Dmitry Naumov / Featurepics.com

California voters will decide whether genetically modified foods should be labeled as such.

If you saw a “genetically engineered” label on a box of cereal, bag of chips, or package of tofu -- would you buy the product?

That’s a question many wonder as California voters prepare to vote on Proposition 37 next Tuesday. If approved, food manufacturers will be required by law for the first time to label all products produced from genetically modified (GM), biotech, or genetically engineered (GE) crops. “Natural,” “naturally made, “naturally grown,” and “all natural” would also be prohibited on labels and advertisements of GM foods.

Previous efforts to mandate the labeling of GM foods have failed in both Connecticut and Vermont.  

Introduced commercially in the mid-1990s, GM crops are those in which DNA—the genetic material of an organism—is transferred from one organism to another in order to introduce a new trait into the organism. The resulting crops would then be disease- or pest-resistant, or be more tolerant to herbicides.

Organizations including the World Health Organization and the National Academy of Sciences believe GM foods pose no likely health risk, and proponents of the technology cite benefits including reduced cost to produce crops and increased crop yield; decreased pesticide and herbicide use; and more nutritious crops.

But critics such as the American Academy of Environmental Medicine cite evidence, primarily from animal studies, of possible health risks of GM food consumption including infertility, organ damage, gastrointestinal and immune system disorders, and accelerated aging. They also cite inadequate safety testing, although an extensive 2010 review of 50 research projects done over a decade by the European Commission found no evidence to link consumption of GM foods with higher risks of food or feed safety when compared with conventionally produced foods.

Although the FDA encourages biotech companies to voluntarily consult with them about the safety of their products before making them available to consumers, GM foods don’t need to be labeled unless they have significantly different nutritional properties, contain allergens not normally expected in the food, or contain toxins beyond acceptable amounts.

Because there’s no mandatory labeling of GM foods, there’s a good chance many of us consume them without even knowing. According to the Grocery Manufacturers Association, 75 to 80 percent of conventional processed foods currently contain GM ingredients. Among the foods most likely to contain GM ingredients include ready-to-eat cereals, snack chips, tofu and other soy-derived foods, soups, and any processed foods made with corn, soybeans, canola and cottonseed oils.

Those who support the “Yes to Prop 37” campaign believe that consumers should not be left in the dark about what’s in their food. According to one such advocate, Michele Simon, JD, MPH, author of "Appetite for Profit," “Prop 37 is an important step toward bringing America in line with 61 other nations that already require some form of GM labeling.” She also questions what she refers to as “The more than $40 million spent by leading pesticide and junk food companies to keep Californians in the dark about what they’re eating.”

Although it doesn’t support mandatory labeling, the American Medical Association recently updated their position on GE foods and called for mandatory safety testing before they hit the market.

While the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics’ official evidence-based position on GM foods won’t be available until 2013, registered dietitian and Academy spokesperson Jeannie Gazzaniga-Moloo, Ph.D, R.D. says, “The Academy supports consumers right to know what ingredients are in the foods they purchase to feed their families.” She adds, “Those who have specific questions about foods or ingredients should contact food manufacturers directly.”

Although it’s unclear when and if all GM foods will be labeled, some consumers want to minimize their exposure. Here's what you can do:

Consider going organic, at least sometimes
According to the U.S Department of Agriculture, a food that’s labeled “organic” cannot be produced through genetic engineering. Although some organic foods unintentionally contain small amounts of GM ingredients, choosing more organic foods—especially processed ones made with corn, soybeans, canola and cottonseed oils that are more likely than many other processed foods to contain GM ingredients —can help you reduce your overall exposure. And even though there may not be enough evidence to say organic foods trump conventional ones nutritionally, a recent review in Annals of Internal Medicine found that consuming organic foods may reduce exposure to both pesticide residues and antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

Be picky with processed foods
To minimize your exposure to GM foods, look for processed foods that have a “Non-GMO Project Verified Seal” on their label. Created by The Non-GMO Project, a non-profit organization in North America; the seal indicates the product has been produced “According to consensus-based best practices for GMO avoidance.”

Mix it up
Because organic foods can be pricey, choose seasonal, local items and buy appropriate amounts based on what your family typically eats to save money and reduce waste. If you can’t afford or choose not to buy all organic food, vary your grocery list and menus weekly or monthly. For example, buy different kinds of beans, whole grains, and oils—that’ll help you vary your nutrient intake, and at the same time, minimize possible health risks associated with individual foods.

For more information on GMOs, check out the World Health Organization website and The PEW initiative on Food and Biotechnology  

More from NBCNews.com Health:

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• Greenpeace out to sea on GM rice issue, bioethicist says
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Greenpeace, perhaps best known for its battles at sea to protect whales and the oceans, has gotten itself involved in a huge controversy over genetically modified food.

