But you should stick to your strong suit and knowledge of basic agricultural and horticultural practices is lacking.
Oh, so a doctorate in biomedical engineering doesn't give me any knowledge of bioengineering? Just out of curiosity, what is your background in the area?
The "tasteless" vegetables and fruit you speak of have less to do with the the genetic heritage, and more to do with: 1) the time elapsed between picking and consumption, and 2) the amount of processing done to the food before it is consumed.
* It has nothing to do with whether the fertilizers are organic or chemical.
* It has nothing to do with the use of herbicides or pesticides, although I'm not a fan of the abuse of said products.
I do a good bit of traveling myself.
* Food in other countries isn't what it's cracked up to be. My same wife will not buy fruits and vegetables from some of the South American countries you speak of, because they sometimes use human waste to fertilize their agricultural products. That qualifies as organic, BTW. If it doesn't say grown in the U.S.A., she won't eat it.
* When I have traveled in many countries, I am forced to drink (gag) sugary coca cola, because the water is infested with diarrhea-producing pathogens. The health bulletins I read even warn against eating the fresh produce, because it has been washed with the contaminated water. Instead I am forced to eat everything cooked.
My diet? Fresh fruits and vegetables, preferably RAW fish (even my 5-year-old fights his older brother for his share), cooked, deboned, deskined chicken breast, occasionally turkey, lots of nuts of various kinds, and whole grains. My kids have never been to McDonalds. I fight hard to eliminate the sugar, honey, and high fructose corn syrup that are in EVERYTHING these days. And for snacks, there's a drawer full of various flavors of
Zone Bars for them to choose from. They are healthy, they eat as much as they want, and they don't have the least hint of obesity (unlike most kids today).
No matter how you want to spin honey, cane sugar, or corn syrup, it isn't part of the diet. Organic schmorganic - it's poison.
No, they don't eat lunch meats. I don't believe in the preservatives. No Oscar Meyer for them. That's one good thing about Germany - no preservatives in the "lunch meats." You get to see what those products are
supposed to taste like. Of course that also means that you have to buy it fresh
every single day.
No, they don't eat much in the way of prepared foods. Too many preservatives, too much food coloring, too much processing that destroys vital phytonutrients, and too much added high glycemic index junk.
THAT is what you taste, or are not tasting.
As for genetically modified anything, well the whole argument is preposterous. Virtually everything YOU eat is genetically modified, unless you're fishing out of the ocean, hunting in Africa, or picking berries in the wilderness. The only argument here is HOW your food is genetically modified. The choice in the past was natural selection and hybridization. Today we can get from A to Z much faster. Somehow when we employ modern bioengineering techniques, the result is evil. In the end, the DNA doesn't give a rat's tushie how it got to be what it is.
Yes, there are major problems on this planet with the lack of genetic diversity in the plant food supply.
Yes, there are major problems on this planet with excessive use of herbicides and pesticides. It is likely the cause of ever decreasing sperm counts in men around the world (compounds that act like estrogen analogues, etc.).
On the other hand, we keep turning all the agricultural land to suburbs, and burning up the forest. We could always exterminate half the planet, and allow those plants that have lower yield to play a major role in the food supply. Who gets the gas first?
Or... We can genetically modify plants so they aren't vulnerable to the insects and diseases that plague them (rather than use pesticides and herbicides). I sure would like that. I have some American Chestnuts in my back yard. As soon as they get to about 10 feet high, they are killed by Chestnut blight (an Asian import, BTW). Once upon a time, they were the most impressive trees in the western hemisphere, and a major supplier of food in nature. If you could genetically modify those trees so they contain the gene that the Chinese Chestnut has that makes it resistant to the blight, I sure would appreciate it. The Chinese Chestnut just doesn't compare. And it's taking bloody forever to get to the end game with hundreds of generations of hybridization, so you eliminate all Chinese Chestnut except for that one bloody genome that gets the job done... But by the long approach, we'll probably end up with a solution that just isn't quite the American original. Too bad...
Same with the American Elm. Can you help my friend Rich? He's got a wild one in his yard. It doesn't have Dutch Elm disease (an Asian import) - yet. Sure would be nice to fix it now.
We can also get to genetic diversity quickly through modern techniques, rather than what they are doing today which is to mass produce a few species that have high yield and low vulnerability.
By the way, the same techniques will one day cure sickle cell anemia, and Huntington's Disease, and Tay Sachs, and..., and... And it might help my sister with the Great Danes she breeds. It's tragic seeing them die on average at about 7 years of age.
Yes, we sometimes unleash and wreak havoc in the environment. Speaking of the Europeans, one of their idiots unleashed Starlings in this country. Because they don't have their natural parasitic enemy here, they're overrunning the place. In some places, they consume more grain than livestock, causing farmers to have to take drastic steps to get rid of them. And some idiot European unleashed the gray squirrel here, and it has overrun the native red squirrel. Now we homeowners sometimes have to resort to drastic means to cull them from our suburbs. (In my case, my native red-tailed hawk does the job).
But this has nothing to do with GM foods per se. There are worst case scenarios, but the benefits outweigh the risks.
And if you had FRESH GM vs. "normal" fruits and vegetables and tasted them side by side, I'll bet you couldn't tell the difference. Furthermore, they could be genetically modified to produce more of the cancer-fighting phytonutrients that most people are so lacking in their diets today.
End of rant.
- Bill
P.S. By the way, you should come by my yard some time. Whenever possible, I plant natives. Ever seen a mountain laurel (
kalmia latifolia) bloom in suburbia? You won't find that plant at Home Depot. Oh, and that golden thing is the flower of a white oak (
quercus alba). You won't find that at Home Depot either.
Is it a legitimate concern, or veiled trade protectionism? Who knows?
