Gigantic vegetables: threat or menace?

March 14, 2007 4:11 PM

My partner staunchly affirms that very large vegetables and fruit from the supermarket are so big because they are GMOs. Can this be true, and is it anything to be afraid of?

Because of this belief she feels uncomfortable buying big veggies and fruits. She'll point out big pears and say "Ugh, that's disgusting." She will pick through the bin for the smallest of them and choose a different grocery store next time. This doesn't make sense to me as (although I know that veggies can be bred for size) if the mushrooms are GMOs this week, then they were last week too, even though then they were smaller. Also, I think that if the strawberries are mutants at Safeway, they probably are at Save On and Superstore too.

Is she right? Are big fruits and vegetables human-made genetic mutants? If they are GMO, is this a problem? I know that big veggies are often woody and less flavorful, so there are other reasons to avoid them, but I just don't think that my partner's argument holds water.

posted by arcticwoman to food & drink (37 comments total)

Everything you see in the store is a "human-made genetic mutant". There are no significant domestic crops which are identical to their wild forebears. (Except maybe certain herbs and spices, and not even all of them.)
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 4:18 PM on March 14, 2007 [3 favorites]

Big fruits and vegetables predate what we know as genetic modification. They've been bred for ages to accomplish so that the plants yield a lot of fruits and vegetables and the produce itself looks appealing and size is part of that equation. Taste was a distant consideration, most store bought produce tastes has little actual flavour.

Picking the smallest out of a bunch of megaveggies really doesn't make sense, you're correct, if one is a mutant they're all mutants... but they aren't mutants anyway.
posted by substrate at 4:19 PM on March 14, 2007

Size is not a direct symptom of GMO. If I recall correctly, the majority of GMO content in food that makes it to the supermarket is for resistance to the herbicides used to control weeds and shouldn't make the product look any different. Produce that's large, or looks ripe but isn't, is usually a result of old-skool selective breeding.

Aren't there any large veggies in the section labelled "Organic"?
posted by krisjohn at 4:19 PM on March 14, 2007

Indeed. Many fruits and vegetables wouldn't even exist if they hadn't been genetically modified by humans thousands of years ago.
posted by koeselitz at 4:20 PM on March 14, 2007

I don't know about size, but the little sticker on the fruit will tell you if it's organic, GMO, or conventional.
webbery
9xxxx = Organic
8xxxx = GMO
xxxx = Old school
posted by idiotfactory at 4:23 PM on March 14, 2007 [10 favorites]

All of the major grains are genetically engineered, and have been for thousands of years. Selective breeding to adapt plants and animals for human needs was the first breakthrough effort of human technology, called agriculture. Wheat, corn, rice, and most domestic crops will not propogate naturally, nor survive in the face of competition from wild species. Look at any fallow corn field. The first year it is fallow, some few dormant "volunteer" corn seeds may yet germinate, sprout and grow to maturity, and this can even happen in the second year, albeit with lesser results for the volunteers, as the fertilizer levels upon which commercial corn crops depend drop away. By the third year, if nothing has been done, corn is absent, and the plot will have been taken over by wild grasses, and perhaps early first stage trees, such as pines, depending on locale.

You cannot eat out of grocery store, if you are serious about avoiding GMO, and to sustain 2 adult humans in a temperate climate solely by hunting and gathering, you'll need a couple square miles of land, if it is productive, and has plenty of fresh water. But beyond that, I grew some heritage tomatoes last year, from pretty old seeds, that gave me a few over 1 pound, and many over 1/2 pound. And I've grown zucchinis over a foot long, and summer squash over 2 pounds. It just takes care, water, physical support, and time. Nothing wrong with the food, except that, as you mention, older larger fruits, like squash, are sometimes of a firmer, drier texture.
posted by paulsc at 4:29 PM on March 14, 2007

Indeed. Many fruits and vegetables wouldn't even exist if they hadn't been genetically modified by humans thousands of years ago.

And grains. And pretty much all the farm animals we eat.
posted by The Michael The at 4:29 PM on March 14, 2007

You should google for photos from giant vegetable growing competitions. You will see that people have been growing super-large varieties for a very long time, way before GMOs were even dreamed of.

Many shoppers prize size, so breeders and growers may try to gratify that preference. In all probability unusually large veges were bred and grown using normal, traditional plant breeding techniques.

