Does your stomach hurt after eating at the dining halls? That orange ooze, those oily roasted veggies, PAM cooking spray on every grill, and the giant vats of yellow oil on the counter in Commons are likely causing you more problems than you realize. Inflammatory corn, soy, and canola oils are in nearly every food cooked in our dining halls.

Dr. David Heber of UCLA criticizes modern medicine’s focus on treating symptoms rather than “addressing the root cause” of health issues, “which in many cases is inflammation.” Most of the human immune system resides in the digestive tract. A diet high in processed oils “trigger[s] an inflammatory response,” like a food allergen does, compromising our immune system and often leading to the development of disease. During a global pandemic, attention to the health of our immune systems should be a paramount concern for the college, which has taken so many other dramatic measures to reduce transmission of the virus while serving us food that isn’t good for immune-system health.

Canola oil is “caustically refined, bleached, and degummed,” processes that involve “high temperatures or chemicals that are damaging to the human body.” It is then subjected to “deodorization,” a process of heating that oxidizes the product. “Canola oil is extremely unstable under heat, light and pressure, which causes oxidation and releases free radicals inside the body.” When heated in refining and cooking “it produces high levels of butadiene, benzene, acrolein, formaldehyde and other nasty compounds,” which “when combined with increased free radicals, create the perfect environment for cancer growth.” Ingesting this kind of oil exposes body tissues to “oxidized or rancid products,” which “contributes to degenerative diseases and chronic inflammation.”

The genetic modification of canola and corn causes further inflammation, and creates new allergies with corresponding inflammatory responses. Ninety percent of canola and corn is genetically modified, and because non-genetically modified corn and canola oil are specialty products, it seems likely that all of those oils in our dining halls are genetically modified. Monsanto nearly monopolizes the agricultural industry and produces genetically modified organisms (GMOs), altering their canola and corn with Bt endotoxin derived from bacteria that are designed to burst bugs’ stomachs. A group of French scientists found evidence that Monsanto corn produced tumors in rats and impaired digestion. Another study suggested that Bt corn creates allergies by perforating the intestinal wall. Sources unassociated with Monsanto say that Bt crops have caused digestive issues in rats, mice, and corn-fed cattle.

If GMOs are so bad, why aren’t they adequately regulated? There is a revolving door between Monsanto and the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration. One of Monsanto’s attorneys, for example, became policy chief of the FDA, later returning to Monsanto to become its vice president and chief lobbyist. Geneticist David Suzuki summarizes the problem:

“The FDA has said that genetically modified organisms are not much different from regular food, so they’ll be treated in the same way. The problem is this: … What biotechnology allows us to do is to take [an] organism and move it horizontally into a totally unrelated species, to switch genes from one to the other without regard to the biological constraints. It’s very, very bad science. [The FDA assumes] that the principles governing the inheritance of genes vertically, applies when you move genes laterally or horizontally. There’s absolutely no reason to make that conclusion.”

Because of Monsanto’s political involvement, the ability to test the safety and health hazards of GMOs in North America is limited. It’s the biotechnology industry itself that tests almost all FDA-approved GM food. In Europe, many scientists suggest the harmful effects of GMOs, and 26 countries have banned them. President Biden has appointed Tom Vilsack, nicknamed “Mr. Monsanto,” to oversee the USDA as Secretary of Agriculture after holding the same position during the Obama presidency. He has reportedly approved more new GMOs than any other Agriculture Secretary, and he continues to serve the corporate interests of Monsanto. Regardless of what you think about any other aspect of the Obama or Biden presidency, the appointment of Vilsack is detrimental to the health of the country, which remains uninformed about the long-term detriments of GMOs and their inflammatory qualities, an ignorance that is convenient for corporate financial interests.

In 2016, Monsanto merged with Bayer, one of the world’s largest antacid, anti-inflammatory, and allergen medication-producing pharmaceutical companies. This $66 billion alliance enables Bayer to cheaply engineer drugs using GM agriculture. With numerous lawsuits against Monsanto that accuse it of failing to disclose the cancer-causing effects of its glyphosate pesticides and with evidence supporting the allergen-creating effects of Bt genes in its seeds, the union of Bayer and Monsanto even creates suspicions of collusion between the pharmaceutical industry and the GMO industry, since the ingestion of more Monsanto products means a greater market for allergy and symptom-suppressing medication.

With an endowment approaching 1.5 billion dollars, Hamilton could easily prevent long-term mental and physical health effects for its students by requiring the dining halls to use anti-inflammatory non-GMO oils, such as 100 percent extra virgin olive oil or coconut oil. At the very least, it could provide labeled alternatives that are free of such products at each meal. If Hamilton tries to care for students’ health in other ways, perhaps it would be willing to follow the science and change this unhealthy aspect of our diets.