One thing keto (and especially ‘lowcarb’ or ‘slowcarb’ which gives you more carbs per day, plans) makes you realize is that aside from grains and beans and some of the fruits and veg, there is a whole world, a wonderland, of “real food” out there. There is not much more delicious than “real food” when you really think about it.
And yet. WTH is this? Mayo, one of the most basic manmade foods for centuries, now needs to be made with bioengineered ingredients? Why??
Apparently it means that the items in bold (in the ingredient list) are GMO. The chickens that lay the eggs are fed GMO corn, etc. This is probably USA specific. (Other countries might have similar labeling requirements.)
I wasn’t able to find any photos online showing the label with bolded items.
Doesn’t NEED to be, but the reality is GMO / Bioengineered doesn’t necessarily equal bad. In the case of the mayo, that’s because of the Canola oil, which sucks on it’s own, but even then, you eating enough to matter? Unlikely. I usually use Primal Kitchen’s Avacado mayo, it’s the best alternative mayo I’ve found, but sometimes I want the real thing, I’m not worrying about an ignoreable amount of Hellman’s that isn’t going to make a difference when the end result is my food tasting the way I want it too. That’s me.
The Bioengineered Labeling requirements are newer, tons of things are going to start adding it that haven’t actually changed anything about the product. Half the stuff all of us are eating are probably going to wind up with that label on it minus the ones that are superclean and already labeling themselves as Non-GMO.
The problem with bioengineered crops is not the foodstuffs themselves, but that the crops are designed to require glyphosate to be applied as an insecticide. So not only does the manufacturer prevent you from using seed from this year’s crop to plant next year’s, but you are also required to purchase their pesticide, and that pesticide is one that is just as deadly as DDT and which persists in the environment just as long, continuing to kill the soil year after year. Not to mention all the other chemical inputs required to grow these crops, either. They claim that glyphosate sprayed on crops does not make it into the food supply—should we believe them? (Possibly. But possibly not.)
Also, if pollen from your neighbour’s GMO crop happens to spread into your field of non-GMO whatever, the seed manufacturer can go after you for copyright infringement and demand that your entire crop be destroyed.
GMO seeds got Indian farmers so deep into Monsanto’s debt that many of them found suicide to be the only option. There is now a movement among their widows to promote the return to non-GMO crops in India. I hope it succeeds.
So the issue with GMO crops is not the food itself, but the rapacious practices of Monsanto, Cargill, Archer-Daniels-Midland and other companies. Fortunately, the experience of farmers practising regenerative agriculture has shown that, when proper procedures are followed, it is possible to grow crops without pesticides at all (or even fertilisers, if you do it right), while at the same time restoring the fertility of the soil. A win-win for everyone, in my book.
I note the big U on the right hand side of the label: one of the markers for Big Food. One of the characteristics of Big Food is that they are WAY more interested in their profits than they are in your health.
I have not eaten Hellmans for a long time: almost all commercial mayonnaises are made with seed oils, which are poisonous in themselves. I am often found looking again at the ingredients
labels in the mayo aisle… I always come away disappointed.
Best way to get healthy mayonnaise? Make it yourself with an oil that you would be proud to eat: extra virgin olive oil? Bacon grease? Butter?
Well, I grew up on miracle whip and margarine. I thought butter tasted totally fake as an adult and had to make myself switch to it. I learned to like mayo when I started eating things that the sweet of miracle whip was disgusting in. And then I liked mayo a lot. There is no end to the number of things that mayo can improve.
I have made mayo with a long assortment of oils and fats, and in no case has my homemade mayo become something that to me, “tasted like mayo.” It tasted like something… but it wasn’t mayo. Because that seed-oil monstrosity in the jar in the store is what my palate learned to call mayo I guess.
I did try the primal food avocado mayos (regular and spicy). I can have about 50% of them subbed for mayo, the rest regular, and have it work. Beyond that, it’s too dark in flavor. More importantly to me, they cost a small fortune.
So it’s bad enough that mayo is so seed-oil heavy. Even the ones claiming “olive oil!” if you look, are still the same ol’ soybean oil crap, they just toss a little olive oil in there for marketing.
