Nice.

Patrick - you are laughable. Probably someone who will go out at noon and get a burger and fries. Now that's a REAL health problem - spend your energies solving that first.

I would only support your position if you had a genetic illness that required you to eat bananas to stay alive.

You are aware that bananas as we know them are already a product of human manipulation, don't you? This fruit does not appear in nature. Wild bananas have large, hard seeds and are virtually inedible.

Dave, genetic engineering is quite different than the manipulation you're talking about. There is a big difference. Don't be simplistic about it. Also, genetic engineering is about companies literally getting a patent on life so they can control all that is planted. As always, some GMO supporter comes in to twist the truth quite a bit. There is nothing natural about planting a fish gene in tomatoes.

Just because you claim it's different doesn't make it so, rudy. It may be a different kind of manipulation, but the fact remains that Patrick's contention that we are "screwing with nature" is based on the assumption that bananas, as we know them, are natural - and they are not. They are simply the product of a less sophisticated form of genetic engineering.

Our food supply is saver than it has ever been in history. Up until just a century ago food borne was one of the largest causes of death to humans. Franken foods are actually a boon to health not a bane, except to the lefty blog intelligentsia that is....

Chris, you have no idea what you are talking about.

You sound like you work for Monsanto.

Please do some research before posting stupid crap. Europe won't eat GMO food after they did the testing. Haiti burned the GMO seeds Monsanto sent them for a reason. Newest research shows the chemical "ROUNDUP" is so bad for the soil, the areas of earth they are sprayed with consistently will soon be 'dead zones' and nothing will grow.

Your comment is the most 'uninformed' comment I have read in a LONG time on newsvine, and that says A LOT.

For those of you who don't have a clue... here you go... read and learn.

Books: Genetic Roulette and Seeds of Deception - Jeffrey Smith

Movies: Food Inc - The World According to Monsanto

Read this link - http://www.savvyvegetarian.com/articles/campaign-healthier-eating.php

Excerpt from this link:

Informed European Shoppers Say No to GMOs

Europe reached the tipping point in April 1999 and within a single week, virtually all major manufacturers publicly committed to stop using GMO ingredients in their European brands. This consumer-led revolt against GMOs in the EU was generated by a February 1999 media firestorm after a top GMO safety researcher, Dr. Arpad Pusztai, was 'ungagged by Parliament' and able to tell this alarming story to the press.

Dr. Pusztai was the world's top researcher in his field and a senior researcher at the prestigious Rowett Institute in Scotland. He had been working on a UK government grant to design long-term testing protocols that were intended to become part of the official European GMO food safety assessment process.

But when Pusztai fed supposedly harmless GMO to rats, they developed potentially pre-cancerous cell growth, smaller brains, livers, and testicles, partially atrophied livers, and a damaged immune system. Moreover, the results clearly indicated that the cause of the problem was due to the unpredictable side effects arising from the process of genetic engineering itself. In other words, it suggested that the GMO foods already on the market, which were created from the same process, might also create such effects.

When Pusztai expressed his concern, he was fired from his job after 35 years and silenced with threats of a lawsuit, his 20 member research team was disbanded, the testing protocols were abandoned, and the pro-GMO establishment embarked on an extensive disinformation campaign to discredit the study’s results and protect the reputation of GMO foods.

When an invitation to testify before Parliament allowed Pusztai to finally tell his story, all hell broke loose. The outpouring of news coverage, wrote one columnist, 'divided society into two warring blocs'[1] over the GMO food issue. The tipping point was reached quickly thanks to the buying power of consumers that convinced manufacturers to keep GMOs out of the EU, in spite of official approvals by the pro-GMO European Commission.

Americans are Uninformed and Misinformed on GMOs

In the US, the Pusztai story was barely mentioned. Project Censored described it as one of the 10 most underreported events of the year. Indeed, the US mainstream media has been consistently close-lipped about the enormous health risks of GMO foods. They failed to cover the preliminary study from the Russian National Academy of Sciences, for example, that showed that more than half the offspring of mother rats fed GMO soy died within three weeks (compared to 9% from mothers fed natural soy).They neglected to report that the only human GMO feeding study ever published showed that the foreign genes inserted into GMO food crops can transfer into the DNA of our gut bacteria.

This means that long after we stop eating GMO corn chips, our intestinal flora might continue to manufacture the 'Bt' pesticide that the GMO corn plants are engineered to produce. And Americans were not told about the estimated 10,000 sheep that died within 5-7 days of grazing on GMO cotton plants — also designed to produce this Bt-toxin.

