Breakfast Aisle

Grocery shopping is MY thing. I think there are some husbands that might do this, but I hate to say it I'm not sure if we would eat or what we would get fed if I left it up to Mr. Farmer (Honey, if you are reading this, I love you till the cows come home, but we both know it's true). I try to space out my grocery stops to every other week and this may be longer if I am able to make a run to Costco which is about an hour and fifteen minutes away. This may seem like a long time between grocery stops, but bread freezes and milk stays fresh for some time. One other benefit is having the ability to buy our protein in large amounts. Once a year we buy a quarter of beef and a half of a hog from my sister and her in-laws and keep it in our deep freeze. This helps with the budget, meal planning and the biggest plus - supporting local agriculture.

This past week I had our nightly meal plan wrote out, I had looked through the grocery ad and I made the short list of items I would need to pick up for the week. It was a pretty generic list, mostly staples. Nothing to GRAND, but here you go:
 
- milk
- cereal
- bread
- large bag of shredded cheese
- red grapes
- peanut butter
- bananas
- spicy brown mustard
- tortillas
- cherry tomatoes
 
As the kids and I roamed the grocery store filling our cart, we reached the breakfast aisle. You know the one that has cereal, bread, oatmeal, jams, peanut butter, etc. As I reached for our staple peanut butter the one that I've ate since childhood I took a moment to look at the label.
 
Non GMO
 
This labeling of Jif is correct, peanuts and the other ingredients in peanut butter are non GMO. The Skippy sitting next to it is also non GMO, but they currently do not state that on the label. At this time there only 10 crops that are genetically modified and two of those ten have not hit grocery store shelves.
 
Approved and available:

1. Corn (field & sweet)
2. Soybeans
3. Cotton
4. Canola
5. Alfalfa
6. Sugar Beets
7. Papaya (Hawaiian)
8. Squash

 
Recently approved, but not yet available:

1. Artic Apples
2. Innate potato

 
As I continued to scan the ingredient list on the jar of peanut butter, sugar was listed second. This could be either cane sugar or beet sugar. As shown in the first list sugar beets are a genetically modified crop which is the source of beet sugar once processed. Last year research was completed looking at the molecular level of sugar to see if the sugar from GMO sugar beets could be distinguished from non GMO sugar, cane or beet. The result was a resounding no_ . The sucrose was identical, no difference. So, yes the peanut butter is still non GMO.
 
As I stood in that aisle with my kids, my buying preferences changed. The tried and true peanut butter that has stood on my family's shelves for years has been replaced, by a peanut butter that chooses not to label their product as non GMO.