nutritionwonderland

Author: nutrition

  • Truvia and PureVia – A Window to the Past or the Future?

    In the coming weeks, we will be examining two new sweeteners called Truvia and PureVia that are being released into the American food supply in the first half of 2009.  They are derivative of a naturally sweet plant called Stevia, which has been used around the world for quite some time now to sweeten drinks and native dishes.   But before we dig deeply into the science around the new Stevia-based sweeteners, we think it would instructive to learn the history of synthetic sweeteners in America – as the past is usually the best predictor of the future.

    Back to the Future

    Harvey Wiley

    To understand Truvia and PureVia, you need to wind back the clock – all the way back to the 1900s.  Here you will meet a man named Harvey Wiley, a sugar chemist with Germany ancestry and deep roots in the American academic system.  He came to Washington in 1906 to become the Chief Chemist at the Department of Agriculture shortly after famed author Upton Sinclair dropped “The Jungle“, a scathing of the meat packing industry, onto the American public.  These developments were creating an environment ripe for change.

    During that same time, physicians were starting to recommend reduced-sugar diets to help some of their patients.  This advice was based on an unexplainable (no longer) link between being overweight, inactive, having diabetes, and ‘debilitation’ in general.

    As it turns out, our former president Teddy Roosevelt was just such a patient.  His doctors recommended jumping onto the newest artificial sweetener of the day, saccharin (today – Sweet ‘n Low), to reduce his sugar intake, presumably to prevent diabetes.

    Realizing the President was regularly consuming the additive, Wiley, ever the scientist, took immediate issue.  Here is an exchange between the two as they discuss potential actions against the additive [emphasis mine]:

    “I immediately said to the President: “Everyone who ate [it] was deceived. He thought he was eating sugar, when in point of fact he was eating a coal tar product totally devoid of food value and extremely injurious to health.”
    “You tell me that saccharin is injurious to health?” Roosevelt retorted.
    “Yes, Mr. President, I do tell you that,” Wiley replied.
    “Anybody who says saccharin is injurious to health is an idiot,” Roosevelt sternly answered.

    Towards Regulation

    Wiley was quite obviously a man of a different sort.  Anyone brave enough to get in a President’s face is not short of courage.  That same courage caused Wiley to take a different route. He and a brave group of human guinea pigs, nicknamed the ‘Poison Squad’, went about testing food additives – including saccharine, borax and formaldehyde – by ingesting them and reporting on what happened.   This group of hardy souls was only allowed a controlled amount of water & food while they ingested chemicals (‘in a hygienic environment’ of the day) and collected all their excrement for examination.

    Crude as it was, Wiley’s Poison Squad were conducting the first food additive studies. These theatrical studies were reported widely across the media, especially in the Washington Post – building Wiley’s magnanimous character.  These events, coupled with ‘The Jungle‘ finally culminated in the passage of the Pure Food Act of 1906 that established the FDA and Wiley as the ‘Father of Pure Food‘.

    As Upton Sinclair, the ardent socialist, famously noted about his Jungle treatise intended to stoke a populist backlash against unsafe labor conditions,

    “I aimed at the public’s heart and, by accident, I hit it in the stomach.”

    Meat Packing, cerca 1906 – Sinclair’s target

    And The Lobbying Begins

    Passage of that act led to more professional research programs designed to test the food additives – namely saccharin.  Wiley’s work quickly identified food containing saccharin as ‘adulterated’ – akin to a modern-day FDA ‘not GRAS‘ labeling.  From his April 29th, 1911 Food Inspection Decision 135 [emphasis mine]:

    “At the request of the Secretary of Agriculture, the Referee Board of Consulting Scientific Experts has conducted an investigation as to the effect on health of the use of saccharin.  The investigation has been concluded, and the referee board reports that the continued use of saccharin for a long time in quantities over 3/10ths of a gram/day is liable to impair digestion; and that the addition of saccharin as a substitute for cane sugar or other forms of sugar reduces the food value of the sweetened product, and hence lowers its quality.