On the risk front: GMOs contain genes from unrelated organisms. Those genes produce new properties in the modified organism. So it's possible that in addition to the sought-after result, some unexpected chemical might be present. This can also happen with normal plant breeding techniques too - you might breed for pest resistant tomatoes, and discover that the resulting fruit deter pests, but taste nasty too. The risk to you in consuming GMOs is the same risk as in any new variety.

There are various reasons to be agin GMOs, from the "yuk factor" to the very real concerns over intellectual property abuse by major corporations or unintended consequences in pest management. But I wouldn't worry for a second about eating them.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 4:49 PM on March 14, 2007 [1 favorite]

I don't know of any transgenic crops engineered for size; there's a tomato designed to stay fresh longer, and the herbicide-resistant produce mentioned earlier, though.

Keep in mind that the produce you see in your supermarket has been selected to be the most visually appealing fraction of the crop. Small or misshapen fruit winds up in processed food.
posted by mr_roboto at 4:50 PM on March 14, 2007

If your partner is concerned about the nature and quality of the food she eats, and she certainly should be, ill-informed revulsion is not a great way to go. I'd suggest The Omnivore's Dilemma as a reasonably non-strident overview of some of the issues around food. The Future of Food is a good documentary, albeit one I couldn't finish because it pissed me off too much.

There are no easy answers as to what constitutes good food, but I'm personally convinced that good, wholesome food is pretty hard to come by in the typical supermarket and the more I read, the more convinced I am of this belief.
posted by stet at 4:56 PM on March 14, 2007

Big tomatoes at the big box store = nothing to worry about.

Ugly tomatoes at the coop = tasty (seriously, do a taste test!) organic goodness.

Big Tomatoes that have fish genes inserted into their genetic code so that their cells don't freeze during shipping = who knows if you individually should worry (or if it's dangerous to humans at a different level -- like the "escaping" of GMO crops into the wild). Oh, and they look just like the first one's I mentioned above. Idiotfactory's number trick is interesting and I'll be paying attention at the big box grocery stores.
posted by zpousman at 4:57 PM on March 14, 2007

"Can" yes, "is" doubtful and no.
posted by DU at 4:57 PM on March 14, 2007

Genetic modification is **NOT** the same thing as hybridization. Farmers and breeders didn't put almond genes in carrots or soy genes in wheat like they do now. They say it's safe, but there have been at least two instances where plants with genes added from plants from different families have triggered allergies in those allergic to the donor plant. If I recall correctly, one person spent a week in the hospital on a respirator. You're living in a dream world if you think scientists can ensure this can't happen. I wouldn't risk it if I had a serious food allergy.

As for large vegetables - they are chosen that way to look good (bigger is better) and usually have less flavour than smaller vegetables. What's more, they're more likely to go bad in the fridge if you don't use them right away. This doesn't apply to loose-leaf vegetables, since their size has more to do with temperature and conditions, but solid vegetables...I'd pick the smaller ones for taste reasons. Also larger root veg can be woody and have an unpleasant texture, even after long cooking.
posted by watsondog at 5:01 PM on March 14, 2007

Crap, I meant to be all helpful and link to the book at your local public library, but there's some sort of session thing going on. Rest assured, they have it and I'll kick an OPAC vendor in the shins next chance I get
posted by stet at 5:11 PM on March 14, 2007 [1 favorite]

It makes no sense to call a genetically modified plant a "mutant." Mutation is a random process that occurs naturally without human intervention. The changes genetically modified plants have been designed.

You don't need to do expensive gene splicing to make big vegetables—humans have been doing it the old-fashioned way for ages. Gene splicing is used instead to do more exotic things like add Vitamin A to rice, or resist various stresses in the environment, including certain pesticides. On the other side, some genetic modifications allow plants to be grown without using pesticides.

As others have pointed out though, even if big vegetables were inherently something to worry about due to some genetic factor (which they aren't), that genetic factor would be present in even the small vegetables from the same lot, so seeking out the little ones won't help.
posted by grouse at 5:19 PM on March 14, 2007

Of course, non-GMO foods may be the result of mutation breeding, wherein plants are bombarded with radiation or chemicals to encourage them to mutate. We really have no clue what kind of side-effect mutations may have been introduced by this style of breeding, and it's essentially unavoidable.
posted by backupjesus at 5:38 PM on March 14, 2007

Nor do you have any clue what sort of "side effect mutations" may have been introduced naturally by the sun or cosmic rays. And that's been happening for hundreds of millions of years!
posted by grouse at 5:51 PM on March 14, 2007 [1 favorite]

