When apples are subjected to mechanical damage, such as slicing, the apple flesh changes its original color and becomes brownish. Some consumers perceive this as a problem. But fear not—scientists have created nonbrowning Arctic® apples, which are genetically modified in order to solve this “problem.”
As the marketing people who sell these apples explain:
Primary browning in apples takes place when the fruit’s phenolic compounds react with oxygen. This oxidation process is driven by an enzyme called polyphenol oxidase (PPO), which we silence in our Arctic® apples. When an apple’s cells are ruptured – by bruising, biting, or cutting – the browning reaction begins when PPO found in one part of the cell is able to react with phenolic compounds found elsewhere in the cell.
These fancy new apples are being sold sliced and packaged in plastics, because apparently humanity generates too little plastic waste from packaging, and we must try as hard as we can to make even more. Just how lazy a person has to be in order to be unable to slice their own apples before eating them?
The fact that apples become brownish after being sliced is not a problem. Instead the problem is that many consumers have ridiculous ideas about how fruits and vegetables are supposed to look like.
For example, here is an online article titled “Supermarket Buying Guide: How to Buy Produce.” Here’s a quote from it.
Vegetables should look fresh, with no bruises or punctures; leafy vegetables should be free of insect damage, root vegetables not shriveled or decayed…Don’t buy damaged fruits or vegetables even if they’re a bargain—they’ll be less nutritious (and less tasty) than fresh.
This is terrible advice that is bound to increase food waste. Bruises or punctures are no big deal if you are planning to eat some fruit or vegetable immediately after purchasing it. They become a problem only if you are planning to store said food for a week before eating it, because bruises and punctures speed up rotting. As for insect damage, I grow some of my own food, and over my lifetime I have eaten a lot of vegetables with some minor visible insect damage. Sure, there are cases when insect damage on fruits and vegetables is so terrible that the food becomes inedible, but some minor visual defects are no big deal. Various critters live in gardens, and they are interested in snacking on the food humans produce. Deal with it. Moreover, of course, you should avoid fruits and vegetables that are decayed and rotten, but “fresh” is more complicated. For example, it is currently spring, the carrots I now eat were harvested half a year ago. They are no longer as crunchy and juicy as they used to be in autumn. The taste really is worse when eating such carrots raw, but when cooked they taste pretty much the same as fresh carrots.
I don’t particularly complain about other customers rejecting “ugly” fruits and vegetables whenever their silly behavior allows me to get cheaper food. For example, two weeks ago I bought some cauliflower with minor visual defects that was 60% cheaper than normally.
But I do complain when other consumers’ decisions result in me becoming unable to get tasty fruits and vegetables. Let’s get back to apples.
Shown here is my favorite apple cultivar, “Cukuriņš” in Latvian or “Korobovka” in Russian, it is an old (from 1800ties) apple cultivar that originates from Russia. The apples are small, but have a very sweet taste. They ripen early in summer, and the tree is very winter-hardy.
I can get these apples only in farmers’ markets, because all supermarkets have collectively decided that these apples are too tiny and too ugly to sell. Yes, they are tiny and not particularly pretty, but so what. Who cares! I buy apples in order to eat them, I don’t buy them to stare at them. These apples are tasty, and that’s what matters for me.
My second favorite apple cultivar is “Tiina,” which was created in Estonia and registered as a new cultivar in 2001. These apples ripen in autumn, and they are also very sweet and juicy. These apples are larger and prettier than “Korobovka,” but supermarkets still won’t sell them, because they aren’t large and pretty enough.
Instead, supermarkets sell apples that are large, pretty, and have a very long shelf life. Unfortunately, they also taste like cardboard. If not for the local farmers’ market, it would be impossible for me to buy apples, because the pretty and supposedly fancy crap that is sold in supermarkets isn’t tasty enough to be edible.
This problem isn’t happening only with apples, this is happening with all the fruits and berries out there, because large retail chains demand cultivars that produce pretty fruits with a long shelf life. They don’t give a damn about how these fruits taste.
