Genetically modified fruit is either amazing or evil. I can't decide which. No matter which side you fall on, it sure is intriguing. It's mind-blowing that scientists can take tomatoes and combine them with lemons. It's a fruit centaur.
WebEcoist, a magazine specializing in "environmental oddities," profiles some of the more promising fruit-and-veggie hybrids, many of which may be commonplace in the future.
One I don't think will make the cut is a graisin, which is just a giant raisin. It tastes the same except it's a lot bigger. While the Japanese scientists who developed it are obviously extremely smart, I can't imagine a scenario in which you'd need one huge raisin instead of lots of little ones.
But really large grapes would have some uses. They'd be easier to eat on the go and less messy. Enter the grapple.
The grapple combines the "sweet distinctive flavor of Concord grapes
combined with the crispness of a fresh, juicy Washington Extra Fancy
apple." Best of all, grapples avoid the whole genetic battle because
they aren't engineered in any way. Instead they're just apples that are
picked and then infused with grape juice in a "relaxing bathing
process."
Other candidates for daily eats include the tangelo, a true hybrid of tangerines and grapefruit that looks like an orange and is easy to peel and slice like an orange. Or maybe we'll all be eating pluots, which are 70 percent plum and 30 percent apricot. Best of all, pluots are a result of crossbreeding, not genetic modification.
I don't have a problem with delicious pairings like plums and
tangerines but the lemon/tomato mix mentioned above -- the lemato -- is
where people start to get worried. Scientists wanted to give tomatoes
lemon and rose scents and did so by transferring genes from lemon basil into tomatoes.
I've read too many Michael Crichton novels to take scientists on their
word that genetically engineered foods like lematos are OK. I don't have an intense fear of GE food and look forward to using the amazing inventions of food scientists. But until we progress a little more, I'll stick with tomatoes that smell like tomatoes.
Read the whole list here.
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Let me rethink that--if they could genetically synthesize pears, blue cheese, and walnuts into one neat, choppable package, I would eat salads by the metric assload.
An apple is capable of relaxation? That humanizes fruit way too much for me. From now on, it's meat only.
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