    Wiley, et al. continue:

    “If the use of saccharin be continued, it is evident that amounts of saccharin may readily be consumed which will, through continual use, produce digestive disturbances.  In every food in which saccharin is used, some other sweetening agent known to be harmless to health can be substituted, and there is not even a pretense that saccharin is a necessity in the manufacture of food products.”

    Shortly thereafter, a pattern familiar to all 21st century citizens began.  An attorney representing the saccharin manufacturing corporation, Sherman Brothers, published a threatening letter to the New York Times, emphasizing the cost benefits of saccharin while claiming that the amount of saccharin required to do damage was significantly higher than anyone would consume in a single bottle of soda.  From the Times piece [emphasis mine]:

    “Saccharin today is almost exclusively used in soft drinks, “pop,” soda water, etc., and reduces the cost of the same.  3/10ths of a gram of saccharin – the quantity declared by the Remsen board to be innocuous – will sweeten thirty bottles of pop or soda water; and it therefore appears to be a physical impossibility for any person to absorb a dangerous quantity.  With sugar advancing in price, with a saccharin in moderate quantity approved by the highest scientific authority in the land, I am at a loss to understand the animus of the editorial article above referred to.”

     

    How the mighty have fallen…

    Only a year later in 1912, the newly formed FDA reversed their position, claiming the sweetener was safe.  This pattern would play out many more times.

    The battle of saccharin would take a breather for awhile but resurface in the late 1960′s after a studies unearthed 1940′s era research from the FDA that showed how saccharin caused bladder cancer.  A flurry of research started up again and a move by the FDA to ban the substance gained momentum in 1977 after watching saccharin formally banned in Canada.  Instead, the US congress blocked the ban and a warning label was issued instead.  That lasted until 2000 when it too was dropped for unclear reasons.  Subsequent scientists have spoken out about the additive but as of February 2009, it remains readily available in the United States.

    What are we to think?

    This now common back and forth policy is attributable to the way in which money sways political fervor, not as if this revelation should be news to you.  It nonetheless bears repeating because we are about to welcome still two more additives, Truvia and PureVia, into our lives in the coming months.

    The saccharin debate has stretched nearly 100 years but it is just one of many chemicals to suffer such a tumultuous fate – rGBH, DDT, Aspartame and most recently the plastic additive Bisphenol A have all followed this similar path.  Each is worth their own story but the take home point is the same – additives come with consequences.  All of these wonder chemicals come with side effects, some of them quite severe.

    Cheers or Jeers?

    And that brings us back to Truvia and PureVia – and why they may finally break this cycle.  The hope with the newest agribusiness additives is that they are actually based on something in nature – Stevia – so the thinking goes that they may bring the promise of a reduced calorie sweetener that does not impair people’s health.  None of the artificial sweeteners currently for sale can legitimately make that claim today.

    The characters surrounding these various debates constantly changes but Wiley and Roosevelt would largely find the song remains the same – nearly 100 years later.

    NOTE: This article is the 1st part of a series about Truvia and PureVia. You may want to read the next two parts to better understand this issue:

    Part 2: Truvia and PureVia – The Science
    Part 3: Truvia and PureVia – The Controversy of Stevia

  • Book Review: The Cholesterol Myths by Uffe Ravnskov, MD

    Book Review: The Cholesterol Myths by Uffe Ravnskov, MD

    A recent study from the New England Journal of Medicine showed that the death rate from heart disease has fallen by over 50% during the period from 1980-2000.  The authors concluded that the dramatic drop can be equally attributed to medical advancements in treatment and better management of heart disease risk factors, respectively.

    Cholesterol Myths in Detail

    While this large decline is great news, the heart disease situation remains more mixed than it first appears.  Of the roughly 340,000 deaths avoided since 1980, only about 82,000, or 24%, can be attributed to cholesterol management (using the now standard IMPACT statistical model (pdf)), despite the relentless National Cholesterol Education Program that was begun in 1985 at the behest of the NHLBI.  More worrisome, another large study states that 70% of the decline in deaths came in people that still have heart disease.  Other doctors also point out that any drop in heart disease deaths does not mean there is a drop in new cases of heart disease.

