
GM Apples That Don’t Brown to Reach U.S. Shelves This Fall - rbanffy
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/609080/gm-apples-that-dont-brown-to-reach-us-shelves-this-fall/
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exabrial
It annoys me that fruit/vegs has to "look good". Anyone that has grown their
own carrots know that the results you get are far from the "ideal carrot" :')

That being said, I believe GMO food is the future. It's safe and
environmentally friendly: we can use far less land and water to produce larger
amounts of crops.

~~~
herrity4
I think were shooting ourselves in the foot. We did the same with antibiotics.
Disease gets worse and we make super bugs and are more and more reliant on our
defenses. Eventually GMO will be the same thing. You won't be able to grow
nonGMO crops because we have weaponized the crop killers to such a high
degree.

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kobeya
News flash : “nonGMO” crops are already genetically modified from wild plants,
just through a more painstaking process of cross breeding and artificial
selection over random mutations. This is already happening and would happen
anyway.

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herrity4
All genetic modifications aren't created equal. If you can get to it from
cross breeding, it's probably not that foreign a trait, but if you to say
splice pea DNA with mesquito DNA or something, that result could have
consequences consumers would rather not worry about when buying produce. I'm
not saying it's a fine dilineation or anything and I'm not anti science, but
there are more nuanced regulations in food labeling today than GMO nonGMO.

~~~
kobeya
With the availability of genetic sequencing you can get from anywhere A -> B
in the reachable genetic search space through selective breeding, and still
qualify for regulatory purposes as non-GMO. You can get out of that loophole
by prohibiting the non-GMO label for anything that was bred based on direct
genome sequencing, but that's a game a whack-a-mole as I come up with another
scheme.

And at the end, what's the point? Regulate what you actually care about in the
food, not what process was taken to get there.

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jimktrains2
I wonder how this will affect taste. Apples bred to look picture perfect
often/usually/always? have terrible tastes in my experience.

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ivl
I don't think this is meant to affect how apples look initially, only once
they've been bitten into/cut so that the white part is open to the air.

Lemon juice used to be the trick, but if this does the trick then cool.

~~~
jimktrains2
> I don't think this is meant to affect how apples look initially, only once
> they've been bitten into/cut so that the white part is open to the air.

I know, my point was that so far my experience with apples made to be better
commercially fail when it comes to taste. I wonder if this will be different.

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sonink
It was a bit shocking to me when I first walked into an American super market
to see tomatoes all the same big size and shining red color. This is in sharp
contrast to what we get in India - they come in all sizes and different shades
of orange, green and red.

Even though the American ones were instantly attractive, it slowly dawned on
me that perhaps something is wrong. Now I appreciate the Indian vegetables a
lot more.

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sampo
For anyone interested, Scientific American tells a bit more about the enzyme
which causes browning in apples:

[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/experts-why-
cut-a...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/experts-why-cut-apples-
turn-brown/)

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herrity4
Put the information on the package. Let consumers decide, irrational or not,
there's a market for nonGMO. If you want to supplant that market with GM
foods, do it through informing consumers not blending in with food they
already trust. The labeling games producer's play with our food is really
unfortunate.

~~~
dawnerd
Problem with that is it sounds scary. Some big companies already are and hide
the text on the bags, but your average consumer sees it and thinks it’s full
of chemicals.

Personally, I’d rather eat a gm crop that’s been altered to resist insects
than eat an organic crop that’s been sprayed with organic pesticides such as
(the now not used) rotenone.

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JohnTHaller
As a general rule, looks good and tastes good are inversely proportional to
each other.

~~~
yesimahuman
Explains why most supermarket tomatoes are _terrible_

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kodis
I'll buy a bag or two, just to encourage research into what benefits these
types of genetic modification techniques can bring to market. I hope their
business results are as successful as their produce results seems to be.

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darksim905
You guys are freaking out about apples, but I'm excited for the application of
(the concept of) silencing towards humans. I don't think* it quite works this
way & I'm sure biologics are similar, but it would be amazing if you could do
the same thing for humans. Imagine doing that for people who have psoriasis.
Would be amazing if the body took to that & could continue producing cells
that react properly.

