I used to avoid anything with GMO associations. The word sounded like a warning label. Then my daughter was diagnosed with celiac disease, and I started reading ingredient panels for gluten, dairy, and soy. That habit sent me down a rabbit hole. I wanted to know what the GMO label tells us. The answer took me to a 1986 government memo, a database of mutant crop varieties, and a report from the National Academies. What I found reshaped how I shop.

Farmers have been changing plant DNA for roughly 10,000 years. Corn began as teosinte, a grass with tiny hard kernels. Generations of farmers selected seeds from plants with bigger, softer kernels until corn emerged. Wheat, rice, apples, and squash followed similar paths. Those changes are genetic, even without a lab. They came from selection.

In the 1920s, plant breeders added a new tool. They exposed seeds to radiation or chemicals to scramble DNA randomly, then selected the useful results. The FAO/IAEA Mutant Variety Database lists more than 3,300 officially released varieties from this process. Some of those varieties sit on conventional and organic grocery shelves. Learning that blurred the line between GMO and traditional breeding.

The GMO label is a 1986 legal category

In 1986, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy published the Coordinated Framework for Regulation of Biotechnology. That memo split oversight among the FDA, USDA, and EPA and decided existing laws were sufficient. The 1986 memo defined the category we now call GMO by the method of breeding, not by the trait or the risk.

A crop with thousands of random mutations from radiation gets no GMO label. A crop with one gene moved from a soil bacterium gets the label. The difference comes down to legal definitions rather than biology. The National Academies made this point in a 2016 report. Their committee found no evidence that genetic engineering as a process creates unique hazards. What matters is the specific crop and the specific trait.

What the largest review found

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine assembled 20 scientists to review more than 900 studies and public comments, and their 2016 report found no evidence that foods from genetically engineered crops are less safe than foods from conventionally bred crops. They also examined environmental and economic effects, which varied by crop and farming practice.

The World Health Organization states that GM foods on the international market have passed safety assessments, and no country where they are approved has reported health effects tied to them. USDA estimates for 2020 put genetically engineered varieties at 94% of soybeans, 92% of corn, and 96% of cotton planted in the United States. Most of those crops go to animal feed, oil, sweeteners, and fibers, not to the fresh produce aisle.

Most whole fruits and vegetables in U.S. grocery stores are not genetically engineered. A few apple varieties, some potatoes, some squash, and papaya from Hawaii are the exceptions. The papaya example matters to me. A virus nearly wiped out Hawaii's papaya farms in the 1990s. Public researchers at a land-grant university developed a papaya resistant to that virus. That papaya came from public researchers, not a single company.

Three misconceptions I had to unlearn

• Non-GMO does not mean pesticide-free. Non-GMO crops can be sprayed with synthetic pesticides. Organic crops use approved pesticides too, from a different list. The non-GMO label refers to the genetic method, not to pesticide residues.

• GMO equals one company's technology. The virus-resistant papaya came from public researchers. Some nutrition-focused crops, like rice engineered to produce beta-carotene, also came from public researchers. I used to picture a single company controlling every GMO seed. That picture is incomplete.

• GMOs are untested. The crops on the market go through safety assessments before approval. The 2016 National Academies report and the World Health Organization both reviewed that evidence. Testing happens on the specific trait and crop. GMO as a category is not tested, because it is not a single thing.

Where I landed as a mom

I still buy non-GMO when I can. I like supporting supply chains that are transparent about their methods. Clean Monday Meals products are non-GMO, and I appreciate that the ingredients are listed in plain language. But I no longer treat the GMO label as a warning.

The questions I ask now are the same for any food. I look for ingredient lists that make sense, food that is not highly processed, and growing practices I want to support. Those questions apply to GMO and non-GMO foods equally.

The history taught me that plant breeding is ancient. The label is a 1986 legal category. The fear, for me, was mostly unfamiliarity. The evidence helped me replace that fear with curiosity.

I am not a plant scientist or a dietitian. I am a mom who reads labels and keeps finding that the simplest questions work best. Talk to your doctor or dietitian if you are unsure what fits your family. If you want recipes built around clean, recognizable ingredients, the free Clean Monday Meals Recipe App has hundreds of them.

When you make a recipe, tag @cleanmondaymeals so we can see it.