    Translation: we still have a lot of work to do.

    Closer to the “Truth”

    The perception of reality can mean different things to different people.  To some, those numbers above mark an unbelievable success – a triumph of science over nature.  To other researchers, those same numbers reveal troubling contradictions about the actual causes of the disease.

    And that’s where the questions started for Uffe Ravnskov, MD.

    Does cholesterol cause heart disease or do they merely have an association with each other?  How do HDL and LDL relate?  What role do high fat foods really play?  What if all of those studies about cholesterol were wrong?

     

    The Heart Disease Decline since 1950

    Dr. Ravnskov, a founding member of  the International Network of Cholesterol Skeptics, takes all those positions and goes even further in his book, “The Cholesterol Myths” published by NewTrends Publishing.  One part detective mystery, one part conspiracy theory, Ravnskov tears through piles of medical studies digging towards the “truth.”  His thesis is rather simple: cholesterol does not cause heart disease.  We put emphasis on the word cause for good reason: Ravnskov’s entire argument hangs on tearing apart the correlation-versus-causation dichotomy.  For the most part, he succeeds but at a cost to his text.

    A Myth Unraveled?

    The Book

    Ravnskov lays out his attack into a series of myths he wants to dispel for readers.  Some myths are bold like “High-fat foods cause heart disease” while others are down right incendiary, especially when he claims to bust the myth that “the cholesterol campaign is based on good science.”  Putting down the entire research community is good way to get attention and attention he received.   This book was publicly burned on Finnish television upon publication.  So much for reasoned debate.

    Once you get past the burnings, you will see this work is undeniably strong on laying out a solid foundation in science for those who aren’t so inclined.  Ravnskov meticulously breaks down the correlation-versus-causation argument in a way that lends itself to being understood.  You will definitely understand the difference between the two, even if you only manage to make it twenty pages into the text.

    Cholesterol Myths really shines when it sticks to deeply interpreting studies findings within the scientific paradigm Ravnskov sets up.  His work goes to great lengths to uncover shoddy science in some of the landmark cholesterol-heart disease studies.  In some cases, Ravnskov uncovers pure gold for his readers.  Case in point, one of Ravnskov’s first myths deals with a study examining the Masai people, an indigenous people who did not consume a western diet, for a diet-heart disease connection.  From Page 36 [emphasis added my own]:

    “Professor Mann studied a much greater number of hearts and aortas from Masai individuals of all ages and found that the coronary vessels of the Masai were just as atherosclerotic as those of US citizens, perhaps even moreso.  But severe sclerotic changes [in Masai], so-called raise lesions, were rare; the sclerotic changes in the Masai were situated inside the vessel walls, leaving the inner surface of the vessels smooth.  And in the 50 hearts he studied there was no evidence that myocardial infarction has occurred in any of them.”

    Moments like this really let Ravnskov’s investigatory skills shine; he masterfully dissects the cannon of cholesterol research like few other authors we have ever read.  And during these infrequent moments in the text, you can see what this book could really be – a true guide to the future of heart disease research  – but ultimately that is not this text.

    At its best, Cholesterol Myths is a scathing review of literature instead of a gateway to where this literature should guide the national discussion.  Instead of using his knowledge to lead us into a more beneficial discussion on heart disease, Ravnskov exhausts his mental energy on tearing down cholesterol.  At times, I found myself hoping he would direct that massive brain of his towards constructing a new paradigm in which we could view heart disease.  Don’t hold your breath for that one.

    Instead, Ravnskov frequently leaves the reader to infer ulterior motives about each study he rips into, all without ever saying it explicitly, a sort of intellectual dishonesty that I did not appreciate as a reader.    Additionally, the book’s nine myth sections overlap and repeat each other often.  Invariably, he finds problems with about every major study that shows a relationship between cholesterol and heart disease.

    From the beginnings of Myth 6, you can see a familiar line of reasoning repeated throughout the book:

    “It is extremely difficult to design even the initial steps of a scientifically acceptable trial.  The standards of science are high, however.  In fact, they are so high that, even if we manage to select a test group and a control group with almost identical risk factors for heart disease, we must remember that almost identical and absolutely identical are not the same thing, and that we will never know all the factors that may, or may not, contribute to the development of the disease in these people.”

