This is a download from BFM 89.9, the Business Station. It's fun Friday, my name is Jeff Slandu. When we look into our crystal ball of horrific futures... ...soon to be available on the Matt's Blain to Murch and Die Store...
...the subject of designer babies comes up as the technology moves ever forward, lawmakers and scientists are battling over the ethics of tweaking our kids. But quietly, the effects of similar technologies are making it onto the Supermarket shelves. What are we talking about? Matt's here, so it must be time to Matt's Blain.
Hey Matt, thanks for jumping in earlier about that promotional piece. Is this one of your evil plots, Matt? Hey Jeff, do you think anyone is really duffed enough to give me the keys to their gene editing tools? I mean, think of all the things that I would make.
Flying monkeys would basically just be the start. I'd have people with noses on the back of their heads, armpits that dispense sun cream, hands made of ham, thank you Richard Herring, for those, by the way. I think that could possibly be my superpower, tweaking other people's DNA. Which is precisely why no one will ever let it be my superpower.
Some of them are good, but some of them, yeah, I understand why. But then again, it's animals that you want to disrupt, chickens with, for breast, cows crossed with, millipedes, those kind of things. Well, I'm definitely going to book you as my lab partner if I do ever get the keys to CRISPR. I like the way you're thinking, man.
Unfortunately, no. We're talking about the genetic modification today, but it has nothing to do with me or this kind of stuff, more of the pity. We've talked about GM foods on the show before, quite often in fact, especially when it comes to lab culture at Hamburgers. There is one area where we're already eating a lot of genetically modified produce, whether we know it or not.
And that's on the supermarket shelf. A surprising amount of our food is already genetically modified. Sure, we've talked about it before. You know, GM foods, especially like crops, like soya, plenty of times.
What's changed? Well, partly I'm talking about it today because, you know, Ramadan ends next week. And a lot of the celebrations, at least here in Malaysia, are about food. So it's a good time to talk about the provenance of foods, but also because the GM foods themselves are changing.
A lot of the early experiments in genetic modification were largely about improving life for the growers, increasing yields, making crops hardier and sturdier and ultimately cheaper for us as consumers. What's changing is the way that we're treating the foods themselves. Every other week, it seems that something is declared to be the miracle new superfood. You know, throw away your blueberries, let's all go and eat quinoa.
I happen to love blueberries and quinoa, by the way. Or chia seeds, raw chocolate, even Malaysia's most hated MSG, is making something of a healthy comeback. All of this is fine as long as we separate the fact from the science. And at the same time, the science is actually leading us towards creating genetically modified superfood.
Before we get into the details, why does GM food freak us out so much? I guess for the same reasons that we get so upset about the idea of laboratory grown beef, because it's something that's unnatural. But in theory, it's actually quite a practical solution. It's the same thing with fish.
You know, we keep eating so many fish that they don't have time to spawn and repopulate. So many species have plummeted in terms of stocks. And that, of course, pushes prices up as well because they become more scarce. The same thing goes for meat.
Demand from the growing middle classes of China, India and across Africa is ultimately going to push prices up. Because more animals means more pristine wildlands that we're going to lose to slash and burn cultivation. The emission of all those cows and sheeps and pigs increase pollution. And at the same time, we've actually lost the natural land that helps to process the pollutants that they make.
Now with animals, you can see why it does upset a lot of people. These are living creatures we're messing with. But is it the same with plants and fruits? Yeah, I mean, people freak out in pretty much the same way.
That's why there's currently a lot of hot debate about the way in which GM foods are labeled. In the US, a new law is about to come into force. I think either June or July this year, which will force manufacturers to list any ingredients that are genetically modified. But it isn't really as cut and dried as that because we don't always know the exact provenance of everything that's in our food.
The farm to table concept? Not really. That's a bit more hipster-ish than we're going to get today. So when you buy something like a tin of sweet corn, for example, there's probably going to be a label on it that tells you if it's GMO or not.
But that might not be reflected throughout the entire food chain. Most big manufacturers will probably know the provenance of their food. So they'll have a good idea whether that produces modified or not. But a lot of our food is not produced at that industrial level.
A local restaurant may be getting it's all from a local supplier. They may not think to ask whether it's modified or not. The same with the produce you get at the market. If you're getting your fruit and veg from independent distributors, you may think to ask, you may not.
And the distributor themselves may not know if everything they're selling is GM or not GM. So a restaurant might be using these genetically modified ingredients, GM ingredients and not? Absolutely, because not everyone is aware of the subject. For a lot of people, food is food, ingredients are ingredients.
