So you know GMO's right? like genetically modified organisms?
Like 'em? Hate 'em? Don't really know what they are and not really willing to commit to either side until you're convinced they're worth discussion? Well, look no further friend.
Tuesday before we were let out, Amanda gave us one final piece of homework: read and annotate the first chapter ("Against the Ways of Nature") of Mendel in the Kitchen by Nina v. Fedoroff and Nancy Marie Brown.
Certainly this flashes us back to the blogpost about last Monday where we looked at the issues revolving around bananas, a huge controversy all its own. The first chapter of the book opened with an introduction to the case of Golden Rice, what was once a huge protest topic for anti-GMO activists.
Basically the situation is this: A lot of kids in poorer countries eat rice, and a lot of it. Rice, according to the chapter, accounts for sometimes more than half the calories consumed in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Laos, and other countries, and is a staple food in nearly half the world. The problem is, it doesn't have a lot of vitamins and nutrients in it, and developing children don't get enough vitamin A in their diet, which assists eyesight in the early stages. This often leads to a lot of the children going blind before they reach adulthood, with about a million of them dying from the deficiency.
What scientist Ingo Potrykus decided to do with this information was try to put a gene that would tun into vitamin A in the body, into the rice, and after about ten years of deliberation and hard work, he and his colleagues succeeded. Golden rice was created, rice with implemented with the gene that give daffodils their vibrant yellow color, and kids in worse off countries lowered their risk for blindness and respiratory disease due to vitamin A deficiency. pretty cool, right?
Unfortunately, it faced very harsh backlash from people claiming that Golden rice was "a source of genetic poulltion", an abomination and a sellout act. One reviewer of the story even said it was "worse than telling them to eat cake".
What scientist Ingo Potrykus decided to do with this information was try to put a gene that would tun into vitamin A in the body, into the rice, and after about ten years of deliberation and hard work, he and his colleagues succeeded. Golden rice was created, rice with implemented with the gene that give daffodils their vibrant yellow color, and kids in worse off countries lowered their risk for blindness and respiratory disease due to vitamin A deficiency. pretty cool, right?
Unfortunately, it faced very harsh backlash from people claiming that Golden rice was "a source of genetic poulltion", an abomination and a sellout act. One reviewer of the story even said it was "worse than telling them to eat cake".
Other accounts in the chapter detailed similarly interesting methods of genetically modifying organisms, including irradiation, somaclonal variation, and tissue culture cloning, which we've seen happen with the cavendish banana.
Okay, but how is this applicable to real life current events? Well....
The last ingredient! Beta Carotene! Right here in my "natural" dessert! These white people are probably shoveling this stuff into their mouths faster than kids in Asia are going blind because Beta Carotene, GMO's and Golden Rice are being protested for how unethical it is. Oh yes, let a million already disadvantaged children lose their eyesight but don't dare mess with God's plan. God probably has a plan for that army of blind kids to spread his message too, doesn't he.
Beta Carotene is a gene that turns food yellowish and activates/carries vitamin A in the body.
Basically glorified food coloring. That is good for you.
Anyway, if this topic interests you at all in the slightest, I highly encourage you, in fact I implore you, to please check out at least the first chapter of this amazingly, impressively sophisticated and simple book, Mendel In the Kitchen free of charge on google books and if you like it, read along with the Violet Band as we plunge the rabbit hole into the intricate world of genetically modified organisms in our food.
thanks for reading
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