    While he is technically correct, studies that contain a control group mitigate these confounding factors.  No study will ever be perfect but we can’t use that as an excuse to dismiss significant research findings completely.  Ravnskov is wise to highlight study oversights but that does little to forward the heart disease dialogue.  Arguments like the above really dog this book in our opinion – and they appear far too often.

    Where we go from here

    Simply addressing heart disease as a cholesterol problem has not brought the world any closer to eradicating it.  Ravnskov’s arguments about the sometimes flimsy science surrounding cholesterol theory are an extremely valuable addition to this discussion.  His commendable goal of educating the public on the many problems with the singular cholesterol argument was accomplished ten times over in this volume.  Even a casual reader of this work comes away from it with a better understanding of the scientific method and heart disease in general – and that is a welcome development.

    Still, Cholesterol Myths misses the larger target in our opinion.  After destroying cholesterol in his book, Ravnskov does not forward any additional theories on the causes of heart disease.  This may not seem like much of a problem but it is in the scientific world.  The best theory ‘wins’ out in science because it can explain the most behavior present in a given situation; it need not explain all of the behavior.

    With a chronic disease like heart disease, it has already been well established in scientific literature that many factors, like stress and inactivity, contribute.  Only one of these factors, cholesterol, is ever considered in this text – and in that way this book is attempting to topple a myth that simply does not exist anymore.  Even, more, Ravnskov may thoroughly debunk cholesterol as a singular cause of heart disease but he freely admits there is a correlation between the two.

    From Myth 2 in his work:

    “Table 2B shows, in accordance with many other studies, that more heart attacks occurred among those with the highest cholesterol levels.  The differences were not impressive, however, considering that the figures were not adjusted for anything but age….”

    Major studies controlling for various factors show somewhere between 10-33% of the total heart disease death rate decline can be attributed to cholesterol reduction, depending on the country in question.  While this doesn’t prove cholesterol singularly causes heart disease, it definitely shows cholesterol is somehow involved.

     

    Heart Disease Decline Factors, Credit: NEJM

    And thats just the problem for us.  These conflicting facts often leave us in the lurch during Ravnskov’s elaborate presentations, knowing cholesterol plays some role with heart disease but not truly being the cause.  Admittedly, uncovering the cause of heart disease may be beyond the scope of his book but Ravnskov’s omission of a more comprehensive theory looms largely over this book.

    Overall, this book is a necessary addition in the discussion about heart disease.  Ravnskov’s book should be read by anyone with a critical eye and a curiosity about the origins of heart disease.  But it could have been so much more.

  • Organic Fish Standards Announced by the USDA

    Organic Fish Standards Announced by the USDA

    ast week, the USDA announced their first organic guidelines for fish. The new guidelines uphold some of the traditional mainstays of organic agriculture, like banning the use of antibiotics, hormones, pesticides and GMO feed in some instances while weakening other provisions at the same time.

    Most notable in the new guidelines is the inclusion of a loophole that allows aquaculture farms to obtain up to 25% of their feed from unregulated wild seafood stock (see the NOSB draft literature). The loophole does specify that organic producers use ‘sustainable’ wild seafood as the feed for their fish stocks but does not go so far as to require 100% organic feed. This is the first time ANY livestock producer (NOTE: the USDA classifies fisheries as ‘livestock’) has been allowed to include any non-organic feed into their own animal’s feed.

    A beautiful sockeye salmon

    Additionally, these new guidelines allow all types of fish to be raised in open-water pens in the ocean which allows water from the fish farms to filter into neighboring aquatic environments, a move that could allow both species and disease to jump from the farms into the ocean.

    Largely, this new protocol targets commercial aquaculture farms, because of their explosive growth and the desire of many farming interests to label their products with an organic sticker. The protocol does very little to clear up the controversial issue of whether or not wild-caught seafood is organic or not.