The group is charging that unsuspecting children were put at risk in a “dangerous” study of genetically engineered rice in rural China. It’s a serious claim, because it is putting research seeking to put more nutrition into food at risk.

Genetically engineered rice has the potential to help solve a big nutritional problem—vitamin A deficiency.  A lack of vitamin A kills 670,000 kids under 5 every year and causes 250,000 to 500,000 to go blind. Half die within a year of losing their sight, according to the World Health Organization. I think Greenpeace is being ethically irresponsible and putting those lives at continued risk.

Research involving children is often highly controversial.  Putting children at risk when there us no certainty of benefit in the hope of gaining new knowledge is, at best, ethically dubious.  Research done on kids when the risk is great rightly sets all of our moral teeth on edge.

That is the charge Greenpeace is screaming ethical bloody murder about. They say Chinese children were given dangerous genetically engineered rice in a study without any consent from the kids, parents or the approval of the appropriate review bodies. 

Greenpeace does not favor the use of genetic engineering to modify food. It’s been campaigning for years against plans to introduce “golden rice” in China. The claim about the experiment, if true, would drastically slow the very research that will, if successful, lead to a lot more genetically modified food being eaten in China, the U.S. and the rest of the world. Is Greenpeace’s fear of GMOs protecting kids or potentially harming them? The latter seems, sadly, more likely.

As might be expected, the charges of research abuse are causing an explosion of reaction in China. Beijing has launched an investigation, a Chinese researcher has already been suspended and a whole lot of finger-pointing is going on within China. A couple of fingers are also pointing right at the USA, since the rice study was funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the National Institutes of Health. 

If these accusations were true, this would be one of the worst research scandals of all time.  U.S.-funded research involving dangerous food made by big, greedy U.S. companies tested on poor, innocent kids in rural China with no consent— who could trust people willing to do that? The only problem with Greenpeace’s cry of scandal is that it is nonsense.

You can look at the paper on line that is setting off this international moral maelstrom.  It appears in the August issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.  The title of the paper is “Beta-carotene in Golden Rice is as good as b-carotene in oil at providing vitamin A to children”.

Without even knowing what the heck this title means, it tells you something very important — this is an experiment that worked!  The engineered rice allowed the kids in the study to get more vitamin A, Guangwen Tang of Tufts University and colleagues report. 

The 68 6 to 8-year-olds in the study got either the “golden rice” or spinach.

The beta-carotene in the title is the substance in carrots that gives them their orange color.  It occurs naturally in other plants, including spinach.  But it does not exist in white rice.  B-carotene is used by your body to help make vitamin A.

If you live in a country that relies heavily on white rice and not much else for food, you may be vitamin A deficient.  The experiment involved tweaking the genes of rice so the plant produced more beta-caroten.  The paper reports that when kids ate this rice in the study, they got as much or more vitamin A then they did eating their usual diet or one supplemented with other sources of carotene.  The experiment worked.

Well, you may say, even if the experiment worked, it still is not right to put kids into a nutrition study without their parents’ knowledge or the proper review. True, but the study was neither risky nor lacking in review.

GMO food has been eaten by almost everyone reading this column for years.  No study has shown any health danger. The researchers who conducted the China study rightly did not worry about the safety of the rice.  The researchers only wanted to see if it helped put Vitamin A into the kids who ate it.  It did.

What about consent and review, which Greenpeace says did not happen? The paper says otherwise. 

“The study recruitment processes and protocol were approved by the Institutional Review Board–Tufts Medical Center in the United States and by the Ethics Review Committee of Zhejiang Academy of Medical Sciences in China. Both parents and pupils [children] consented to participate in the study,” the researchers wrote.

The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition may not be on your bedroom table for night reading but it is a respected journal that is widely read by leading scientists and doctors interested in nutrition.  Either the researchers have put into print before their peers the biggest flat-out lie since Bernie Madoff denied he was running a Ponzi scheme ,or the critics screeching about Chinese kids being used as “guinea pigs” have a whole lot of explaining to do.

Maybe, despite the researchers’ efforts, something went wrong in terms of families really understanding they were in a study.  Even if there were no reason to think children were ever at any real risk, that would be a problem. It’s worth checking out, if for no other reason to inform future studies and prevent stinks like this one.

The result of the study shows that there is another tool available to fight the death and blindness caused by diets poor in food that creates vitamin A. The world’s leaders need to be sensitive to fixing real, ongoing problems in trying to do research ethically when subjects are poor and vulnerable.  The world needs to tell organizations that have an irrational fear of GMO food even when it might help save kids lives and sight to head back out to sea.

Art Caplan, Ph.D., is the head of the division of medical ethics at the NYU Langone Medical Center

Related links:

China investigating GMO rice study

Big Food girds for California GMO fight

Oregon farm group sues over GM canola