The best way to read this post is to begin with a recent press release from Texas A&M on their new Supercarrot.
Second, read Wired magazine journalist Alexis Madrigal's coverage of the story. Alexis praises the next generation of biotech crops. He writes that, "A carrot that increases what's known as the bioavailability of calcium could have a major impact in the marketplace." Really?
You are correct, Alexis: it could have a major impact on a totally uninformed marketplace -- but not much of an impact on nutrition. However, it is likely to have an impact on genetic contamination, wasted public research dollars, and increased corporate profits. If you had read the press release and considered the math around just how much more calcium we are getting from this new carrot, and at what costs, you might have seen that this "news flash" is no news at all. This is a great example of industry fluff. This is promoting a new breakthrough that on the surface has lots of flash and pizazz, but with scrutiny becomes a big "So what?".
The biotech industry is going to keep pushing a media blitz to get us to swallow their breakthroughs and keep their stock prices up. Unfortunately, many researchers at our public universities are willing partners in spreading their misinformation. Don't believe me? Let's look at the math:
The article states: "If you eat a serving of the modified carrot, you'd absorb 41 percent more calcium than from a regular carrot," said Dr. Jay Morris, lead author on the paper. The article later adds: "The daily requirement for calcium is 1,000 milligrams, and a 100 gram serving of these carrots provides only 60 milligrams, about 42 percent of which is absorbable," he noted.
I emailed Morris and he provided this statistical summary directly from the study: "total calcium absorption per 100 g of carrots was 41% +/- 2% higher in sCAX1 carrots compared with control carrots (26.50 vs.15.34 mg of Ca per 100 g) (P < 0.001)."
So, per carrot, there is an additional 10.66 milligrams of available calcium. Not bad, a statistically significant increase per carrot. But is it significant in our overall dietary intake of calcium? Not even close.
As the article says, the daily RDA is 1000 milligrams. A 100-gram serving of "normal" carrots (3.5 ounces: about one fresh carrot, or a half dozen of those little baby carrots) gives us 15.34 milligrams, 1.5 percent of the RDA. And the Supercarrot? It gives us about 2.6 percent of our daily needs.
Wow, so if we ate a bag-full of these carrots a day, we'd be well on our way to stopping osteoporosis! Morris points this out in the press release: "A person could not eat enough of them to get the daily requirement." So there is no story about biotech saving us from malnutrition, but the "SuperCarrot" headlines all over the media could easily be construed as such.
If you go to the USDA website and look for info on RDA, you'll find tables giving bioavailable calcium content of a wide array of foods. Carrots aren't too high on the list. And ... well ... a 100-gram bowl of Kellogg's Corn Flakes gives us three times the total RDA. So, not to promote Kellogg's, but why are we worrying about our carrots having more calcium?
Fine, let's breed for better nutritional
value in all of our crops -- - but let's assess the costs and the risks.
And for those of us in media (ahem, Wired -- - are you media or
advertising?), let's try not to promote what is nominal marginal totally meaningless in true impact on our daily diet
as a breakthrough in biotech that will save us from osteoporosis.
Instead, let's ask questions. How much are taxpayers
coughing up for this research (which will get leased over to a
private seed company, sold to farmers as incredibly high-priced seed,
and put out in fields to share its magic pollen)? What is the
environmental risk? How do these carrots perform in the field against
stress, and how do they taste? Is there a less expensive way to deal
with poor nutrition?
Sorry to disappoint anyone -- if you don't want to get old and rickety, you're going to have to keep eating your cornflakes, or eating some cheese, or one of a thousand things with more impact than these carrots.
By the way, guess which organism provides the gene that gives us this nutritional breakthrough? Arabidopsis thaliana, in the Brassica family -- a cress. Maybe we should eat more Brassicas: kale is pretty darn high in calcium. Nah, let's stick them Brassica genes somewhere exciting -- down where the sun don't shine (where carrots grow).
I'm not even going to touch on how the environment in which you grow the food affects its overall nutritional quality. I'll save that for the publication of Carlo Lieffert's research.
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This essay first appeared on my blog SeedStory.
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Comments
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wiscidea Posted 7:09 am
24 Jan 2008
"To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure this carrot is necessary.... Is there an epidemic of people chowing down on too many carrots and not getting enough calcium from other foods. Grains and other staples are a different matter."
Given the number of times I've been accused of being an industry shill or blinded by science or evil or whatever, I have to comment on this story.
There are times when we really don't need a new solution, especially a new GMO, for an old problem. And this is very likely one of those times. I think GMOs are useful for a variety of purposes (and I will not debate that here). But how many people are calcium deficient because they eat carrots to the exclusion of everything else? How many people need a high-calcium carrot? People probably don't even eat as many carrots as they should to get their betacarotene!!! How's adding calcium to carrots going to help?
Rather than push the supercarrots, it would be better to encourage consumption of something like broccoli. Unless I learn some very compelling information supporting the need for this carrot, I, confessed and vocal supporter of GMOs, must agree with Mr. Dillon.
This really complicates efforts to educate people about where and when GMOs might be beneficial. Aaaaaaaarrrgh.
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Sean Casten Posted 8:11 am
24 Jan 2008
Of relevance to this story though, since the argument that calcium-enhanced carrots will protect you from osteoporosis seems to be about as logical as the argument that coca cola is a good way to get high...