I find it absolutely amazing that scientists are now able to genetically modify plants. That’s really cool. Genetically modified papaya plants that are resistant to the papaya ringspot virus are amazing. That’s an example of how this technology ought to be used. Hawaiian papaya production was almost destroyed by this virus. Transgenic papaya varieties that are resistant to PRSV entered production in 1998 and resuscitated the industry. Golden rice is also great. While I do think that the long term solution for a nutrient deficiency and malnutrition would be diversifying and improving poor people’s diets, a quick fix that can immediately improve people’s lives and alleviate suffering is still very welcome.
But nonbrowning apples! Come on, this is ridiculous. Are you seriously trying to tell me that one of the greatest problems with our food supply is the fact that apples become brownish a while after slicing?
I have a better proposal. I want genetically modified grapes, apricots, peaches, nectarines, and kiwifruit that are winterhardy enough to endure cold Latvian winters.
It is already possible to grow grapes in Latvia. Pictured here is the grape cultivar “Zilga,” which I am already growing. The vine is extremely frost resistant to minus 40° Celsius. The pesky drawback—berries are small (1.7 grams), and the average weight of a cluster is also small (88 grams), also the taste isn’t really that good either. I do perceive these grapes as tasty enough to eat them, but they are a bit sour and nowhere near as tasty as grapes that are grown in warmer climates.
On my boyfriend’s land (which I have appropriated for my food production needs), I also grow Actinidia kolomikta. This plant produces small edible berries, which taste somewhat like kiwifruit. And, yes, this plant is closely related to what consumers call kiwifruits, the difference is that these plants are more winterhardy and have tiny fruit.
In Latvia, it is also possible to grow apricots, cultivars like “Velta,” “Lāsma,” etc. In Latvia, growing apricots on apricot rootstock is impossible, because the resulting plants would freeze to death in winters. Thus here growers graft apricots on plum rootstock. The problem is limited compatibility between plum rootstock and apricots. Prunus cerasifera var. divaricata is the most commonly used rootstock, because they grow quickly and make strong roots. Yet these plums are not fully compatible with apricots, thus resulting trees often die after a while. Personally, I am currently experimenting with grafting apricots on a plum cultivar “Latvijas dzeltenā olplūme.” When fruit trees get hurt in too cold winters, the trunk is the first part that dies. Branches that are higher above the ground survive better. This is why in Latvia gardeners who are willing to spend a lot of time fussing with a single fruit tree often plant a winterhardy cultivar and then graft another cultivar with better fruit quality on each of the branches higher above the ground. For now, I am still waiting for my plum tree to grow larger so that I can try to turn each of its branches into apricots.
As for peaches and nectarines, nobody in Latvia is even trying to grow those outside of greenhouses; they simply aren’t even remotely winterhardy enough for this climate. So yeah, I really want genetically modified warmer climate plants that are made more winterhardy. But no, instead scientists are working on some silly nonbrowning apples that could be sold already sliced and wrapped up in plastic.
But fine, let’s put aside silly nonbrowning apples for a moment. What humans are doing with our food supply is plain terrifying. Gene patents must be outlawed. Corporations that exploit their monopoly position and have way too many lawyers on their payroll must be reined in (hint: I’m talking about Monsanto). State governments must pay for creating new plant cultivars. This is serious. We are talking about humanity’s food supply, something that is essential for our survival. We cannot afford to let for-profit corporations to promise that they will make new and better plant cultivars for us. Yes, so far in wealthy countries the food supply is secure. But the key words are “so far.” The climate is changing. We will need new and improved plants that can adapt to too much or too little water combined with the wrong temperature, never mind pests and diseases. If we want to avoid mass famines (I strongly suspect that there will be plenty of them once the climate becomes shitty), we should start working on new plant cultivars while we still have time to plan ahead.
I am disappointed with how corporate interests have turned the term “GMO” into something people hate. Sure, gene patents and nasty business practices are, well, nasty. But the technology itself would have so much potential.
