In the hopes of creating food for people with certain health problems, Italian scientists grew radish, pea, arugula, and Swiss chard plants in a liquid medium, without soil, to increase the amount of iodine the plants contain, and reduce the amount of potassium.
Working at a commercial microgreen farm in southern Italy, the scientists altered the amount of iodine and potassium in several vegetables. The greens at that farm were grown in a liquid medium, which made the project easier to carry out:
“Soilless cultivation is considered an advanced, environmentally-friendly agricultural practice for enhancing the quality of fresh vegetables,” said the researchers, adding that “soilless systems represent an opportunity to modulate the nutrient solution precisely and efficaciously.”
After some experimentation with different growth medium formulations, the team was able to produce vegetables that had 14 times the iodine content of plants that weren’t grown in a special formula.
Iodine is a critical nutrient for proper thyroid health. It is commonly found in fortified table salt, milk, fish, and eggs but with a call for reduced salt intake by health organizations and a move toward more vegan lifestyles, it is slowly working its way out of the diet. By boosting its presence in other foods, the researchers feel they could help support the health of consumers.
Next, the scientists were able to grow the same veggies with a 45% reduction in potassium, a dangerous nutrient to individuals suffering from kidney disease.
“Since vegetables contain high concentrations of potassium, patients with impaired kidney function are sometimes advised not to eat vegetables, or that they should be soaked in water and boiled to reduce the potassium content through leaching,” said the researchers.
“However, the reduction in potassium using such cooking methods can be considered limited, while other important minerals and vitamins could be significantly lost,” they added. “In this context, the production of vegetables with low potassium content could be of great interest.”
As their next project, the researchers will alter the nutrient profile of edible crops by directly changing the plants’ metabolic pathways, rather than just changing their growth medium.
The scientists are a collaboration between Italy’s Institute of Sciences of Food Production, the National Council of Research, and the University of Bari Aldo Moro.
“The optimization of these techniques will require in-depth research into the molecular biology of plants, including the metabolic pathways involved in the synthesis of target molecules, and a constant refinement of growth conditions,” the group of scientists said. “The combination of advanced scientific knowledge and innovative technologies can open new perspectives in the production of healthier and nutritionally biofortified vegetables.”
Plants could also be altered to contain vaccines. Vaccines could be administered painlessly by eating tasty genetically-enhanced greens. But green activists oppose that. So that alternative to getting a shot won’t become a reality anytime soon. That’s too bad, because people avoid getting vaccinated just because it hurts. My daughter refused to get vaccinated for COVID-19 for weeks, to avoid the pain of getting a shot. But she has no problem eating chewable medicine tablets, or drinking grape-flavored cold medicine.
At the National Review, ethicist Wesley Smith noted that “Scientists are conducting an experiment that, if successful, would permit us to receive some vaccines and other medicines by eating food rather than by jab.” Study Finds observed that “Vaccinations can be a controversial subject for many people, especially when it comes to injections. So what if you could replace your next shot with a salad instead? Researchers at the University of California-Riverside are working on a way to grow edible plants that carry the same medication as an mRNA vaccine.”
Researchers hope that by modifying the genes of edible plants, they can carry the vaccine in a way that lasts longer and is stored more easily. They plan to deliver DNA containing mRNA vaccines into plant cells, where they can replicate. “Ideally, a single plant would produce enough mRNA to vaccinate a single person,” said professor Juan Pablo Giraldo.
But as Smith notes, even after the plants are genetically engineered, they won’t soon become available to the public, because of “implacable opposition” by green activists. They will fight against allowing genetically-modified greens to be distributed, “regardless of the medicinal benefit.” That’s how they have responded to agricultural advances and food-technology improvements in the past, delaying them for years.
He gives as one example vitamin-enriched “Golden Rice,” which “has the great potential to prevent blindness in children who live in developing countries caused by Vitamin A deficiency.” Scientists engineered these rice plants to produce beta-carotene. But distribution of them “was thwarted for many years, even though growth and distribution will be via a non-profit.”
In 2003, environmental activists in the Philippines destroyed a field trial of Golden Rice being conducted by the World Bank-sponsored International Rice Research Institute. As food safety expert Gregory Conko noted, “Golden Rice is a humanitarian project—the grains engineered to produce beta carotene to provide a needed Vitamin supplement for poor rice-growing farmers in less developed countries. Activists even tried to convince Filipino farmers that walking through a field of genetically engineered corn could turn farmers gay.”
They did this “despite the considered opinion of dozens of scientific bodies from all around the world” that “genetically engineered crops now on the market are safe for consumers and the environment,” a conclusion reached by “the U.S. National Academies of Science, American Association for the Advancement of Science, the U.K.’s Royal Society, and the French Academy of Science.”
Left-wing activists have vandalized other projects to genetically improve crops. For example, Smith notes, “experimental wheat field intended to develop a plant that is resistant to fungal infection was trampled asunder by activists who apparently prefer human starvation to a benign modification of wheat so that it will be more resilient.”
Bureaucratic agencies delay for years the distribution of genetically-enhanced crops and foods. It took 20 years for genetically-enhanced salmon to be approved by the FDA. The FDA must find genetically-modified food products to be as safe as their non-modified counterparts before they come to market. But the FDA is very slow to approve even safe and effective products. For example, FDA regulation has “done more to slow the introduction of valuable drugs than to prevent the distribution of harmful and ineffective ones,” according to The Atlantic. By delaying the approval of life-saving drugs, the FDA has caused hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths.
Left-wing opposition to agricultural advances has not been not limited to genetic engineering. Some left-wing Luddites also denounced crossbreeding and selective breeding that improved crop yields, such as wheat that put most of its energy into edible kernels rather than long, inedible stems.
The agronomist Norman Borlaug, who pioneered the Green Revolution, saved perhaps a billion lives in the Third World by developing high-yield, disease-resistant crops through biotechnology. For this, he received the Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the Congressional Medal of Honor. Yet he was smeared in the left-wing magazine The Nation, which had an irrational phobia of biotechnology, as being “the biggest killer of all.”