~~~
jfarlow
It is happening. Hemophilia being cured at Marin Bio [1].

There are a bunch of therapies where Cas9 is being used by to therapeutically
knock out or repair particular proteins. Indications currently targeted at
Intellia: ATTR, Hepatitis B, AATD, PH-1, etc. [2].

[1] [http://investors.biomarin.com/2017-07-11-BioMarins-
Investiga...](http://investors.biomarin.com/2017-07-11-BioMarins-
Investigational-Gene-Therapy-for-Hemophilia-A-at-6e13-vg-kg-Dose-Maintains-
Average-Factor-VIII-Levels-within-Normal-Range-for-over-One-Year)

[2] [http://www.intelliatx.com/pipeline/](http://www.intelliatx.com/pipeline/)

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ep103
So... its still going to go bad, but it just won't turn brown? And it won't be
labelled, so I won't know its not an ordinary apple?

Sigh.

~~~
jimktrains2
Browned apples aren't bad apples. You can currently splash a little lemon
juice over them to the same effect (denaturing the enzyme that causes browning
chemically instead of suppressing its expression generically).

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nomercy400
How do you identify a bad apple, other than browning, without taking a bite?

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seszett
The browning only appears as the apple's flesh starts oxydizing after having
taken a bite (or a slice) of it and exposing it to the air.

It helps in no way to assess the freshness, taste, quality or anything about
the apple. It just makes the exposed flesh turn brown after a few minutes.

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darpa_escapee
I had a Granny Smith apple in the back of my fridge for something like 3
months.

It looked like I just bought it when I found it again.

Realizing that honestly made me uncomfortable.

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jimktrains2
Apples are a great at storage. Some can be extremely hardy if kept in a mostly
dry and cold place. It was one reason they became so popular: you could keep
them over winter in a root cellar.

This is how we get out-of-season apples. They basically get stored in
refrigerated warehouses.

Granted not all apples are like this. Some become mealy pretty quickly.

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zzalpha
For anyone reading who has an apple tree, quick correction: cold and humid.

My crop easily lasts for 3 months in my storage fridge (and I don't take the
time to sort them to properly eliminate bruised fruit, etc), but the key is
cold and humid, not cold and dry.

~~~
jimktrains2
Ah, sorry, and I don't seem to be able to edit. I guess I always consider a
fridge a dry place, but that's not really true the more I think about it.

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jackhack
This disgusts me. I have a right to know what is in the food I (might) eat. If
indeed there is no risk from GMO products (plant or animals), or animals given
antibiotics, or cows given hormones to increase milk production, etc. then it
falls upon those industries to educate and convince me of this point-of-view,
not to hide the information or (in some cases) make it illegal to report the
GMO/non-GMO status.

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exabrial
Antibiotics: don't make it into your beef in an amount that will affect your
life. You can consume more drugs by drinking tap water in LA.

Hormones: I guess we should ban birth control as well, correct? Because that's
all it is...

But, I believe in a free society, so if people wish to remain ignorant of
science, that's their prerogative. But it's important to recongize those are
just marketing campaigns: there is nothing "healthier" about eating beef
raised antibiotic/hormone free, all other things being equal (living
conditions for the animals).

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seszett
> _Hormones: I guess we should ban birth control as well, correct? Because
> that 's all it is..._

We don't usually give birth control hormones to male humans. I don't know if
they are bad when they are given to animals (it's forbidden here in Europe)
but female hormones are _definitely_ not good to developing children or adult
males.

They're just good/neutral (well, not functionally neutral of course, but not
causing unplanned disruption) to adult females because they're part of their
normal physiology.

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exabrial
> We don't usually give birth control hormones to male humans.

This comment presents a false premise. The amounts in beef are ridiculously
small, especially when compared to other foods. Any "advantages" to "hormone
free beef" are pseudoscience and a marketing campaign, and that's it.

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seszett
I did say that I don't know if there's a problem with hormones given to
animals.

My point was the original comment implying that hormones are not harmful
because they are used for birth control, which is shortsighted and plain
wrong.