I am even more disappointed with the organic farming industry. Their business model is based upon lies and fearmongering. “Natural=good; chemical=bad” is a ridiculous idea to promote. It’s also harmful and spreads mistrust towards science among uneducated people who easily fall victims to fearmongering. Lifesaving medicines are “chemicals.” Toxic mushrooms are “100% natural and organic.” Whether some molecule can be found in the nature or was synthesized in a lab is not how you determine whether you should get it into your body.
Sure, I am aware that conventional agriculture kills bees, depletes phosphorus reserves (phosphate rock being a finite natural resource), and fucks up soil. We do need to change agricultural practices towards something more sustainable, so that we can produce safe food for all the humans on this planet in a way that harms the environment as little as possible.
Yet the organic farming standards were never meant as a rational, evidence-based, and scientific attempt to establish optimal guidelines for how to achieve these goals. Instead it was the result of an infantile black versus white mindset that categorizes everything natural as good and everything created in a laboratory as toxic. Various technologies have both benefits and drawbacks. For example, using synthetic fertilizer increases crop yields (thus humans need a smaller amount of agricultural land in order to get the same amount of food) but also uses up finite natural resources and harms rivers due to fertilizer runoff. A rational and evidence-based approach would compare such benefits and drawbacks and calculate exactly how much (if any) synthetic fertilizer farmers should use for the best possible results. By the way, modern synthetic fertilizers can provide numerous different nutrients for plants (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, calcium, magnesium, copper, iron, manganese, etc.), thus it is possible that maybe in some circumstances farmers should provide only some of these nutrients from a synthetic fertiliser and not not the others.
Determining optimal methods how to produce food would require plenty of work from scientists with degrees in agriculture who are also capable of advanced statistical analysis. Moreover, it would be impossible to create a single set of rules that are applicable for all the plants out there. Some plants need little fertilizer and are naturally resistant to pests and diseases. For such plants it would make sense not to use synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. But for other plants using modern technologies significantly improve yields. It depends. Agriculture is complicated. Various technologies have both benefit and drawbacks.
Unfortunately, guidelines for organic farming are simply a list that bans everything “non natural” and “chemical” that some uneducated victim of fearmongering might possibly dislike.
Let’s consider pesticides, for example. Ask people who buy organic food what they like about it, and most will say “they’re grown without pesticides.” Yet that’s not even factually true. In organic farming only synthetic pesticides are prohibited. A chemical is said to be synthetic if it does not already exist in the natural world. As long as some substance is naturally occurring somewhere on this planet, farmers can use it as a pesticide. Organic farmers do use pesticides. A lot of them. And no, the mere fact that some molecule occurs somewhere in the nature doesn’t mean that said substance is better or safer when used as a pesticide. For example, Rotenone is worth looking at more closely. Despite the high toxicity of Rotenone to aquatic life and some links to Parkinson disease, it is still allowed in organic farming as it is a naturally occurring compound (it occurs naturally in the seeds and stems of several plants).
Alternatively, the toxin produced by Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) has been used as an insecticide spray since the 1920ties and is commonly used in organic farming. Bt proteins are allowed in organic farming as an insecticide, because Bt is a bacterium that is found naturally in the soil. Bt is also the source of the genes used to genetically modify a number of food crops so that they produce the toxin on their own to deter various insect pests. Using Bt as an insecticide is allowed in organic farming, but growing plants that have been genetically modified to produce the same substance is somehow evil. That’s irrational.
And the most terrible part is that a lot of things that are happening with our food supply are irrational. From silly nonbrowning apples, to consumers imagining that fruit and vegetables with minor visual defects are inedible, to gene patents, to organic farming standards.
Speaking of the latter, marketing specialists who promote organically grown food have spent decades telling consumers that chemicals are bad and that scientists cannot be trusted. I wonder how many people started with organic food (due to being afraid that they might ingest chemicals) only to fall deeper in the pit of fear thus ending up as anti-vaxxers and fans of alternative medicine in the form of various natural food supplements that are supposed to cure all illnesses. Misinformation drives fear and ignorance. Humanity is approaching the point when we will need all the technologies we have just to avoid mass famines, yet numerous people are afraid that technology creates food that contains toxins and is harmful for health. This sounds like a recipe for a disaster to me.