    What They are Saying

    Initial reaction from aquaculture farmers was largely positive while environmental and consumer groups were enraged, as might be expected. Large firms like Cooke Aquaculture remained largely silent on the issue, a possible indication that the decisions made by the USDA were in their favor.

    On the other side of the coin, NGO firms like The Consumer’s Union, who publishes of Consumer Reports, expressed deep displeasure with the new guidelines, saying that the USDA’s decision ‘will undermine consumer confidence in the entire organic marketplace‘.

    The Living on Earth Show, spoke directly with Food & Water Watch about the open-net pen provision in the new USDA guidelines. This is a great audio interview covering this environmental issue in-depth.

     

     

    Listen to the Interview

    (A Transcript is also available)

    Why all the fuss?

    The new ‘green’ in organics

    The reason for the wildly varied opinions on organic fish boils down to dollar bills. Organic sales are estimated to reach $23.6 billion dollars in 2008, another year of double digit growth despite the terrible economy. If you factor in natural foods, that number jumps to almost $33 billion. From 2005-2008, these products grew at 67.6 percent, annualized at 18.8% year-over-year [source: Grist]. These type of revenue gains are usually reserved for high-tech start-ups, not food producers. The power levied by the ‘organic’ title is immense in the marketplace.

    Growth like this is being fueled by consumer demand but also by the premiums most producers can command for their goods. Price premiums on organic food range from as little as 5% to as much as 200%, depending on the product. Because food is typically a very low margin good, even a 5% premium would attract significant agribusiness interest. This has been a major factor in the meteoric rise of the organic food industry and the continued push for new organic foodstuffs, like the new fish standards.

    Organics net tremendous sales by galvanizing the fractured buying public around a variety of causes ranging from environmental concerns to food safety issues and general wellness. Even though organic food buyers are a wildly diverse group, they appear to agree on one thing – tough organic standards. In the Food Poll conducted by the Consumer’s Union, 93% of the buying public said any fish labeled organic should only be fed organic feed and an equally impressive 90% said organic farms should recover their waste and not pollute the environment.

    The USDA’s Precious

    Such loyalty and power of the organic moniker comes from the fact that, up until now, organic labeling has required farmers to adhere to extremely tough guidelines, like the 100% organic feed guidelines for all livestock producers and 5 year waiting periods where no pesticides could touch farmland before a single product could be certified organic.

    The process, by which products are physically labeled as organic, was once an afterthought in the market but that occurred long before these goods carried such revenue generating power and marketing glow. Companies are now fully aware of the premium their products command once they have been certified organic and, sometimes, desperately seek that certification.

     

    The Future of Organic Fish

    Organic fish is a complicated concept even without the vast, monied players described above pushing their weight around. Obviously, no fish ‘organically’ grows in an aquaculture pen out in nature, so if we want to be true organic purists, no fish farm products could ever be called organic. The USDA may be setting up a nutritionally complicated system where wild, non-organic fish are the most desirable, followed by farmed-organic fish and rounded out by typical farmed non-organic fish products. Other products find themselves in a similar bind.

    Herein lies the problem.

    We have ask ed a government agency to draw a very particular line about a subject to which there is no general consensus to begin with. Is a salmon in a fish pen natural? Is a mercury laden wild tuna more nutritious than a PCB-filled farm raised tilapia? What guidelines can be imposed to obtain a truly wild, organic fish of any kind?

    Open-pen aquaculture may have proven detrimental effects on the environment but that does not mean that the fish inside that environment cannot be produced organically, in theory at least. There are even new urban aquaculture methods being developed that go far beyond the aims of these rules. Watch the future below:

    Aquaculture can be done correctly, sustainably and even with a beautiful flare. These images come from architect Benedetta Gargiulo’s vision for fish farming in Central London:

    Inside sketch of a London Fish Farm, credit: Pruned

    Architectural Plans for a London Fish Farm, credit: Pruned

    The NGO crowd is probably right in saying that these new organic fish standards are too weak on the environmental front but aquaculture will advance in ways unknown, despite the rules.