Big vegetables are (as is covered above) human-bred strains that are bred to be big. If you're growing vegetables to sell to a wholesaler, your priorities are basically:

1) size and quantity of fruit (directly transmits to your profit margin)
2) appearance of fruit (buyer picks by appearance)

Taste doesn't even enter into it. Which is pretty unfortunate, I think, since what you care about, as the end-user, is mainly taste. Strawberries the size of baseballs taste like shit, but they look big and pretty, so they sell well. The choice today is basically between organic or wild fruit (which has an average amount of taste) and strongly bred fruit (which has a much less than average amount of taste). No one is breeding taste in; it's just that some fruit hasn't yet had taste bred out of it.
posted by jellicle at 5:54 PM on March 14, 2007

I think for certain fruit, people are breeding for taste. That's how you sell, say, new strains of apples, although that might be part of a backlash to the extreme breeding for uniform color that left us with the Red Delicious apples that only fulfilled half of their description.
posted by grouse at 6:00 PM on March 14, 2007

All I know is that the old, old apple trees on my Grandpa's farm make some apples as big as my baby daughter's head. Taste great, too.
posted by purenitrous at 6:03 PM on March 14, 2007

At lunch today I had an enormous orange, the size of a grapefruit, that I bought in a convenience store.

The orange was a few days too old and dried out.

I paid something like $1.80 for it, but I was downtown where there were not a lot of fruit and veg stands around. And people wonder why most Americans don't eat their five servings of fruits and vegetables a day.

The orange was probably three servings, though.
posted by bad grammar at 6:20 PM on March 14, 2007

Actually, the bigness of modern fruits and vegetables is fairly likely to be a direct result of artificial genetic manipulation.

Most of the fruits and vegetables on contemporary shelves are polyploids, that is, they have more tham two sets of parallel chromosomes:

Polyploid crops

Polyploid plants in general are more robust and sturdy than diploids. In the breeding of crops, those plants that are stronger and tougher are selected. Thus many crops have unintentionally been bred to a higher level of ploidy:

* Triploid crops: banana, apple, ginger
* Tetraploid crops: durum or macaroni wheat, maize, cotton, potato, cabbage, leek, tobacco, peanut, kinnow, Pelargonium
* Hexaploid crops: chrysanthemum, bread wheat, triticale, oat
* Octaploid crops: strawberry, dahlia, pansies, sugar cane

Some crops are found in a variety of ploidy. Apples, tulips and lilies are commonly found as both diploid and as triploid. Daylilies (Hemerocallis) cultivars are available as either diploid or tetraploid. Kinnows can be tetraploid, diploid, or triploid.

As the quoted text implies, traditional selective breeding has resulted in 'unintentional' polyploidy in food plants (that list has errors, unfortunately, the polyploidy of tritcale and others is anything but unintentional). However, much of the polploidy in our foods has resulted from direct manipulation of the genomes with colchicine, first isolated in 1820, derived from meadow saffron, and used in agriculture since the 1930s, which poisons the mitotic spindle and results in a doublng of chromosomes of treated cells-- and the resulting fruits and vegetables tend to be considerably larger:

In aberrant euploids, there is often a correlation between the number of copies of the chromosome set and the size of the organism and its component parts. For example, typically a tetraploid organism looks very similar to its diploid counterpart in its proportions, except that the tetraploid is bigger as a whole and in its component parts. The higher the ploidy level, the larger the size.

I looked for quite a while for a definitive list of food crops deliberately treated with colchicine and likely to be found in our markets, but I did not find one.
posted by jamjam at 6:54 PM on March 14, 2007 [1 favorite]

No, size is not an indication of GMOness. The biggest zucchnis I've ever seen were grown in my grandmother's garden. They got that big because they had good soil and were left to grow longer than would make sense for a farmer.

Certainly some foods today are GMOs, but of all the complaints about modern agriculture, complaints about GMOs make the least sense to me. The DNA in each cell of what we eat does nothing to us; we break it down, what tiny amounts of it there are. Genes only matter insofar as they code proteins. If the proteins that are produced are harmful, then you've got something to complain about. But as far as I know, there is no evidence that GMOs produce harmful substances in the plants. I have heard that some GMOs can produce allergic reactions based on the spliced-in DNA, but that's not something that would ordinarily be harmful.