Many consumers in the US mistakenly believe that the FDA approves GMO foods through rigorous, in-depth, long-term studies. In reality, the agency has absolutely no safety testing requirements. (The tests that biotech companies voluntarily perform on their own crops are often meticulously designed to avoid finding problems).

The reason for the FDA's industry-friendly policy on GMOs is that the White House (under the first George Bush) ordered the agency to promote biotechnology. Also, the person in charge of developing the policy was the former attorney of biotech giant Monsanto—and later their vice president. The policy he oversaw claimed that the agency was not aware of any information showing that GMO crops were different 'in any meaningful or uniform way,' and therefore didn't need testing.

But 44,000 FDA internal documents made public from a lawsuit show that this was a complete lie. The overwhelming consensus among the FDA's own scientists was that GMO foods were quite different and could lead to unpredictable and hard-to-detect allergens, toxins, new diseases, and nutritional problems. They had urged superiors to require long-term studies, but were ignored. Evidence of this apparent fraud at the FDA was presented at a Washington, D.C. press conference in 1999. Although major media were in attendance, they didn't run that story either.

Americans know so little about this subject, that only about 1 in 4 are aware that they have ever eaten a GMO food in their lives (even though the vast majority of processed foods contain derivatives from the four major GMO crops: soy, corn, cottonseed and canola). Thus, the same companies that carefully avoid GMO ingredients for concerned Europeans are happy to sell GMOs to unknowing consumers in the US.

WOW Pat. you are one serious conspiracy nut! GMO foods will be just as safe as any wild type plant. sure if u add a toxin production gene to the plant it will be toxic, but then why would u add that in the first place! you wouldnt it wouldnt sell. but modifying a plant to make a bigger fruit or sweeter, or seedless one. will not make it harmful to u in anyway. GMO's are the only way the world will ever be able to fill the stomachs of the frighteningly fast growth of the human population

Well, I won't eat them. I have actually done the research on them.

There will be more left for you then E.

Eat up!!

Dave, genetic engineering is quite different than the manipulation you're talking about.

Only because it's faster and a more recent development. Genetic manipulation has occurred ever since breeders and farmers have tried to improve their herds or crops. Now we do it quicker and with slightly more predictable results.

And I'd suggest that you bring up different evidence, Patrick, because without meaning offense, information derived from a vegetarian-obsessed website is seriously biased. I know you have your views and want to back them up, but after reading through a website that insists the world go vegetarian, I just can't take them seriously. Besides, they make no citations or references; they just provide links to books they want to sell.

Quicker and more predictable...sure, like puppies and piglets that glow in the dark after being genetically tinkered with...this direct laboratory genetic manipulation is nothing more that a lot of guess work in a white coat. None of these scientists can predict with any measure of certainty what the long term effects / fallout of their intellectual arrogance will be.

I've always been surprised why the religious and conservative right has never weighed in on this issue...aborting a fetus is a crime against God but screwing around with the very fabric of God's creation doesn't seem to get any reaction at all from the right...can't figure that one at all.

You fall prey to the common "tomatoes are a fruit, not a vegetable" meme.

The fact is that tomatoes are eaten as a vegetable, not a fruit. While it is true that they are botanically fruit, so are an awful lot of other vegetables. Think eggplants, cucumbers, peppers, zucchini, and green beans.

Even the Supreme Court says that tomatoes are vegetables (see Nix v. Hedden).

What jaded political musings are you talking about?????? Oh, and dave, tomatoes are a fruit, that's a fact. And that fact won't change even if the World Court decides otherwise.

Rudy, tomatoes are a fruit that are eaten as a vegetable, just like all the other fruits I described.

The Supreme Court I cited is relevant, because, prior to it, no one ever tried to classify tomatoes as anything other than a vegetable. Importers of tomatoes tried to claim back the duties they had paid on their imported tomatoes, because the tax code at the time charged duties on imported vegetables, but not fruit. This case is the entire reason people always say "Tomatoes are a fruit, not a vegetable" while never saying the same thing about peppers or zucchini.

You fall prey to the common "tomatoes are a fruit, not a vegetable" meme.

The fact is that tomatoes are eaten as a vegetable, not a fruit.

Dubya Tee Eff?? "Eaten as a vegetable?" They're eaten as anything else is eaten: by insertion into the oral cavity, mastication, and digestion. The method of ingestion means nothing to its taxonomy, and generations of ignorance does not change the fact that tomatoes are fruit.

Here. Be educated. (Oooh! And that one even mentions tomato!)

Lots of sources correctly identify peppers, tomatoes, and squash as fruit. Popular misunderstanding--including the Supreme Court--does not change anything. Being "considered" a vegetable while cooking (whatever that means) does not change anything. What, if you boil a piece of meat does that make it a potato? If you use peas in a salad, we should automatically call them lettuce, because we only make salads out of lettuce, right? Leave taxonomy to the scientists. You're not equipped for it.

