East Hampton - It's time for dinner - do you know where your Tofu came from? Practicing yoga isn't just about stretching out your hamstrings or snatching up the latest yoga fashions so you'll look cool at your local studio - it's about paying attention. It's about paying attention to what is going on in the world and making a difference. Yoga means making an effort to practice truthfulness, non-stealing, non-violence and non-greediness. It means caring about stuff - looking behind the glossy finish.

Cotton plant. (djc.com)

Take tofu for instance - made from soybeans. Do you know where your tofu burger came from? I've watched all kinds of good Americans who wanted to eat less meat and be more environmentally conscious, switch from eating lots of meat to eating lots of tofu and soy chips and soy milk and soy burgers and soy turkey and soy cheese and bacon! Tofu is made from soybeans and soy enjoys an ancient and wonderful history as an important source of protein in a country like, say, Japan? So what could possibly be wrong with that?

Almost all soybeans grown in this country are from genetically modified seeds! At the moment, there are four genetically modified crops in the U.S., soybeans, corn, cotton, and wheat and they were all developed, not to increase yield in order to feed and clothe our exponentially growing world population, as the chemical companies that developed them claim, but to make money for those same companies (and to hell with the risks to the consumer!).

Well, that leads us to a couple of questions. What does genetically modified mean and why would you want to genetically modify such a perfect bean? Well, it means that food "scientists" have mucked around with the genetic engineering of the plant's DNA to achieve a particular trait - kind of like breeding certain qualities in and out of a purebred line of dogs.

Soy chips. (medifast1.com)

You most likely don't know this but almost all soybean seeds in this country are owned by a sweet little behemoth company by the name of Monsanto. Monsanto is a chemical company and famous for such outstanding contributions to our culture as DDT, Agent Orange, bovine growth hormone, and a product called Round Up. I first heard about Round Up in the late 1980s when all my neighbors on a four-acre lot of land I owned in Bozeman, Montana, wanted me to spray the land with Round Up to kill an invasive weed species that was growing out of control on the property. I didn't.

In 1998, as the demand for soybeans grew, due to the growing population and the industrialization of our food chain which was making more and more manufactured products out of soy, Monsanto came up with a "Round Up Ready," genetically modified soybean seed that would yield plants that could withstand the spraying of Round Up. Brilliant! Farmers needed an herbicide to kill weeds in their soy fields, so Monsanto not only sold them the weed killer, but came up with a soybean that could withstand the poison herbicide and then sold them that too. Good ol' Round Up – killed every weed out there except the Round Up Ready Soybean, and since it was genetically modified, Monsanto could own the seed. (At that time, in 1998, two percent of soybeans in the United States contained Monsanto's patented gene. By 2008, 90 percent of soybeans in the U.S. were genetically modified and contained the Monsanto gene.)

One more note: From 1976 to 1979 Clarence Thomas worked as an attorney for Monsanto. In l991 he was appointed as an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court and subsequently wrote the majority opinion in a court case that allowed Monsanto to prevent the farmers from saving their own seeds. Essentially this meant that the farmers had to buy seeds from Monsanto every year in order to grow this genetically modified bean. Sweet!

I watch the kabillions of people out in the Hamptons this summer - more than I ever remember, partying, beach going, shopping, grilling and chilling. Hamptonites just want to have fun. I wonder how many have money invested in Mutual Funds that have stock in Monsanto and how many, as the clamoring for parking at Main Beach goes on, even give a hoot about what Monsanto does, as long as it makes enough money to pay the rent on the summer share. Yoga is about waking up! Are you in the dark? Consumers have a right to know. You have a right to know. When will it happen?