The folks running hawker stalls and coffee shops, they're looking for a combination of price, quality and reliability from the people they get their food supplies from. They may not give themselves the luxury of debating whether that soy or those potatoes are genetically modified. So are we all eating GM food already? The very likely answer is yes.
And that's partly down to nature doing its thing after we as human beings have done our thing, which is mentioned about with the stuff in the first place. Because those genetically modified seeds are literally in the wind. So you could be a wholly organic grower, producing soy and linseed for beard oils, for example. But it's perfectly possible that your crop will be contaminated with the GM seeds for grower, who might be kilometers away from you.
The farmer hasn't planted GM seed, but that doesn't mean that they're not there in the field. Or worse, that crop may now be some new kind of hybrid. Now, none of these actually suggest that genetic modification is creating superfoods, which is quite the opposite. Well, that's why I said we have to sort out the science from the junk when it comes to superfoods.
This is where we get back into the territory that people are uncomfortable with, unfortunately. So usually when you talk about superfoods, we're talking about some miraculous discovery. We've found some food from deep and stark in some way that nobody has experienced before. Or we've rediscovered foods that were once popular and seem to have slipped out of favor.
Things like rhubarb that we now know are full of good things, as long as you avoid eating the bits that are poisonous. With GM superfoods, we're talking about engineering the good stuff to be inside it. It's like the strain of rice with added vitamins. Yeah, I mean, obviously, I didn't want to lead with that.
Seeing as so many of our listeners are major ice eaters. But yes, it looks like golden rice, as it's called, is now ready to reach the market. So golden rice is a superfood because it's being enriched with vitamin A. Vitamin A deficiency can cause a range of autoimmune conditions, as well as visual impairment.
In severe cases, it can lead to death. And where is vitamin A deficiency common? Well, in developing countries across Asia, Africa, and South America, where rice is most likely to be a staple. Is this something that has been rushed?
No, I mean, this is something that has been in development for decades. It's been pretty comprehensively reviewed to make sure it won't make people grow a third foot out of their belly, although that would revolutionize a lot of sports. And think what a belly hand could do for the pickpocketing industry. Anyway, countries like Canada, Australia, and New Zealand have approved it for use.
And that's very important because when things are developed by Western companies to benefit lower income countries, there's often quite a lot of suspicion. Vaccination programs in the developing world have been beset by conspiracies that it's a plot to kill or sterilize the local population. So, you know, white people can ride in and steal their land and turn it into Westworld or something. There's actually gene modification ever happened naturally.
Yes. That's a really good question. And it happens all the time. When we talk about gene mods, I'm shortening it to make it sound more cool and less frightening.
Gene mods happen all the time. Our own bodies do it. Viruses and bacteria can grab or hijack or transform our DNA. So in that sense, all of us are in some way transgenic.
In case you think I'm some kind of world expert, a lot of the information for today comes from a series of articles in the new scientists. I'll post some of the links on the Matt's Blaine Facebook page. So gene editing techniques are quite new. So what did we do to increase plant yields back in the olden days?
Well, that's the thing. We've been doing basic gene splicing and crossbreeding for hundreds of years, if not longer. There are no pomolos in prehistory. You know, that was the result of a very weird imagination, but that turned out fine.
When you look at the early crops we farmed, they were essentially wild. Their yields were very low. We increased that over time by keeping seeds from the most successful strains and replanting those. You could take varieties from different parts of the world, say a high plains wheat that was resistant to drought and then cross it with a lowland higher yielding variety.
And that creates a hybrid that is drought resistant but still gives a better yield than the original high plains version. You know, it's specialized, but it isn't actually rocket science. I spent a couple of summers working for a seed trials company harvesting their little trial plots. One of my school friends, Reg, went on to be a wheat breeder, creating those new strains.
But he kind of is rocket science pretty much. We tried really hard not to let him know it. Now we're talking about designer pineapples. Yeah, we're talking about genetic modifications of food.
We'll be right back with more. Bringing fresh meaning. BFM 89.9. And we're back.
My name is Jasando together with Cal2Bot. I'm Ditch before the break. We were talking about the perceived dangers of genetically modifying food. What we didn't talk so much was crazy stuff.
We can do now with our food. So maybe we spoke a little bit about golden rice. What else is on the horizon? Well, some of it is quite straightforward.
So for example, growing foods that are rich in omega-3 oils, I think one of the reasons that Chia is a superfood is because of the omega-3 content. But omega-3s are not just there to give yummy mummies glossy hair. As I mentioned earlier, we are kind of overfishing the oceans. So moving to farmed fish, if not background fish, is actually a smart move.
