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TEXT 5. IT'S JUST NOT NATURAL

Genetic modification can give us easy-peel oranges, cancer-fighting strawberries and blue potatoes. But if you don't want your food fiddled about with, can you avoid it?

When you bite into an apple, do you ever wish it was a pineapple instead? Well, now you can have the best of both worlds. Australian scientists have created a fruit with the convenience of an apple and the taste of a pineapple. The aim of the Snack Apple is to persuade children to eat more fresh fruit and vegetables and it's just one illustration of how far science is prepared to go in pursuit of this worthy ideal.

First on the scene was frozen-food company Iceland which came up with chocolate-flavoured carrots, made by freezing the vegetables with granules of chocolate sauce. And plant breeders have a range of mini-vegetables such as carrots, broccoli and cauliflower, which they hope will make them popular snack foods with youngsters and a healthier alternative to crisps.

But science can now do more than this and create new types of foods by means of genetic manipulation. A gene may be transferred from a different species in order to increase the nutritional value of the plant, or to make it more resist­ant to pests and disease. Incredibly, scientists have used a gene from a fish to give antifreeze properties to tomatoes and so increase their growing season.

Despite the benefits, however, not everyone is in favour of genetically modified (GM) foods or "Frankenfoods", as the media calls them. Because there are no long-term studies to prove the safety of GM foods, their long-term effect on human health is unknown. There is also a great deal of concern for the environment, with fears that GM crops might spread their genes by pollination to other plants grow­ing nearby. This kind of genetic pollution would be very difficult to clean up.

There is particular controversy surrounding soya, a com­mon ingredient in processed foodstuffs. One of the problems is that imports of soya from the US contain both GM and non-GM beans because it's not thought practical to separate them at their source. It is therefore difficult to avoid GM soya because we don't know which products contain it and which don't. A large number of consumers object to this and have called for clearer labeling of GM products.

But should we reject all GM foods? There are plans to introduce more appealing products: peas which contain more vitamin C and broccoli, strawberries and tomatoes with more of the anti-cancer compound, sulphophane. We could also have blue potatoes. The genes that make one natural blue dye have recently been transferred from bacteria to flowers, so why not to food plants? Scientists are already working on blue roses using this technology. And if your main objection to fruit is the unpeelable orange, there are also plants for an orange that will practically peel itself.

(Source: http://www. popsci.com)

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