We are what we eat, but what if we’re not actually being told what our food’s made of? Instead of organically grown tomatoes picked fresh off the vine, we often find processed, hormone-injected, goliath tomatoes bullying the naturally grown foods on our plate.

Too often we accept these as “natural” and “healthy” because they’re all we know. Our diets have been infested with genetically modified organisms, or GMOs.

GMOs are organisms whose DNA has been altered to possibly have traits more favorable to humans, such as frost resistance in tomatoes, growth hormones in cows, or insect resistance in corn, among thousands of others.

According to the United States Department of Agriculture, 88 percent of corn and 94 percent of soy grown in the U.S. have been genetically modified, and GMOs are in almost 80 percent of conventional processed foods.

GMOs have only been on the market since the mid ‘90s, so there is relatively little scientific research proving that GMOs have any effect at all on humans. However, the GMO studies that have been performed on animals have produced concerning results.

The American Academy of Environmental Medicine (AAEM) cites accelerated aging, immune system disorders, and infertility, among others, as effects observed on the animals studied.

Moreover, when traits from one organism are transferred into the genome of another, allergenic proteins may be an unwanted tag-along.

For example, if scientists took a frost-resistant gene from a peanut, which many people are allergic to, and transferred it into the genome of a strawberry, people may find themselves having allergic reactions to the strawberry.

The greatest problem with GMOs, however, is that there are no government regulations requiring companies to label genetically modified foods because studies performed by the same corporations that make GMOs have reported that GMOs are safe, regardless of the 60 other developed nations that have banned GMOs, such as Australia and the entire European Union.

In order to avoid GMOs, it is important to know where to look. Although there are no government regulations against GMOs, there are certain trusted organizations that verify foods as non-GMO, such as Oregon Tilth and California Certified Organic Farmers (CCOF).

The non-GMO project is an organization that works to provide non-GMO foods and is the nation’s only third party verification for non-GMO food and products. If we want to eat healthy, we need to know what we’re eating, and GMOs are the single greatest threat to that right now.

Shop locally and look for labels verifying non-GMO foods. In order to better our chances of victory in the fight against GMOs, it is imperative that we know the risks of consuming them and have the passion to make sure we know exactly what we are putting in our bodies.

Billy Jump is an In-Depth Editor for The Patriot and jcpatriot.com