The thing is, a lot of the feed for farmed fish is currently from wild fish, which sounds stupid, but you know, we're human beings. So we are. So yeah, let's catch fish in the sea to feed to fish in tanks that we then eat. Crazy.
So growing these omega-rich plants would give us another source of food for farmed fish and hopefully make another protein source a bit more sustainable. According to new scientists, 1,200 hectares of omega-enriched rapeseed, you may know it better as canola, were grown in the US last year. And another modification planned for rapeseed canola would halve the saturated fat content. And that of course would have an enormous knock on effect for fried foods.
Oh, healthy fried food. Now that's the kind of change from allegiance could get behind. And it could get even better than that. Combine that healthier oil with motted potatoes, and we could be on the cusp of the holy grail, healthy chips and crisps or fries and chips if you speak alternative English.
Currently in development, the innate variety of potato will bruise less easily and consequently produces fewer acrylamides, the chemical suspected of contributing to cancer than traditional varieties of potato. What else would help us in Malaysia? Well, scientists have been working on genetically modifying cows to produce milk that people who are lactose intolerant can drink. That's something that could have a big impact on Malaysia.
That's quite an old story. So I'm not sure where they are with the research on this. Maybe the cows now got eight legs. I don't know.
In Malaysia, I guess we don't cook bananas as a staple so much, but plenty of countries do. In Uganda, tests are underway to genetically modify the Motoki cooking banana, which is a local staple. And like the golden rice, it's been modified to add vitamin A. Tests are underway and it's expected to be approved for sale by 2021.
Are they doing anything with bread? Of course, in a lot of countries, bread is the staple. I wouldn't be the person I am today without cheese sandwiches. You can argue amongst yourselves whether that's a good or bad thing.
When I was a kid, my mum struggled to get us to eat anything except white bread, which is ironic because now I'm grown up. White bread is the flavor I like. Well, you know, multi-grain rye with a twisted pump and a nickel, something like that's fine for me. But now we're actually modding white flour so that it contains three times the amount of dietary fiber.
And that is a big deal because food fads can be a huge deal for parents. Take the Arctic apple variety, which has been on sale since the end of last year as an example. Unlike most apples, the sliced flesh of the Arctic doesn't brown. It never goes brown.
And that may not sound like much unless you've tried to get a three-year-old to eat a slice of browned apple. Yeah, yeah. What about people with gluten intolerance? Yeah, celiac disease is a growing problem.
A friend of mine here in Malaysia has it. It's not a problem that's limited to developed countries. Wheat and gluten sneak into all manner of things. There are so many food additives that have a wheat base or wheat is included somewhere along the way.
And that makes eating anything except the food you've prepared yourself, an absolute nightmare. A variety of groups are competing to edit this so-called bad gluten out of wheat. One group is currently undergoing clinical trials in Spain. So the prospect of genuinely gluten-free bread and other foods is a very real one in the near future.
Do you think that they sometimes mess with the jeans for fun? You'd think so, right? But I don't think the processes are easy or cheap enough to do that yet. And certainly, that is something that we might be doing in the future in the same way that people are biohacking themselves right now.
The science is really still in its infancy, so we don't have a great grasp of how far we're going to be able to go with this. But certainly, when you mod flora and fauna, you can end up with cool results. My favourite is the pink pineapple, which sounds like a very dodgy cocktail bar. I didn't realise, but pineapples are actually very rich in lycopene, which is the chemical that gives tomatoes that rich red colour and is supposed to be a potent antioxidant.
Normally, the lycopene in pineapple is turned into a beta carotene, and that's what gives the pineapple its yellow colour. The US has already given permission for a modded pineapple that retains the lycopene to go on sale, and its flesh is a very cool pink colour. It is a pink pineapple. It has the normal pineapple up on the outside, and when you cut it open, the flesh inside is bright pink, and it looks like someone sprayed it with neon paint.
Would you eat it? Sure. And as I said, you know, most of us are already eating some kind of genetically modified food. Some people are lucky enough to be able to use very healthy oils, like olive oil, but for most people, that's simply too expensive an option.
So you may have actually been using a genetically modified cooking oil for a while now. Why? Simply because it's healthier. Strains of soy have been altered so that they don't produce the trans fats that probably contribute to strokes and heart disease, because a growing number of countries are banning all foods and oils containing trans fats.
So it is actually a market response as well as a health response. Can it be unsafe? Of course, but that's where the testing and trials come in. Back when I was working at the non-GMC trials company, it took something like 10 years to develop new strains and varieties, partly because you're looking for long-term trends, but also because you have to make sure that it's safe.