While it is true that they are botanically fruit,

So what the hell was that earlier idiocy if you already know what a fruit really is?

so are an awful lot of other vegetables.

Oh. You were paving the road toward further stupidity. Fruits are not vegetables. You, however, are some species of nut. Fruits are not vegetables any more than cars are airplanes or dogs are cats.

The Supreme Court I cited is relevant, because, prior to it, no one ever tried to classify tomatoes as anything other than a vegetable.

Nobody except the frickin' botanists, you mean? (The ones whose findings really count, rather than the SCOTUS' attempt at finding ways to bolster school menus.)

What you're not understanding, PistOff, is that there is no such botanical designation as a "vegetable." It is entirely possible for foods to be both fruit AND vegetable, as in the case of tomatoes, zucchini, peppers, and squash.

In my first post, I said that tomatoes are, in fact, botanically fruits. But that is irrelevant in the "tomatoes are a fruit, not a vegetable" meme. My issue is not with the first part of that sentence; it is with the second.

Ackkk!! I meant NOT because of genetic engineering.

Actually from what I have read; they are cloned through tissue culture. By lucky accident they found a banana that grew without seeds and tasted fantastic. They have been cloning that same plant ever since.

Actually, they produce "pups", little plants from the main stem with a root system that can be separated and replanted. In a way, they clone themselves.

Personally, I know I can't avoid GM foods because none of us really knows where our food comes from especially if we eat in restaurants or eat processed food. I do however, try to eat organic as much as possible. It pisses me off that we are all being used for guinea pigs. I never gave permission to be used that way, but I am. GM foods might be safe, but they might not and it makes me angry that I don't have the right to opt out of this experiment.

Banana's don't have plantable seeds. They reproduce like potatoes.

And we would be much healthier.

how would we be healthier? in my opinion genetically engineered disease-resistant foods are a far cry better than the use of dangerous chemicals.

Hmm, you do realize that they still use dangerous chemcials, don't you? Please tell me you do!!

I think there is some confusion here. Hybridization is different than genetic modification. A plant breeder can selectively hybridize a plant (breed for specific traits) for millions of years and never accidentally introduce jelly fish genes into a tomato plant. Scientists who specialize in genetic modification are actually inserting foreign genes into plants and animals. For instance the flavor saver tomato had pig genes in it. In other words we are creating creatures that have never existed in the natural world. Hybridizers have never and will never do that. Hybridized plants are a variation of an existing creature (a hybridized tomato plant is still a pure tomato plant).

Now before you think about that tomato and say: "mmmmm! bacon" with your tongue lolling around and saliva dripping from your mouth, think about the implications of this. If I were a genetic engineer and I inserted a gene for peanuts into a carrot so that the carrot does not get some sort of disease, how do I know that I won't be introducing the trait in peanuts that is causing peanut allergies in so many people? My carrot is a new creature.

I find it interesting that the rise in celiac disease and peanut allergies is going up in relation to the amount of genetic engineering that is being approved. I have no proof that there is a correlation, so flame me all you want, but for me, I try to avoid GM food when I can.

huh?

@chipperdave:

The Frankenpharmaceutical and Frankenfood industries routinely perform various experiments on the less desired and mostly insignificant groups of so-called "humans" on this planet, such as Africans, Asians, Hispanics, Indians, children in general, "emo" youths, illegal drug users, and anyone who has a body piercing or tattoo, which in the grand scheme of everything is the best and most economical way to achieve such worthy goals as making it possible for 90 year-old white men to attain an erection for up to four hours when it is party time in Vegas, which is fabulous . . .

Fabulous! :)

Cross pollenation to get a better plant isn't GMO.

GMO hit the shelves in the 90's. The same time heart disease and many other diseases skyrocketed.

See my post above for a clear picture of what you are eating.

Go organic.

A couple of points:

It is most likely that the heart disease spike is closely tied to products made from heavily processed white flour, high fructose corn syrup, and refined sugars. <- i.e.: Things that really screw up insulin levels in the body verses the kinds of carbohydrates our bodies evolved to use. (These items cause reduce insulin spikes that result in a loss of insulin sensitivity, which in turn makes weight gain easier). Combine that with a greater abundance of calories available through increased portion sizes and you have a recipe for heart disease due to stress on the organ.

You could also easily draw some connections to synthetic molecules with estrogen like qualities that we are exposed to in our modern environment (fire retardents, plastics, insecticides, soy products, etc) that also shifts the bodies metabolic levels towards weight gain (and thus heart disease).

