What You Need to Know About GMOs

What You Need to Know About GMOs

Producer Potts  0:09  

Brussel sprouts are now delicious to me as an adult, and I learned from you that thanks to GMOs. But are all GMO foods as healthy for us as their non GMO counterparts. I heard this is another major reason that people avoid soy products.

Dr. Sarah  0:28  

There are so many different parts to this question, and I think that the top level genetic modification is an incredibly well understood technology, and it’s very safe. Whether we’re talking about gene splicing type technology like CRISPR, or we’re talking about the sort of traditional genetic modification that humans have been doing with food crops for millennia, which is to selectively breed different plants and cross breed them until you get the desired attributes that you’re looking for. All of that kind of falls under that big umbrella for genetic modification. So with brussel sprouts, it wasn’t like a lab like, snip out this gene, put in this other gene, type genetic modification. What happened was like, the reason why brussel sprouts were bitter in the first place is like prior to 1950s 1960s brussel sprouts were a delicious vegetable that most people liked, and then mechanical harvesting was invented, which made harvesting of brussel sprouts a much easier, automated thing to do, but it was only compatible with a couple of different varieties of brussel sprouts that had to grow in a certain way in order to be able to be mechanically harvested. And it so happened that those were the most bitter varieties of brussel sprouts. So then, for like, a couple generations, brussel sprouts were really, really bitter, and it was like Dutch biotechnologists in the 1990s that actually were able to test brussels sprouts and identify the bitter compounds, glucosinolate. So also, like the beneficial compounds in Brussel sprouts, and they were able to go back to these, like heritage seed banks and start growing like older varieties and start crossing them in order to create new varieties of brussel sprouts that had both the properties that made it compatible with mechanical harvesting, but also like way lower levels of these more bitter compounds. So those varieties of brussel sprouts have taken over. So basically, since the early 2000s brussel sprouts have been way less bitter, which is why a lot of people, sort of my age, think, like, oh, I hated brussel sprouts as a kid, but I like them now. It’s because they’re, like, almost a completely different vegetable because of selective breeding. So selective breeding is a type of genetic modification, and so that’s what’s happened with brussel sprouts. More like this is this has the property that I want, so I’m going to cross it with this one that has this other property that I want, and then I see the baby plants. These ones have the most desirable attributes. I’ll cross those very like Mendelian genetics, if you remember, like high school, like genetics and like you would do these, like little boxes where you would keep track of the traits. That is kind of like what selective breeding is doing in terms of genetic modification. With soy, it’s much more like in a lab, where you take, take a bit of the gene, and you the property that you want. So for soy, it is pesticide resistance or herbicide resistance, pest resistance or herbicide resistance. I should say that more carefully, and that gene is put into the soy, and then a lot of testing is done to make sure it’s very, very safe. Soy has been like genetically modified soy has been approved for human consumption, and that is why, like 90 90% of soy or soy products come from GMO soy now, but I want to sort of emphasize that that technology is very old. We’ve been doing that in biomedical research for decades and decades and decades. I mean 70 years and it’s just gotten better. The control has gotten better. Like that it is completely understood exactly where you need to insert your little gene so that you get the protein that you want that has the property that you want. I think the fear, and I think valid fear with GMOs is that even if the technology is very well understood and is very safe, it’s the application of that technology that is a little bit more morally gray. So you can. No matter how you’re genetically modifying something. You can use that technology to make a crop that is, you know, healthier in different weather conditions. So this is how we could get a lot of crops that’ll survive a warming planet, that are climate change compatible. You can create crops that can thrive with less water. So it’s a less resource intensive crop, you can actually create crops that have higher nutritional value that has been done there. There are a couple of examples of GMO, like GMO rice that has extra beta carotene in it to increase vitamin A content. So there are, there are like, really, like, tangibly, like, good reasons for genetic modification that can really help improve the food supply. And then there’s Monsanto that adds, like, the gene that makes a plant not die when it’s exposed to glyphosate roundup to make Roundup Ready crops, and so those crops are specifically genetically modified to be able to spray more herbicide on them and have them survive. And I think that’s where, that’s where, you know, I think there’s a really important conversation to have about increasing pesticide residue. Yes, we have scientific studies showing that there is no health signal from eating organic food versus conventional, and that the amount of pesticide residue that we’re exposed to in our food supply is not of a health concern at this moment. And I think that the complicated conversation to have here is, at what point are we genetically modifying a crop so that it can handle more herbicide application or pesticide application, and then we’re creating a crop where the residue of those chemicals actually is of a health concern. We’re not there yet. That’s not That’s not where this technology is right now, but that is a possible future, and it’s why there’s so much safety testing that happens with these crops. So I think the big picture answer to this question is, the difference in Brussel sprouts is not like they don’t need to be labeled as a genetically modified food because it was done through selective breeding instead of through a lab. Soy is a genetically modified food, so it does have to be labeled as such because it was done in a lab. Soy is not one of the crops that is routinely sprayed with glyphosate, as far as I know, but you know that there’s a big conversation going on in terms of the future of that technology and how it is used to best improve human health and the planet and the environment. And there are ways that technology can be used irresponsibly. And so I think that is, that is like the ongoing conversation that needs to have outside of fear of this technology, because the technology itself is perfectly safe.

Producer Potts  8:18  

Gotcha, that makes so much sense. So basically, the take home is, at this moment in time, we don’t need to freak out about pesticides on our food or GMO foods, because we’re just not at that level yet, but it’s possible in the future. So something to keep an eye on, and I

Dr. Sarah  8:36  

I think that’s often lost in the conversation when we talk about food safety, like, we only like, like, tip of the iceberg, talked about pesticides right in this video. And maybe that’s a topic for a future video, but I think that we always need to put in the context of like, the fear of those types of we’ll call them toxins, just, just so that we’re all using the same language that fear does come from a place where, like, we know people who have occupational exposure to those compounds do have health hazard, like health risk associated with that. And so it’s about understanding the like, where that line is, so how much we’re exposed to, right, the dose that we’re all exposed to every single day, versus the dose that is an occupational hazard, versus the dose of like a chemical spill or something like that, like a big environmental disaster, and understanding the difference between the person just getting the most minuscule, teeny, teeny, tiny amount, an amount that our body is absolutely able to detoxify, and has no long term implications for human health, understanding that that dose versus the dose of a person who is. Using pesticides in their garden, versus a farm worker, versus, again, like somebody in a factory, and there’s, there’s an accident that is really important to this conversation, and especially in a context where more and more pesticides are being applied to food crops. Like, where does it go from this incredibly low level that is, you know, doesn’t have, like, a long term health implication to a level where we do start to see a signal and start to see increased risk of health problems. That is, that nuance is not included in a lot of the conversation. We are terrified of these compounds because high levels are problematic, and then we, like, completely miss the conversation of dose or Calm down everyone. We know there are these studies that show the amount we’re exposed to is perfectly safe, missing the part of the conversation of Yes, but one of the things that’s happening in agriculture is for, at least for some of these chemicals, is increased use. So we do need to be thinking about how that dose is increasing over time, and at what point we do need to start worrying about that level. So it’s a nuanced conversation right now. We don’t need to worry, but I think we still need to be vigilant, right?

Producer Potts  11:11  

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So where can people get more nuanced nutrition information?