Letter From The Editor: Fooducate’s GMO App

By Dan Flynn | October 21, 2012 From PRWEB last week came the exciting news. Just as I requested, technology has beat the ballot box with a smart phone app for checking out food and beverage items for GMO ingredients (genetically modified organisms). In a past Sunday Sermon, I was skeptical about the whole Prop 37 campaign in California because dictating label writing at the state level struck me as "so 20th Century." And earlier this year, I hailed the X Prize Foundation for offering a $10 million prize to anyone who invents a real life version of the three function Tricorder from Star Trek. Now that would empower consumers, allowing them to conduct geological, meteorological and biological analysis of anything they want. Think of how long the lines will be at the Apple stores when the Star Trek Tricorder comes out! While we wait for that, however, the app and website Fooducate has come out with an update for identifying GMOs. Fooducate has remained hot since it launched in January 2011, recognized by both Apple and the U.S. Surgeon General as the best health app our there.  Its free version includes advertising, the $3.99 app does not, and $4.99 app is available for people who want to be warned of specific allergies. It's pretty simple too. If you have the Fooducate app on your phone or website, you just have to turn on the GMO option in your profile. Just turn where is says: "Warn me about GMOs" to on. From then on, each food item scanned will return GMO information that Fooducate has on the product. It will produce an all clear sign for products without GMOs. Based on an analysis of ingredients, Fooducate will say whether there is a medium or high probability of GMOs. The iphone app, available at the iTunes App Store, also has versions for gluten, allergies, and diabetes. It is also available as an Android. In its announcement, the San Francisco-based company says its people favor passage of Prop 37 and it sees the  GMO app as filling the information niche until the initiative can be implemented in California and for use in the rest of the country in meantime. In reality, Prop 37 may never be implemented in California either because it does not pass or because federal courts later strike it down. Like most propositions requiring a "yes" vote, support has dropped like a rock. The last poll had it still ahead but below 50 percent. California's mostly  liberal editorial writers are coming out against Prop 37 by a about a 5-to-1 margin, largely over the sloppy job done by the drafters. While the "yes" campaign started it and raised about $4.5 million though Oct. 1, the "no" campaign is proving to be the closer having raised about $35 million with nearly half of it available going into October. But all those usual factoids of the campaign are not important anymore. Not with Fooducate and certainly not when the Tricorders go on sale. Technology besting politics, I love it. © Food Safety News More Headlines from Science & Research » Tags: Fooducate, GMO, GMO labeling, Proposition 37