From what I've read, the actual relationship to GMO for heart disease (if any) is pretty tenuous at best. You could say that I got on the highway at 5:00 PM and it rained on the highway at 5:01 PM so obviously my getting on the highway caused the rain - that wouldn't be a good correlation though. On the other hand demonstrating insulin rejection (due to mass market foods) and excess calories intake leading to weight gain and weight gain showing a high relationship to heart disease isn't a big stretch to prove clinically.

Finally, organic is great in concept but to often fails in practice due to economies of scale. You may be able to afford organic - or maybe even grow quite a bit of organic on your own. However, the price premium for organic is typically too great for the bottom half of our populous to afford (I'll go ahead and concede the point that a significant portion of that populous is purchasing prepackaged food stuffs anyway). However, I'm not sure the yields on "organic" crops are adequate to produce the amount of produce required if we all switched to organic - of course it might be interesting to see how much less food product we'd need to produce if we all ate only the calories we needed to and we significantly reduced the amount of discarded food.

Finally - anybody know how often food is labeled organic when it isn't *hint* - higher than you think. Oh and if you suggest buy from local farmers - great, but there are some interesting issues with economics there from an energy consumption perspective - it actually costs more money to grow and distribute produce sold at a farmers market than it does for that califlower from California to make it onto a shelf in Virginia.

My point to the ramble above? Some of these arguments aren't as cut and dried as "All natural good." "Modified bad." Some of the things we as "man" do are actually beneficial - human kind would be in complete famine conditions at our current population levels without modern farming techniques, modified crops, and fertilizers. The problem is (and probably always be) achieving a reasonable balance. Your estiamted lifespan should be higher than your grandfathers - so we must be doing something right occasionally.

You say while typing on a computer, sitting at a desk, possibly drinking coffee or eating something that doesn't exsist naturally.

screwing up everything we touch is an important survival trait. if you want you can go back to living in trees while naked and eating grubs, but ill stick to my house and cheesy-poofs.

mmmm.... cheesy-poofs. thank you society! ^˽^

so, I gotta ask. Did you, as a clear expert on bananas (and I'm not being sarcastic), come across this article on msnbc (a website usually devoid of banana related stories) by accident? Or do you do a search for "bananas" every day and then comment on whatever article you find?

I'm sorry, I don't mean to mock you. I just think it's amusing how the experts come out of the woodwork for things like this.

I didn't claim to be expert but I have REAL experience growing bananas in the tropics and took up the challenge of growing bananas here in the USDA Zone 9 California. I always scan the internet for something scientifically new each day and this is just one of the many sites out there as my source of information.

Of course, I can't resist myself from sharing to other people about what I know and have experienced in real life. I commented on bananas because I'm a banana hobbyist. In fact I'm a rare fruit grower and member of California Rare Fruit Grower. I'm also a citrus hobbyist and have grafted more than 100 citrus cultivars into a single tree and personally research on all of the 575 different kinds of fruit trees that I grow in my tiny yard. I push the envelope of what can be possibly grown in tiny city lots and plant in diversity.

If there are wrong information published out in the sites that I visit, be sure that I would comment on it so that misinformation should be stopped. I expect that there will be lots of misinformation because most writers are not scientists nor researchers.

I also keep tabs of renewable energy, electric cars, high energy batteries, quantum physics, faster than light travel, environmental and ecological research and will comment on them from time to time. So you may find me pervasive.

but look! a hole in the woodwork! must... add... two... cents...

no worries, just playing.

But, since you are the regional expert on science, art, and banana growing why not write a book and get known instead of commenting in the dank depths of forums, where only the curious and stubborn go? It would be an interesting read.

sadly one such as i knows nothing about health and safety, enjoying the natural wonders of cheesy-poofs, and must rely on outside information. Alas though, the world is cluttered half facts and personal stories that collect together like hail or plane-sewage and pelt down from on high.

What to believe, the ever growing number of people who are not starving thanks to cheap mass produced foodstuffs, or the organic grower charging $10 a pound for rice crackers. tasty, tasty, rice crackers. Why must they be so tasty as to drain my wallet? -_-"

But you could eat Hawkins Cheesies which are all-natural, tasty, and nowhere near the price of rice crackers. (Only they are crunchy, not poofy)

if only i was in Canada... cheezies don't come all the way down here. Their american competitor, old dutch, would be nice too but their still too far north! Utz makes huge cheese ball barrels but my Walmart only sells them once a month for 3 days before clearing them out and their--- ooh home delivery!

anyway, this is not about cheesy, cheesy goodness but instead about whether genetic modification for the betterment of mankind is right or wrong. I have to go with the former. its hard to come up with a list of foods that not been tampered with somehow throughout the ages. crossing lines of what we can do is the driving force of humanity. if we let ourselves stagnate then we're no longer human.