Sometimes GMOs are designed to be able to survive specially-designed pesticides that kill everything else (Roundup is the typical example); but often those pesticides are designed to break down. They're not necessarily any worse than any other pesticides, and maybe better.

Finally, before we go around condemning all things unnatural and GMO: read this article - "Will Frankenfood Save the Planet?" in the Atlantic about the potentially massive benefits of using GMOs that can grow without massive amounts of pesticides. Registration is required; I'll email you a copy of it.
posted by Dasein at 7:03 PM on March 14, 2007

Farmers and breeders did put genes from half a dozen separate, wild Solanaceae species (several of them poisonous!) into one food crop, namely the potato. They did combine the chromosome sets of three wild grass species to create modern hexaploid wheat. The effects on these crops were intentional, not accidental.

Insist, if you like, that it's 'not the same thing' because the genes were carried across in pollen rather than in plasmids, taking more time and introducing more uncertainty into the results (uncertainty that later had to be, literally, weeded out); but be aware that your insistence colors you irrational in the eyes of many well-informed, thinking people.

A more reasonable objection to GM produce is what backupjesus said in relation to mutation breeding: We don't know all the consequences of the modification. 'One gene, one protein' is, after all, regularly shown to be false; given the mind-bendingly intricate synthesis pathways of your average zucchini, and the no-less tortuous gene regulation behind it, it is essentially impossible to know you've predicted the full effect of any genetic change. The best you can do is test the product, over and over again, for unfortunate side-effects.

The creators of the potato had to test their products the hard way, by eating them, or feeding them to someone, and seeing who got sick. These days we've got chromatographs and things, so we can check for tropane alkaloids without damaging anyone's health. Unfortunately, we've also got the religion of capitalist industry, which tends to rush things to market and leave important tests for later; and therein you may reasonably be concerned for the safety of your produce. After all, potatoes and wheat have had millions of edibility trials in diverse climates and cuisines, and how many have your new freezeproof tomatoes undergone?

Climate of course has epigenetic effects. Compare navel oranges from California and Florida. They are genetically identical (being seedless clones) and yet so different. But yes, cuisine can make a difference, too. Niacin deficiency caused widespread 'polenta plagues' shortly after Italy discovered cornmeal. Why? Because the Italians, unlike the Mexicans, did not process their corn with lime. I find that fascinating.
posted by eritain at 7:21 PM on March 14, 2007 [1 favorite]

Wow ... that was rather more abrasive than it needed to be. And arcticwoman, the grit is empatically not directed at you.
posted by eritain at 7:37 PM on March 14, 2007

Selective breeding is totally different than genetic engineering. But what a great spin job!

I don't think there are any GMO "big fruit" crops approved but you can read through the entire list for any country here. Most GM crops were engineered to either produce a bacterial pesticide ("Bt crops") or withstand more herbicide ("Roundup Ready" crops). In the US, the main GM crops are corn, soybeans, and cotton (fact sheet).
posted by salvia at 8:21 PM on March 14, 2007

eritain, the "spin job" comment was not directed at you! Here's my non-scientific understanding as to why it's "totally different:" 1. multiple copies inserted, some inert until triggered by environmental conditions; 2. they're inserted using a method designed to spread into genetic material, hence more likely to spread to wild relatives which might not be good, depending on what the trait is, 3. GE has been used to "breed" together not only different species which would never cross-breed in nature, but different kingdoms -- ie, plants and animals. Not sure any of that latter group was ever brought to market...?

Also, here's another source with good links to lists of what's been approved, US only this time. Not many fruits on there.
posted by salvia at 8:32 PM on March 14, 2007

salvia pretty much has it - of fruits, only a GMO papaya variety has been approved, they were working on a plum variety last I read but I don't know if they have gotten through the process yet.

The genetically modified crops you are most likely to encounter in the grocery store are tomatoes and potatoes. There are NO GMO strawberries, pears, or mushrooms approved for commercial production, to use your examples, and to the best of my knowledge there are not GMO crops being currently produced for size. GMO crops currently in production are bred for one of three things: to be resistant to particular herbicides so that they higher volumes of herbicides can be used on them, to produce internally substances that make them resistant to insects (the most common substance being a natural pesticide that is produced normally by bacteria and is in fact commonly used in organic farming, not that I think this is great or anything), or to be resistant to specific diseases.

Whether GMO is safe or not is controversial. Personally I haven't seen research that convinces me of ill effects of consuming approved produce. I am more concerned about potential environmental and economic effects. You can certainly find people out there arguing that it is unhealthy or at least that its safety is not established.