    Regulation becomes more of a spirit-of-the-law versus the letter-of-the-law situation. In spirit, organic products seek to make agriculture more natural and sustainable while organic rules seek to impose strict guidelines on how to best achieve that goal – and we believe these new USDA standards advance that goal if not succeeding entirely.

    More Nutritious Fish from Organic Rules

    Wild salmon, yum

    In our opinion, the real untold story with the regard to the new, organic fishing standard, is what these new rules will mean for nutrition. This new ruling should create a dramatically more nutritious farm raised protein product, which is very important considering the growth of aquaculture.

    Nutritionally speaking, wild cold water fish (like salmon) are the best sources of fish because they contain a wide array of micronutrients and are in better overall health while alive. Based on what we know of protein development in fish, this enhanced nutritional profile is directly related to the diet of the fish while they are alive. Wild fish eat a varied diet more closely related to what they should ideally be eating, resulting in a better ratio of essential fatty acids Omega-3 and Omega-6.

    Humans need to get those essential fats in a 1:1 ratio in their diets for optimum health but, typically, most Americans now get 15-20X more Omega-6 than Omega-3, promoting inflammation in the body. This is why so many people are urged to take an Omega-3 supplements and eat fish but the idea of fish as a source of Omega-3 is currently being degraded by bad farming practices.

    Studies show that farm-raised salmon have dramatically lower amounts of Omega-3 and have higher amounts of PCB contamination than their wild counterparts. Another recent study shows farm raised tilapia and catfish have a fat profile not too dissimilar from hamburger meat or bacon.

    Yes, he is.

    The reason for this weaker nutritional profile is simple: both these fish and most farm animals are eating the exact same diet of refined corn products which creates this inferior fat ratio. Hard as it is to believe, most farmed fish eat nothing but the corn germ by-products of high fructose corn syrup production. This diet turns the salmon gray, which requires them to be artificially colored pink by products like DSM’s CAROPHYLL. Even worse, most of those corn products are GMO varieties that have their own set of issues.

    So, let’s give the USDA a little credit here. While open-pens are regrettable, organic fisheries will be eliminating GMO corn altogether, banning the use of artificial coloration (I believe) and mandating that 25% of these organic fish’s feed are from sustainable wild fish stocks. This should provide the consumer with a noticeably more nutritious protein product in organically farmed seafood.

    The big omisson on the part of the USDA, in our opinion, was not the open-net pen allowance but rather the failure to recognize which species of fish are carniverious (like salmon and tuna) or vegeratarian (like catfish and tilapia) and then REQUIRE organic aquaculture to feed their species appropriately. There is always room for improvement and we hope the USDA puts monied interests aside and notes ALL critiques for future revisions to the standard.

  • Purple Tomatoes Go GMO to Cure Cancer

    Researchers at John Innes Centre in the UK have used successfully created a purple tomato by using genes from the common snapdragon flowering plant. Tomatoes natively possess the genes required to make themselves purple but normally these genes lie dormant. By inserting borrowed genes from the snapdragon plant, the researchers engineered the tomato to activate the usually dormant genes. The tomato plant was designed intelligently with promoter sections of DNA inserted in front of the snapdragon genes, so that the tomato plant would only turn its ripening fruits purple and not its leaves.

    The desire to turn a tomato purple may appear quixotic at first but there is merit to this endeavor. Colors in produce indicate the presence of flavonoids, beneficial compounds known for their antioxidant activity. Specifically, deep red-blue-purple coloring indicates the presence of anthocyanin, a flavonoid widely found in fruits like blackberries, black currants and cranberries but not in significant quantities within regular tomatoes themselves. Seeing as tomatoes are one of the most commonly consumed types of produce, scientists sought to bring together the best of both worlds by infusing this flavonoid into tomatoes, which turns them purple in the process.

    Anthocyanin to the rescue?

    Anthocyanin and the berry fruits that contain it have received quite a bit of attention in the research world because of their ability to inhibit the growth of cancer cells. Berry juices containing anthocyanin have been shown to destroy stomach, prostate, intestine and beast cancer cells.

    Human studies have been mixed however. Initial results from a study of ten high-risk pre-cancerous patients show dosing with berry compounds reduces oxidative stress. Another larger, controlled study had twenty women drinking cranberry juice but found little evidence of quantifiable benefits from drinking the juice over a two week period.

