The TL;DR:<p>There are 2 types of GMO corn: Insect Resistant and Glyphosate Resistant, (Glyphosate is a herbicide, so it can be sprayed on fields killing weeds but not resistant corn).<p>Corn resistant to pests has less loss, therefore higher yield. Also, since there's less insect damage, there's less chance for rot, and therefore fewer mycotoxins, (mycotoxins = toxins that come from fungus). It also hasn't been sprayed with as many pesticides as a non-resistant variety would be, so there's less actual poison on the corn.<p>Corn with no competition from weeds has higher yield, and glyphosate makes it really easy to kill everything else in the field.<p>More corn = more food = better health.<p>Let's pick this apart a bit!<p>Ignoring the lobbyist domain, since the study also appears in Nature[1], there are some sneaky twists here:<p>> GMO corn crops had lower percentages of mycotoxins (-28.8 percent), fumonisins (-30.6 percent) and thricotecens (−36.5 percent), all of which can lead to economic losses and harm human and animal health<p>Fumonisins are a class of mycotoxins, so that 30.6% reduction is already included in the 28.8% reduction of mycotoxins.<p>The word "Thricotecens" only appears in Google as part of this study, and isn't in my computer's dictionary. Is there a scientist that can explain what it is? Is it another sub-group of mycotoxins?<p>Is it a good idea to be consuming corn that grew up with glyphosate[2] in the fields? It seems pretty poisonous, and I didn't see anything about balancing the benefits of more corn vs. less glyphosate.<p>We can also talk about if having more corn in our diet is really a good idea if we want, (spoiler: generally no, especially if you live in North America).<p>[1]<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-21284-2" rel="nofollow">https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-21284-2</a>
[2]<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glyphosate" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glyphosate</a>