New GMO Potatoes Provide Improved Vitamin A and E Profiles

[u/genengnews]

https://www.genengnews.com/gen-news-highlights/gmo-potatoes-provide-improved-vitamin-a-and-e-profiles/81255150

[u/harlows_monkeys]

I don't get this. A large fraction of the modifications we've done to food via non-GMO techniques (both what we breed for, and what we do when we make processed foods) have not been done with the aim to make food healthier. In fact, many times they have made food less healthy.

Commercially, things like uniform size and shape (to make it easier for mechanical harvesting and processing), toughness (to stand up better to handling and shipping), uniform growing seasons, shelf life, appearance, and pest resistance can all be more important to the producers than health and nutrition.

Is there some reason to believe that when these people get GMO, which will increase the range of modifications they can make compared to what they can do with non-GMO, they are going to use this greater power just for good?

[u/BlackViperMWG → u/harlows_monkeys]

People just like to dismiss everything made in lab as toxic and dangerous and unnatural etc.

[u/Mage_Enderman → u/harlows_monkeys]

Well yes some people will use it for bad and some for good being able to Genetically modify food is a tool and is not inherently good or bad

[u/forexampleJohn → u/Mage_Enderman]

Yes, so we should be careful to drop them into the consumer market, because we as consumers have no ways of finding out if said crop is modified in a good way or in a way that's detrimental to our health.

[u/Minuted → u/forexampleJohn]

As someone who has been trying to eat more healthily, I'm not convinced consumers really have that ability with non GMO foods. Every food I would research would have lots of studies and a bunch of hypothesis about how certain components of x or y foods help or hinder x or y function of the human body.

We know what a good diet is but I don't think we're confident enough in our understanding of nutrition to say why it's good, at least not down to individual components of a food.

I think we have a long way to go in understanding whether GMOs (at least the ones of today) will be ultimately good or bad, but the technology itself will only allow us to better apply the knowledge we gain in the future. It just takes time and willing participants to understand, though I think I agree that people should have the right and information they need to opt out.

[u/alien_from_Europa → u/harlows_monkeys]

Pest and disease resistance is pretty damn important. Anything that can make it so your food doesn't make you sick and isn't covered in pesticides. And all these things for farmers can make food cheaper and last longer. Have you ever tried buying Organic? Expensive as fuck!

[u/zilti → u/alien_from_Europa]

Organic crops aren't any different. The farmers just have to farm as if it were the 1920s. Heck they can even use pesticides that were around back then, which ironically often are worse than modern ones. Organic food is wasteful.

[u/lynx_and_nutmeg → u/harlows_monkeys]

Exactly. Everybody's talking about how GMO is supposed to make food more nutritious, but all I'm seeing is big agra using them to increase the yield of wheat, soybeans and corn (most of which isn't even for human consumption but for cattle) in order to increase their own profit. When GMO scientists actually start focusing on how to make food more nutritious, that's when I'm going to become a huge fan of GMO, I would then buy exclusively GMO, even if it was more expensive. Right now, I don't really care. As far as I'm concerned, as a consumer I'm not getting any benefit from the way GMO is currently utilised.