    Still, scientists are excited about their purple tomatoes.

    “This is one of the first examples of metabolic engineering that offers the potential to promote health through diet by reducing the impact of chronic disease and certainly the first example of a GMO with a trait that really offers a potential benefit for all consumers.” said Professor Cathie Martin of the John Innes Centre [https://www.jic.ac.uk/], who participated in the research.

    “The next step will be to take the preclinical data forward to human studies with volunteers to see if we can promote health through dietary preventive medicine strategies.”

    What does it all mean?

    From a scientific standpoint, Professor Martin makes an excellent point; this is the first proactive use of genetic manipulation to improve the nutritional characteristics of a food. Up until now, most GMO ‘advancements‘ have been made in addressing the genetic weaknesses of large foodstuff monocrops, like soy and corn, that allow greater quantities of the crop to be grown. The team at the John Innes Centre has successfully genetically modified a major food product for the benefits of health, not crop yields. This is a welcome development in a world suffering from a modern malnutrition epidemic.

    Purples Tomatoes, care of the John Innes Centre

    However, the scientific studies surrounding anthocyanin – the purple maker – do not give us the guidance we would hope for. If simply dosing with anthocyanins retarded cancer, we would be seeing those results come out in the trade journals. For now, we just haven’t seen those results – if anything we have seen the opposite.

    Some of this can be explained by examining the nature in which nutrients actually become absorbed into the body. These processes appear to be incredibly complex but, generally speaking, we know the nutrients found in foods require other nutrients to be sufficiently assimilated. Studies bear out this idea, like findings that correlate a decrease in cancer with a diet heavy in antioxidant fruits and vegetables while juxtaposed against the fact supplementation with singular antioxidant vitamins seems to have no positive health effect. The basic idea is that nutrients require each other, in very specific amounts, to create the symphony of good health.

    What will decide whether the purple tomatoes becomes a significant contribution to the world of health lies in how the discovery is handled from here. If these tomatoes are adequately and rigorously tested both in vitro (in the lab) and in vivo (in people) for safety, we could really have a development that significantly improves the well being of millions of people, especially those with a genetic predisposition to cancer. Any additional intake of beneficial flavonoids into the Western diet, currently riddled with excessive amounts of fat and sugar, would be welcome.

    Our Reservations

    Purple Tomatoes, in action – John Innes Centre

    We wonder whether scientists are taking a very ‘Rube Goldberg-esque’ approach to a technically simple problem. Designing a fancy, purple tomato is definitely a good way to get more flavonoids into the Western diet but the inclusion of more blueberries and raspberries, which require no genetic modification, would accomplish the same thing. This is an awfully large mouse trap, so to speak.

    Our other major concern is one of history. If we let the recent past be our guide for the future, the purple tomato could very easily become another weapon in the hands of agribusiness. For generations, farmers have conducted defacto genetic engineering by choosing to breed the most prolific plants on their farms but that world has long ceased. Genetic modification of crops by large corporations is the new norm and, unfortunately, GMO seeds carry with them an especially troubled past. Often, these modified seeds have been used as a bargaining tool against farmers, ironically enough.

    The Monsanto company, who has conducted the lion’s share of the development behind the GMO revolution, understandably wants to collect on their sizable investment in the space. We take up no arms against that principle but the disgraceful tactics Monsanto has employed over the years creates great hesitation. Profiting from technological advancements is part of what makes capitalism work but extorting the world’s farmers via the food supply is simply not tolerable.

    In Conclusion

    Instead, we would like to see the public/private partnership between the John Innes Centre and the UK’s Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council continue into the future. We believe this model offers the most promise for the development of a better food supply. Open licensing of the purple tomatoes’ genetic code could be a welcome step instead of the now common draconian smoke and mirrors act that accompanies nearly every GMO product brought to market.

    In short, the proof will be in the pudding. Which path the purple tomato takes will make all the difference. Good luck little guy; we fear it will be a rough road for you from that greenhouse to our plate.