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Martha Hagood Posted 12:50 pm
24 Jan 2008
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Anastasia Posted 2:43 pm
24 Jan 2008
Think of the carrots instead as a proof of concept. Carrots with higher calcium make us one step closer to maize with higher iron, wheat with higher folate, or a number of other changes that could help prevent vitamin deficiencies (and, consequently, prevent much disease and death). Sure, people like you and me who can afford a computer can also afford a balanced diet or fancy vitamins, but many people can not.
This is the beneficial sort of genetic engineering that was discussed back before biotech companies focused only on crop improvements that would bring in the most profit, like herbicide resistance. The corporations have no impetus to develop for qualities that will benefit consumers - the possibility of profit does not warrant the R&D expense. That's why it's necessary for university scientists to research such things, often with funding from sources such as the USDA, or non-profits such as HarvestPlus. I, for one, am excited that a genetically engineered food designed to improve human nutrition is being publicized. I imagine that Mr. Madrigal feels similarly.
The fact that they chose an Arabidopsis gene is irrelevant here. Its genome is sequenced, and most of the genes have been categorized though projects like Arabidopsis 2010. Carrots have a similar gene themselves, but it likely isn't as well characterized as the one from Arabidopsis. It works as well as a native gene, and the carrots are still carrots.
For more scientific discussion on GMOs, visit my blog: GeneticMaize.
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Pangolin Posted 7:54 pm
24 Jan 2008
The continuos greenwashing of the GMO food industry just sickens me. It benefits only the agribusiness giants like Monsanto and damages everything and everyone else. The worst part of it all is that it represents an unacceptable destruction of the potential of genetic science.
We could have everbearing cherry, plum, and peach trees. Mulberry's that produce fat starch-rich seeds like rice, Avocados' with smaller pits. Any number of tree crops modified slightly to reduce the need for hired labor or that would produce grain equivalents to rice or corn, perennial grains that don't expose the soil to the wind.
Instead we get glow-in-the-dark tobacco, poison-proof corn and herbicide resistant rapeseed plants. It's a damn waste.
Put the Carbon Back
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PermieWriter Posted 5:48 am
25 Jan 2008
Oh, sorry, that's crazy talk.
But while all this is going on, there are some perennial brassicas like sea chard and tree collards that both provide lots of calcium and other nutrients and make an excellent building material (i.e. they need thorough cooking).
Eat what you grow, grow what you eat
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wiscidea Posted 6:30 am
25 Jan 2008
http://fnic.nal.usda.gov/nal_display/index.php?info_cente ...
Sorted foods by calcium content...
http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/Data/SR20/nutrlist/ ...
[There is a lot of processed foods toward the top of the list, but there are also a lot of fruits, vegetables, and grains long before you see carrots.]
I appears one could increase their calcium intake by replacing that serving of carrots with a serving of tomato, almonds, papaya, garbanzo beans, and a lot of other things that contain 50% more calcium than carrots.
Or perhaps just eat a kosher dill pickle or mango in addition to the carrots. That would give you 50% more calcium than from carrots alone.
I was wondering if this was important because some people can't or don't want to eat dairy products, but there are clearly far easier ways to add calcium, and a whole bunch of other important nutrients, to our diets -- even in areas where there might be a shortage of good food -- than via "supercarrots".
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kipp Posted 9:04 am
27 Jan 2008
Since brassica and carrot grow side-by-side in the garden, I'm not so nervous about moving a gene or two between them. Night-glow carrots with jellyfish genes are a little freaky - the equivalent of a slight cross between carrots and spinach is not so frightening...
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alexismadrigal Posted 3:57 pm
31 Jan 2008
Glad you went in-depth on the GM carrot's environmental impact. That wasn't really the intent of my post. Wired is a tech/biz mag with a some environmental reportage. It has a different focus from Grist, which is a fantastic publication that I don't look to for tech reporting.
I do take issue with the representation of my post.Where did I say that this carrot would affect the nation's nutrition? I said it "had a powerful marketing hook" and pointed to the same overheated headlines that you did! That wasn't an endorsement of its marketability. In fact, the major thrust of the post, as seen by its introduction in the 2nd sentence, was to use the carrot as a proof point for the agritech biz's plans to introduce produce, which I had previously discussed in a post entitled, "The Difficult Science and Economics of Genetically Modified Produce" (http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/11/the-difficult- ...)
That post makes a lot of the points you just made about the nature of GM crops.
Carrots, or any other produce, with nutrient enhancements will meet with an "uninformed marketplace." AND they could have an impact in that marketplace. Just because we don't want that to be the case doesn't make it untrue! Isn't the media supposed to report on reality as best we determine it? I mean, if we had a very informed marketplace, we wouldn't have a corn-based food system and we certainly wouldn't eat meat from the places where it's grown and harvested.
One thing that has occurred in the GM debate that I find very strange and disconcerting is that anti-GMO people jump on simply reporting on GM crops as supporting them in any form that the most evil agribusinessman might see fit to plant them. And that's just not the case.
Do I know about the failure of golden rice and its cousins? Yes. Do I know that GM crops haven't delivered on their promises in the last 15 years? Yes. Does that mean that no genetically modified crop could ever have a positive impact in the world? I don't know and we don't know. And as long as we don't know, attempts to make them more nutritious or more marketable will remain a story. Very few other places, outside the dedicated green media, are even reporting on agritech's plans to bring GM produce into the marketplace.
I mean, don't you WANT people to know what Monsanto and Syngenta are planning?
In any case, all press is good press, right? Thanks for the link and sorry for the rant.
Best,
Alexis Madrigal
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