Frankenfood

We’re starting to hear more and more loud wailing and gnashing over genetically modified food products, or “Frankenfood” as people on the “against” side of the issue delight in calling it. It’s tempting to dismiss these folks as neo-Luddite fear-mongers who are against these new foods simply because genetically modifying anything is unfamiliar and therefore scary. Unless, of course, you study history or have just been around long enough to remember how other “perfectly safe” miracles of science like DDT, thalidomide, or cyclamates worked out in the long run; in which case, it’s hard to blame people for being at least a little dubious. I still think the purple tomatoes are a nice touch, though…

A story being reported by the BBC Online site describes a new strain of purple tomatoes that have been genetically engineered to contain an anti-oxidant pigment which is believed to have anti-cancer benefits if consumed regularly. No one is really sure how much impact diet has on any form of cancer, let alone whether high levels of anti-oxidants will really help you avoid getting cancer; most of the evidence to date has been more along the lines of “we know these things are good for you in other respects, and they MIGHT help prevent cancer, so why not?” It’s a difficult argument to refute, really; if a single weird-looking fruit is good for your health, and might have anti-cancer benefits, where’s the harm in eating one? It’s not like this is some new scientific development that could turn out to have unexpected side effects later, is it?

Well, actually it is. There’s apparently also some debate about whether these actually taste like tomatoes, not to mention the fact that they look vaguely disturbing. But what makes this entire controversy so amusing is that up until the 17th Century, tomatoes were believed to be poisonous by many cultures, including Great Britain and its North American colonies. As it turns out, the leaves and stems of the tomato plant ARE poisonous (they contain glycoalkoloids), but the fruit is both safe to eat and actively good for you. There was even one celebrated case in the American colonies where a tomato proponent declared that he would publically eat a sack of the red fruits (to prove they were safe) while the local tomato detractors swore he’d keel over from the acid within the first few seconds. What seems to have gotten glossed over in the amusing historical accounts (and contemporary accounts) of this incident is that if our tomato fancier had tried eating the entire plant during his demonstration, it actually might have killed him…

So is genetically modified food any less safe than food bred to have specific characteristics of color, shape, size or flavor the old-fashioned way (e.g. through hundreds of generations of selective cross-pollination)? This remains to be seen, but I should probably point out that unless all of the food you’ve eaten in the last ten years has been taken from plants and animals you raised yourself, you’ve probably already eaten some of this stuff, and unless you move to a farm and start raising all of your own food through completely organic methods, there is a near-certainty that you will be eating some of these products again in the next ten years. Regardless of how we feel about Frankenfood, it’s already here…

I still think these tomatoes look disgusting, however…