Basically, no, your partner does not comprehend what GMO is or how it works and her method of "safe" vegetable selection is absurd and useless. The easiest way to avoid GMO altogether is to go organic, you will avoid a lot of chemicals
posted by nanojath at 10:24 PM on March 14, 2007

Factory farming, and farming with bulk productivity as the main and perhaps only real goal, is arguably a Bad Thing, though. I'd argue that in breeding and growing for size, not just taste but nutrition have suffered, and I think there is data to back this up... It is a topic (in which GMO is a currently relatively minor but growing side issue) worth educating oneself about.
posted by nanojath at 10:31 PM on March 14, 2007

I always thought they were huge because they were over-watered. I also thought that was why they had no taste, at least compared to their international counterparts. I don't know anything about gardening, though.
posted by walla at 6:52 AM on March 15, 2007

Starlink is the name of the GMO corn that triggered dangerous allergic reactions. It was not approved for human consumption, but ended up in a variety of food products that made it to the shelf and sickened quite a few people.

It can be difficult to assure that that kind of thing won't happen again, as pollen drift can cause ostensibly non-GMO crops to become contaminated.

As far as I know, most of the dangers of GM produce are on other fronts. This is a pretty good representation of the kinds of issues farmers have to deal with because of patented organisms. Having grown up in a farming community, I find this stuff pretty offensive and avoid GMO food whenever reasonably possible.
posted by zebra3 at 7:12 AM on March 15, 2007

Strawberries the size of baseballs taste like shit, but they look big and pretty, so they sell well.

This is an excellent point. With few exceptions, IMO, "super-sized" produce tends to be pulpy/fiberous and bland because they've been left to grow for too long. Go for the smaller, younger pieces with better color.

And SMELL IT. Good produce smells strongly of what it is. It sounds stupid, but smell the tomatoes next time you go to the grocery. Then smell the organic tomatoes, and you'll note the difference.
posted by mkultra at 7:13 AM on March 15, 2007

The huge fruits and veggies are from breeding and also from mass production greenhouses (like in the Netherlands) that produce vast quantities of hydroponic produce that grows to immense sizes.
posted by Jupiter Jones at 10:44 AM on March 15, 2007

Watching these crunchy-looking people drive their greenpeace-stickered SUVs in from the 'burbs to buy organic food at the farmer's market has always struck me as just a little cognitively dissonant.

Buying organic is great, but think about it this way: Wealthy people get to eat organic food because we can afford to pay more for crops that yield less per acre. The less fortunate get the stuff that's engineered for high-yield and not necessarily taste. Do you think they want high-yield, Vitamin-rich rice or heirloom basmati in Ethiopia?

nanojath: "Basically, no, your partner does not comprehend what GMO is or how it works and her method of "safe" vegetable selection is absurd and useless."

Just wanted to make sure this point was emphasized. The anti-genetic engineering stuff is mostly due to people with a political axe to grind manipulating those who don't understand the science, just like the stem-cell debate, the abortion debate, the creationism "debate"...
posted by Mr. Gunn at 2:04 PM on March 15, 2007

There are plenty of perfectly legitimate political reasons not to support GM foods.

Even a casual stroll through Wikipedia is enough to counter your glib grouping of it with those non-issues. It's also been discussed endlessly (and thoughtfully) on MeFi, if you care to search.
posted by mkultra at 4:33 PM on March 15, 2007

Watching these crunchy-looking people drive their greenpeace-stickered SUVs in from the 'burbs to buy organic food at the farmer's market has always struck me as just a little cognitively dissonant.

BTW, straw man much?
posted by mkultra at 4:34 PM on March 15, 2007

mkultra: "There are plenty of perfectly legitimate political reasons not to support GM foods.

There are legitimate political reasons to have a position on stem cell research and abortion. This issue is like those in that poor understanding of the science is taken advantage of to further political ends to the detriment of public understanding of the issue. If the question is "threat or menace?" maybe the answer should be "you're not asking the right question."

It's also been discussed endlessly (and thoughtfully) on MeFi, if you care to search."

It has, and I've participated in those discussions and they've generally been handled with the nuance and finesse I've come to expect from the people here. I understand that people, including myself, have various reasons for believing things other than the scientific consensus, and that gets right to the heart of the issue, doesn't it?
posted by Mr. Gunn at 6:40 PM on March 15, 2007