The Ass of All Apples
The Arctic Apple is biotech’s new brainchild. Finally the perfect Pink Lady, Red Delish or Granny Smith. Butt (excuse the pun) is this truly the apple a day that can keep the doctor away? Hmmm…
Let’s see, it won’t turn brown when you cut into it? In fact, it will look fresh and edible all the time. It will be perfect on the outside and white, white, white on the inside. Just like that illustration above. And soon our fast food favorites like McDonalds and Booger King (oops, I meant Burger) as well as SCHOOL CAFETERIAS (that means your kids peeps) will be serving up this ass of an apple.
So, what’s the big deal? Well, let me start with this very simple notion—food isn’t perfect (we live in an imperfect world), however the biotech industry wants to make food infallable. By doing so, our food supply is more predictable—crops won’t get eaten by pests, they will tolerate droughts or they won’t freeze if it gets too chilly—and predictablility means profit. So biotech plays with nature altering the genes in many of the crops today including corn, soy and cotton to create “indestructible” eats. According to the Non-GMO Project, the go-to organization for everything engineered:
This experimental technology merges DNA from different species, creating unstable combinations of plant, animal, bacterial and viral genes that cannot occur in nature or in traditional crossbreeding.
Back to the Arctic Apple—based on this celebrity fruit’swebsite (with a bit of my attitude laced in), this is the deal:
All apples undergo enzymatic browning due to a chemical reaction after cell injury, whether by bruising, biting or cutting the apple. Arctic apples don’t undergo this enzymatic browning because the genes (or switches as I like to say) responsible for the browning are turned off (or silenced) by a bunch of scientists in a lab. While silencing is a natural process that all plants (and animals) use to control expression of their genes in nature, the Arctic Apple’s genes are silenced in a lab. Sounds pretty Frankenstein to me!
The genetically engineered seeds (where the genetic material lives) are grown into plantlets that grow in a tree nursery until they are ready to be transplanted to an orchard, just like other commercial apple tree seedlings. Once in the orchard, they behave just as other apple trees do—they grow, flower and fruit the same way, and react to pests and weather the same way. As for pesticides, the Arctic Apple is no different than any apple (unless certified organic)—they are bathed is pesticides. And as a result, they will consistently top the Environmental Working Group’s Dirty Dozen for the staggering array of chemicals found on them (just as the un-engineered, non-organic counterparts do now).
But, according to biotech, they are not taking genes from another species and inserting them into the genetic material of the apple (like most other GMO’s). Rather they are altering what is already in the apple. So what’s the harm?
- This new science experiment is basically an untested genetic technology—isn’t it enough that you have been the lab rats for biotech for decades without knowing it?
- Despite biotech’s claim that genetically engineered “matter” is destroyed by human digestion (thus not harmful to you), these manipulated genes do find their way into your digestive systems and bloodstream (you are what you eat) and could potentially damage vital human genes.
So, I don’t know about you but given this info, I sure as heck wouldn’t want to take a chance with my health or that of my kids. For more on this apple anomaly, check out the Organic Consumer’s Association. And be sure to stick with organic all the time when it comes to these colorful fleshy fruits.
Let’s keep this conversation going. Please feel free to ask questions or share your thoughts and opinions. I would love to hear from you!