I just stopped eating some of my favorite things that had mayo, quite some time ago. So sad. 
I think @lfod14 is correct and tons of stuff has been GMO etc. all along and it’s only just starting to get labeled as such.
PJ
I have tried many mayos too and I am with PJ… they are something, maybe even OK as an ingredient, but they aren’t really mayonnaise. That spot is reserved for Best Foods (which is what Hellmann’s is called out west).
There really are not that many GMO crops in the US, but the problem is that three of them are corn, soy, and sugar beets. That means most processed foods are at least some part GMO.
Where do we draw the line? We’ve been genetically modifying things for thousands of years, selectively breeding animals and plants.
No question that there are sometimes bad results or downstream effects, but case-by-case I think there’s a fairly big range where people will start worrying, and that as individuals we will pick different points.
Personally, I draw it at all that Roundup. I don’t trust that it stays out of the food. The genetic modification per se doesn’t scare me.
Thanks. I never understood how it is with people as I seriously dislike mayo, it’s super fatty and gross to me (or pointless when used in tiny amounts)…
It probably helps a lot if you don’t know the original thing. I barely had it a few times in my life and I disliked it (it was mostly homemade as why would one buy such simple things I suppose. Hungarians tend to like cooking if they have time for it, I think. my relatives and acquaintances surely did)… So it was easy for me 
My own “mayo” (lard and more yolk than that as it’s me :D) suited my taste and it was a few secs to make… Still pointless and needless but I have the option.
I am a bit different though as I made lots of substitute food where I got a very different but better result and I was happy with it. I don’t care if it’s different as long as I don’t want specifically the original (but then I just eat that).
I grew up on margarine, sadly (no idea what miracle whip is and it’s probably fortunate)… But I tasted butter here and there, maybe that’s why I didn’t need to adapt? Probably not, it’s an okay dairy item and I ate dairy…
Going from sunflower oil to coconut oil to lard was smooth too… It’s more like my tastes but indeed, people may get used to some “wrong” stuff too. A cookbook I have read once talked about how people had problems with changes just because there was a change. Apparently, people were complaining about sunflower oil when it started to became the number one (almost exclusively the one and only) cooking oil here. They found is smelly while the lard and fowl fat they used was neutral to them. To me, sunflower oil was the norm and I felt it tasteless. Until I stopped, now I feel the sunflower seed taste and I always disliked sunflower seeds and their taste… (There is fake walnut here, one ingredient is sunflower seeds… Ouch.) I dislike the taste of olive oil WAY more though… But I have lard so all is well. I try to use as little of it as possible but it’s an option to use some when needed.
Even if I don’t understand the “not like mayo” thing, I do am very very sensitive to taste. I mean, whenever people say "it tastes just like ", it is never true for me, faaaaar from it. Things tend to have their very unique flavor and there is NO substitute if we wants that. With a few exceptions. It’s not always a problem, I can live just fine without most of the zillion unique taste. I can eat other, better and still tasty items.
But if I want something specific… It’s usually not the taste for me but the texture… Yeah, that’s hard and I blame some going off keto on it. I don’t WANT something that specific often so that’s good…
I definitely don’t want it in my food either way, but the reality is it’s become a scare tactic for lawyers at this point. I’ve sprayed more Glypohosate than I could ever account for landscaping, many years in shorts, have had it all over me in mist and pump sprayer spilles, workd for a landscape supplier and been direct exposed to it there more times than I can count as well, plus, eating foods which were most likely hosed down in it. I’ve been tested a couple times thinking it’d be in me and it was always negative. From using it, it’s also pretty hard not to notice that it only kills what you spray it on, and after 10days stuff grows fine again, I have a hard time with the claims that it gets in the ground, leeches all over the place and destroys everything as claimed.
Sure, could metabolites of it possibly do something? Of course, but even with me not wanting in on my food, I’m simply not going to lose sleep over it either. Fear is very profitable.
I still would prefer to avoid it. And since it persists for years in the soil, poisoning the microbes necessary for soil health and fertility, I’d rather not encourage its use.
