Tag Archives: organic

Build a Better Apple

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better-appleNon-browning GMO potatoes may be beaten to your local store by non-browning apples. Many outlets carry news of the USDA’s approval of Arctic Apples® for commercial use. They’ll be marketed as Arctic Grannies and Arctic Goldens.

Okanagan Specialty Fruits Inc. has inserted a non-bruising trait into the apples using gene silencing and precision breeding – they’ve created a GMO apple that won’t brown after being cut. No more dropping each slice in a bowl of lemon-scented water as you prepare pie filling; now you can pre-slice apples for your lunchbox; and no more sulfites on pre-sliced apples at the salad bar. Well, I guess it will depend on the price and the taste, but we’ll have a chance to find out in 2017.

Some folks are outraged. For example, “the Organic Consumers Association (OCA), which petitioned the USDA to deny approval, said the genetic changes that prevent browning could be harmful to human health, and pesticide levels on the apples could be excessive.” Note the “could” and “could” – there’s no proof. I’m sure OCA would say “yet.”

OCA’s opposition strikes me as self-defeating. Surely people who prefer organic will be more motivated than ever to buy their produce. As various articles point out, the USDA only evaluated the apples’ impact on agriculture, not on humans. “The Food and Drug Administration, which has no mandatory review process for genetically engineered foods, is looking at the new apples through a voluntary consultation with Okanagan.” The company is confident since the “apples have undergone ‘rigorous review’ and are ‘likely the most tested apples on the planet.’”

The Arctic Apple® takes GMOs to a new place. Not life saving like microbes that manufacture insulin, not nutritional like Golden Rice, not enhancing profits like Roundup resistant soybeans. Just convenient, just nice-to-have. (Well – okay – less bruising will probably help with profits, too. But – raising apples is a business and all business is about money.) Will consumers buy it? I, for one, will give it a try. I plan to buy one, eat half of it, and leave the rest, sliced, on my counter for hours.

We’ve posted about GMOs before.

The Future of Food Could be Flavorful

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Third PlateDan Barber is a chef concerned about the farm-to-table journey of America’s food. He works with boutique farmers in upstate New York, including the Stone Barn Center for Food and Agriculture – a farm built in the 1930’s in a “Normandy style,” by wealthy philanthropist John D. Rockefeller to “preserve a memory – the place where he sipped warm milk from the lid of the milking jug.” (No matter how nostalgic, Ponderer does not recommend drinking raw milk, more especially the longer it’s been out of the cow.)

Barber is owner and chef at two New York restaurants, Blue Hill in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village and Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Tarrytown (45 minutes from Grand Central Station). I visited his website at Blue Hill Farm.com before reading the book.

Blue Hill at Stone Barns is an elegant restaurant where jackets and ties are preferred for gentlemen. (Apparently fancy restaurants have given up trying to tell women what to wear.) In keeping with the ideal of serving the day’s harvest (and perhaps because of shortages for entree portions), Barber serves “multi-course tastings” for $138 to $198 per person. You’ll be happy to know you can buy Dom Perignon by the glass ($80). Most Americans are unlikely to dine here. But rich or extravagant people serve an important social function. They are the early adopters for things that become everyday benefits – air travel, electric cars, television, ocean cruises – so perhaps they can blaze the trail to better eating. Trends from expensive restaurants can affect the local grocery store, for example, designer pizzas are now available in your frozen food section.

New York is the right place for this venture – judging from my travels in lower upstate New York, you can’t throw a rock without hitting a farmer’s market or stand. Farm-to-table is a popular idea.

This is not a text book. It reads as conversation story-telling. Barber presents interesting stories about growing heritage varieties of crops and rotating crops and livestock to maximize soil fertility. This is not standard organic farming which retains the old American mindset: grow monocultures and serve slabs of meat with a few vegetables. It must be wonderful for a farmer to have the financial support to try these ideas and we meet many such farmers (at least one who, by the way, eats “hulking pork chops” and butters bread so thickly Barber “thought he was joking.”) Continue reading →