You want your fruit to age so you don’t have to as quickly.  All this hullabaloo about an apple that won’t brown has me in a flap.  The news that a BC company has invented an apple modification that makes it resist turning brown makes no sense whatsoever to me. I am no scientist but let me share what I know.

This apple has been modified to remove the polyphenol oxidase enzyme.  A polyphenol is exactly the property in a fruit or vegetable that you want to keep.  It is the very thing that acts as an anti-oxidant in your body that keeps you young and healthy by blocking the free radicals and therefore the formation of carcinogens (things that cause cancer).  It is a powerful and honorable thing to be a polyphenol, one that doesn’t come easily.  A polyphenol protects you by being the thing that protects the apple in nature. When you eat it, it becomes part of the other processes in your body that protect you.  The more protecting of itself the fruit had to learn, the more protecting of you it can do.

Think of it this way.  An organic apple had to go through a lot of shit to fight off pests and fungus so it developed a lot of “muscles” called polyphenols.  Its unbrowning, modified counterpart didn’t even have to get in the ring, didn’t have to learn how to punch those pests right in the eye. (yes, I respect its scrappiness, and you should too)   As a result, it did not get big and strong and full of polyphenols.  It stayed out of the game so it stayed pretty.   

And why do we want it to stay pretty? So we can cut it and package it, ship it around the world,  and it will “keep” longer?  If they said “we removed the Vitamin C for you” how would you feel?  Just because no one knows what a polyphenol is doesn’t mean that they don’t need it in their arsenal. 

I haven’t even weighed in to the other reasons we do not want to genetically modify our foods. (political, environmental, long term effects…)  I’m just stuck on the basics feeling a little like Cindy Loo Who.  Why? Why, Santy Claus, are you taking our Christmas Tree? When it does so much for our hearts and our bodies!?

So let’s hear it! What have I missed? Do you really want a pretty apple that won’t do as much for you but will travel? Or do you want the best apple that has the most powerful punch it can muster?

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