Overheard in a restaurant:
“You gonna finish your shirt?”
“Yeah. I’m just takin’ a break. I’m getting stuffed. Who ‘da thought I couldn’t finish my T-shirt and T-bone? Must be slowin’ down. I used to go through a whole buffet of clothes.”
“But think of how lucky you are to have so much food. You know, there are people out there who are starvin’ when they could be runnin’ around full but naked.”
Not much longer, it seems. That is, not much longer will people go hungry. Here’s the headline from Reuters: “U.S. regulators allow genetically modified cotton as human food source.” * Guess it will be T-bones AND T-shirts on the menu at swanky roadside eating establishments with flashing names like “Restaurant,” “Stop-n-Gobble,” and “Breads and Threads.” Apparently, researchers from Texas A&M AgriLife Research were able to remove gossypol from cottonseed while still leaving it in the growing plants to ward off insects.
But there’s always the unintended side effect, isn’t there? Gossypol (C30H30O8) is a yellow phenolic aldehyde that the Chinese have used as a male oral contraceptive. Start eating cottonseeds free from gossypol, and men get more fertile, so there’ll be more mouths to feed. And there’s always the interesting fact: We’ve been raising and using cotton for over four millennia and only now have we figured out a way for humans to eat it. Sure, we’ve been feeding it to our animals in supposedly small amounts, but other than its uses as medicines for birth control and ovarian cancer, the cotton’s gossypol has limited our consumption of cotton mostly to wearing it. ** Obviously, during those four thousand years of using cotton, we didn’t have until modern times the ability to genetically alter cotton beyond hit-and-miss hybridization. But with our newfound ability to rapidly alter individual genes in plants, I wonder what other commonly used plant material might have food value. We use forests, don’t we? Why limit trees as a source of food via nuts or fruits?
Back to our restaurant conversation:
“Gotta hand it to them scientists. Now we can go food shopping and clothes shopping in one place. Oh! I forgot about Walmart superstores; I guess I can do that now. But, I don’t mean havin’ a grocery store section next to sections for TVs, toiletries, and toys. I mean, I can shop for an edible pair of jeans.”
“You gonna finish that shirt? If not, I’ll take it rather than gettin’ up for another trip to the buffet. Maybe them scientists will make other stuff edible. I’m thinkin’ trees. That way, we could really get all them newspaper journalists with tabloid mentalities and political agendas to eat their words.”
*Dunham, Will. Reuters Environment. 11 Oct. 2019. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-science-cottonseed/u-s-regulators-allow-genetically-modified-cotton-as-human-food-source-idUSKBN1WQ2J1 Accessed October 12, 2019.
**Gadelha, Ivana Cristina N., et al. Gossypol Toxicity from Cottonseed Products. The Scientific World Journal, Volume 2014, Article ID 231635, http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2014/231635 and https://www.hindawi.com/journals/tswj/2014/231635/ Accessed October 12, 2019.
“You gonna finish your shirt?”
“Yeah. I’m just takin’ a break. I’m getting stuffed. Who ‘da thought I couldn’t finish my T-shirt and T-bone? Must be slowin’ down. I used to go through a whole buffet of clothes.”
“But think of how lucky you are to have so much food. You know, there are people out there who are starvin’ when they could be runnin’ around full but naked.”
Not much longer, it seems. That is, not much longer will people go hungry. Here’s the headline from Reuters: “U.S. regulators allow genetically modified cotton as human food source.” * Guess it will be T-bones AND T-shirts on the menu at swanky roadside eating establishments with flashing names like “Restaurant,” “Stop-n-Gobble,” and “Breads and Threads.” Apparently, researchers from Texas A&M AgriLife Research were able to remove gossypol from cottonseed while still leaving it in the growing plants to ward off insects.
But there’s always the unintended side effect, isn’t there? Gossypol (C30H30O8) is a yellow phenolic aldehyde that the Chinese have used as a male oral contraceptive. Start eating cottonseeds free from gossypol, and men get more fertile, so there’ll be more mouths to feed. And there’s always the interesting fact: We’ve been raising and using cotton for over four millennia and only now have we figured out a way for humans to eat it. Sure, we’ve been feeding it to our animals in supposedly small amounts, but other than its uses as medicines for birth control and ovarian cancer, the cotton’s gossypol has limited our consumption of cotton mostly to wearing it. ** Obviously, during those four thousand years of using cotton, we didn’t have until modern times the ability to genetically alter cotton beyond hit-and-miss hybridization. But with our newfound ability to rapidly alter individual genes in plants, I wonder what other commonly used plant material might have food value. We use forests, don’t we? Why limit trees as a source of food via nuts or fruits?
Back to our restaurant conversation:
“Gotta hand it to them scientists. Now we can go food shopping and clothes shopping in one place. Oh! I forgot about Walmart superstores; I guess I can do that now. But, I don’t mean havin’ a grocery store section next to sections for TVs, toiletries, and toys. I mean, I can shop for an edible pair of jeans.”
“You gonna finish that shirt? If not, I’ll take it rather than gettin’ up for another trip to the buffet. Maybe them scientists will make other stuff edible. I’m thinkin’ trees. That way, we could really get all them newspaper journalists with tabloid mentalities and political agendas to eat their words.”
*Dunham, Will. Reuters Environment. 11 Oct. 2019. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-science-cottonseed/u-s-regulators-allow-genetically-modified-cotton-as-human-food-source-idUSKBN1WQ2J1 Accessed October 12, 2019.
**Gadelha, Ivana Cristina N., et al. Gossypol Toxicity from Cottonseed Products. The Scientific World Journal, Volume 2014, Article ID 231635, http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2014/231635 and https://www.hindawi.com/journals/tswj/2014/231635/ Accessed October 12, 2019.
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