I didn't mean to "flame" you (am I using that right?). I actually found your posts to be informative and insightful. Sometimes however, I cannot resist the temptation of being a smartass.

There are many ways to have seedless crops without using genetic engineering. In citruses and watermelons for example, applying GA3 or gibberellic acid will trick the female flower into setting fruit without pollination. And when there is no pollination, we have seedless fruits.

Some fruits are parthenocarpic, meaning, the flower with the female part will turn into fruits without the need for pollination. Persimmons and bananas are prime examples of such fruits. Of course, some companies can genetically engineer existing plants to have this parthenocarpic abilities when there used to be none so that there won't be a need to apply plant hormones such as GA3 to produce seedless fruits. But occassionally we do find rare seeds in otherwise seedless fruits.

Some plants like the mandarins can be grown in large monoculture blocks. The mandarins are self-incompatible which means that it cannot pollinize itself to produce seeds, but nonetheless, the fruits will set. Sometimes the citrus growers and beekeepers are at odds with each other because the presence of bees would make it possible for the mandarins to become seedy because bees can fly and carry pollens far from the monoculture blocks.

GMO foods such as carotene synthesizing rice ("golden rice") have done wonders for malnurished 3rd world children who risk going bling from carotene deficiency.

One of the most hilarious typos I have ever seen on Newsvine - where there is a lot of choice. It must be the "bling" that makes them blind.

a good point hilary, though spell check or a quick edit would have done nicely. it is thanks to golden rice that blindness rates in rural Asia and Africa will drop once if is allowed to be given, though the main problem of malnutrition will need be solved for long term help, especially as fats are needed to effectively absorb Vitamin.

as for naturally sterile fruits and veggies, adding acids doesn't sound very natural. it seems like we've been playing around with these plants with all the know-how we've been able to use. perhaps there were dissenters when people started playing with the citron, what with the grafting, hybridizing, and general tinkering in early times. maybe they also called it unnatural?

Now we have a new tool for tinkering. It won't be long before we can have shoe trees and and self juicing pomegranates. perhaps, if i'm lucky we can have a nice Yggdrasil.

The tool is not new, at least a couple of decades old, but new or old, that would be according to someone's context of time and relevance.

There are some rules as to addition of acids or using hormones. Organic farming regulators allow the use of acids if they are extracted from natural sources instead of the synthesized types.

There is a nice tool that I bought to extract pomegranate arils in just a few seconds. It is called Aril Removal Tool or ART for short. I make pomegranate wines and will have to use that tool to extract pomegranate arils in the quickest time to make large volume of wine.

that would be very useful. I hate removing the seeds from pomegranates. it's so time consuming!

we should just be happy they took the time from their busy day to answer one of life's greatest questions.

next week they can get to the sound of one hand clapping problem. My money is going on the sound "cl" i figure the other one adds the "ap" but i could be wrong. It's times like this that we must rely on them for queries like this.

I've come across several studies trying to revive the American Chestnut Tree through plant breeding and Genetic Engineering. There are existing rare American Chestnut Trees that survived the diseases and they are trying to propagate them or move their genes and hybridized it with other chestnut species. Genetic engineering is also very promising and they have spliced genes from the offending microorganisms to develop resistant trees.

I have a friend who grows European and Italian Chestnuts and from to time share information about the Chestnut industry.

Main problem with genetic engineering is that we rush out to spread the products when it has taken millions of years of selection pressure to truly select what has the right balance of living in harmony with the rest of the ecosystem.

Plants are more evolved than animals and humans, speaking from a genetic point of view. They have more chromosomes and genes than humans, all shaped by millions of years of selection pressure, while staying put in one area. So playing with their genes directly will produce indirect effects that are impossible to predict the consequences.

They have already brought back the American Chestnut. They are extremely expensive but the very first ones are now available. Google it.

I want a hoofed, grass eating, Frisbee chasing crossbreed! I'll name it spotsy, and I'll love it forever or until i get me a griffin. And I wont be sad when it dies because it will have the leanest dow meat ever!

You should see your doctor about adjusting your meds.

God help the next generation if you are really a teacher. You are an ignorant, semi-literate fool.

I think you hit a nerve, teach. People don't want to be reminded that we've been re-engineering the world over the last few thousands of years.

Kudos, omega. Luckily for us if the regulator is downloading porn, it is only between his lobbyist sponsored crack parties.