You don't need to use gene modification to come up with foods that are less healthy or potentially poisonous to some degree or other. It's the same with GM foods. Scientists aren't hacking apples and throwing them out of a window to pass us by to test. They're a long drawn out tests and approvals from food regulatory bodies.
So if something looks dangerous, it can be pulled long before it becomes a threat to people. Is there any evidence for such that GM foods are unhealthy? They doesn't seem to be, but it's hard to say because it's in its infancy, so we don't really know. What it does seem to show is our squeamishness of anything that suggests that we change the DNA of something.
I mentioned earlier that we're all transgenic in a way and that external factors have altered our DNA. I think that it trips a lot of people up. We assume that our DNA is static, but it isn't. We used to think that DNA mutated over long periods, but the more we know about it and the more we observe the way that species evolve, we can see that those jumps can actually be really rapid and they can be in response to some external stimulus or catastrophe.
The only thing that's really changed is that now we're engineering some of those jumps. So how are companies promoting GM foods? This is where we get into characteristically weird territory. According to the new scientists' articles I was reading, they contacted companies like Monsanto and DuPont Pioneer and they don't actually publicise the genetically modified content of their foods, even if it does have health benefits.
It seems that people are happy to consume them as long as they don't know. Why is that weird? Well, it's weird that the people who are pioneering these techniques seem to accept the public opinion is against them. So why bother if public opinion is against them?
Which is also part of the weird territory. In a sense, they don't have any choice. That's not to say they're not committed, but as I mentioned before, food regulations are getting stricter and stricter. One way to get around that is to make food with better ingredients, but of course that increases cost.
People complain enough when their tateric goes up by 20 cents. Imagine how much an Asilomac is going to cost if it's made with virgin coconut oil, free-range organic chicken and eggs, sustainably farmed prawns and non-drought inducing peanuts. Which means we're to blame. Yes, that's the payoff to every episode.
It's like the big reveal is no reveal. Sure, it's pressure from us as consumers, but it's also pressure from lawmakers. So we say we want one thing, but we're only willing to pay for something else. So businesses have to find a profitable way to make the thing we're willing to pay for.
So when we go back to GM oil, the chances are whatever we think about it, it will become a staple for the fast food industry. Because the fast food companies are under enormous pressure from public bodies and governments to make their food healthier. And the only real way to make fried food more healthy is to take the unhealthy bits out of the oil that you fry with. That way, producers can give us what lawmakers want and what we're willing to pay for.
It does feel a bit shifito. No, I agree with you. We should have more information. We should have more choice.
And I think governments and public education should be doing a lot more to make the case that these foods are safe. More than that, we don't have any real choice, I think, but to move towards this GM future. I say governments because the skeptical is we are. If it's something that companies like Monsanto and Jupont do, then we're not going to believe it at all.
Unfortunately, as long as a number of people keep getting larger, we're going to have to look at radical solutions to keep everybody fed. And that's not just about modding the food. We have to look at distribution systems. We have to look at waste.
It's kind of crazy that I can get fresh spinach from Australia at most supermarkets in KL. In the meantime, though, I think we need more of these cool superfoods. We need more pink pineapples. If there are any genetic tincters listening, I've got some suggestions for you.
Hail is kiwifruit because they have hair. Why? Why? Yeah.
Why? Rambutans the size of pomolos. I don't think I'd actually want to eat one, but imagine a bunch of those hanging from a tree. Three foot long asparagus tips.
Carrots that actually taste nice. Carrots do taste nice, Matt. You have a problem. I do have a problem.
What would you like to see here? Oh, man. I don't know. Maybe a durian that doesn't smell like...
No, I like the smell. It's the taste I can't be. A durian that tastes good. It doesn't smell.
I don't know. It's tough. I guess you could do anything. And I like the fact that we should actually be playing with the jeans.
I know it's not cheap now, but hopefully in the future it does become a playground thing where kids in schools and universities, especially kindergarten kids, could just play around with the jeans and come up with something. We could even have apples that are like those global hypercolor t-shirts that we have that change color in different heat settings. You know, disco apples. I think that would be kind of cool.
I love anything neon though. So like that neon pineapple, that would sell out really fast. Cool. Well, I hope I haven't ruined anyone's rya celebrations or caused them to examine every label on the food at the magnifying glass.
All I can say is that I'm not scared of the GM revolution and I'm the person who likes scaring people. So don't worry and have a great holiday. Man, I'm a teacher talking about designer pineapples. Also, you can check out about the comfort transcripts of the show.
Of course, you can also find out how to bring a little bit of maths planning to your company, but just going on to the website. We'll be right back after this with Geek's Box BFM 89.9.