Creeksong

Poster child for GMO veggies?

Aren't carrots naturally white and, over the years, have been selectively bred into being the colours that they are now?

We've been schooled. Thank you.

Well, but, at the heart of it is genetic engineering when done intentionally.... Would a carrot naturally cross with a beet? A potato with a plum? A grapefruit with an orange? No.... It has to be a byproduct of human meddling/intervention. It therefore falls under the umbrella term of genetic engineering [or modification]. It's not quite the same thing as "natural" selection methods of altering crops (or anything else) where you only collect seeds from the ones with the traits you're looking for to plant the following year and continue doing so over several generations to end up with a new subspecies of a plant. When you come across things like purple carrots, potatoes, tomatoes, they are not the result of natural processes.... Look to the origins of the carrot (Queens Anne's Lace) for instance --- its root is usually thin and white or a yellowish-orange in rare cases but never any other color. It is not in its DNA to be another color.... The orange domestic carrot is the result of selective management -- picking & planting seeds of Queen Anne's Lace with bigger & more orange root until the familiar carrot was the end result... The unnatural color has been introduced by humans genetically modifying the natural state of the plant since the wild carrot does not have the genes to produce these odd colors.

So, while GMO has come to mean bad things and people just cannot be satisfied with what nature provides, in the broader umbrella sense of the term it does include all unnatural genetic manipulations -- whether through gene splicing or combinations or through crossing animals/plants in more natural ways.... And the result is so artificial that the resulting offspring/hybrids are most often infertile.... I would challenge you to try picking seeds from the purple-red carrot and planting the following season to try to get the same color.... If you're successful, the pretty carrot is a hybrid, if not the pretty carrot is a GMO crop... ;) 'Cause seed suppliers don't want you to be successful in raising these types of food crops yourself without them so the resulting plants bear seeds which are infertile.... Nature doesn't produce such hybrids with predictable regularity without human intervention ;)

Alrighty, well, there you go.... That takes care of the carrot issue ;) Though crossing those Asian ones with the Queens Anne's Lace originating carrots is no less genetic manipulation..... But hey, that's just the genetic-engineering-degree-holder in me coloring my take on it ;) Mainly 'cause those old breeds don't taste the same.... So to get that sweeter carrot taste and combine the benefits of beta carotene with the fun colors of the Asian heirloom carrots, you'd have to manipulate their genes to produce something that could reliably be grown from a seed germinated plant to be fertile & be planted and grown reliably again and again....

The scientific community has been very careful & proactive, even bullish, in promoting this idea that hybridizing through cross pollination isn't genetic modification ever since the truth about their activities with GMO animals and plants has come to light and appalled many..... If the "masses" only knew the true extent of the GMO reach into the world's food supply there would be absolute outrage world-wide.... It's creepy when the ham you're eating has human genes spliced into it.... It's an outrage when the veggies you consume have been tainted with pesticides at the genetic level so you ingest them whether you like it or not..... Oh, and let's not even contemplate the thousands of GMO activities that do not even require labeling.... Or those same things being shipped out and tested on the poorest of the poor who don't have time to contemplate such things while they're starving. And much of it is done without disclosure of any kind. Worse yet, the push is to make non-GMO food supply items obsolete...

Just a few months ago, my mom bought some leafy veggies from the grocery store... No special label on them at all.... When she used them, they tasted like fish and nothing like what they should taste like -- she ended up throwing them away.

Fascinating stuff, huh? And it all started with a photo of a slice of carrot....

Fizgig, it would be great fun to know if Maja the Bee also holds a degree and is eligable to genetic manipulation, should she just hum along the garden of a family having crop from both hairloom seeds of common old dutch carrots and asian carrots kept standing for winning new seeds. ;o) As far as I know they still ave the ability to cross.
Perhaps a fun and crazy rainbow carrot might have less vertile flowers if it should be come to pass that way, but I'd still call it a fairly natural crop, better than F1 hybrids from the garden centre where the dear engieers made sure you cant get any palatable progeny from at all and become dependant on buying new stuff each year. And why on earth should it not be appetizing?

BTW, fishy tasting leaf veggies might be a sign of bio-vertilizer containing soil and weed from cleaning out fishponds in not long enough ripened compost. This is definately mega-yucky and you should not just silently dispose of it....
Your mom should have rushed that back to the grocer and informed them. Today the consumer's store and the wholesale business behind should be able to trace the crap back by it's bar-code to the comercial grower of orgin.