In Defense Of Hybridized Fruit

[Andrew Michaels]

It's so bizarre to me that I find myself in the position of defending not only fruit, but the natural process of genetic intermingling that effects all plants and animals on our planet.

None the less, with plenty of people trying to demonize hybridization as unnatural and fruit as too sugary, I felt it was time to clear the air, and wrote this article, which you can read here.

[Andrew Gubb]

That was an awesome article. Very informative, and it helped with a lot of little worries I'd had. It's great to finally understand why bananas are seedless, for instance. Thanks

Edit: also thanks for the rest of the website, which I have been reading. Awesome.

[funchy]

I DO have a problem with the modern carefully-hybridized commercially available fruits, vegetables, and nuts.

Yes, it's true that domestication is the process of using hybridization to select better plants to suit our needs. However in the modern supermarket, the most carefully hybridized are carefully designed for traits the grocery store wants: long shelf life, Round-up herbicide resistance, not likely to bruise, regular size or shape. Compare that with heirloom (older) varieties, and you'll see that modern hybrids trade off flavor & vitamins for shelf life. This is why the health conscious may prefer the heirloom Brandywine tomato over the generic "Plu #4664 BULK ON THE VINE" red tomato-looking bland fruit we find at the big supermarket.



One good article on how nutrition in our fruits/veg has declined over the last 50 yrs:
Fruits, vegetables not as nutritious as 50 years ago

Another page I liked:
Truth About GM Crops

Why do they choose these super-engineered hybrids? Money $$$ Extremely bruise-resistant fruit means easier shipping and less waste, which turns into profit at wholesale and retail levels. Never mind if we have to sacrifice vitamin levels or taste. Most consumers don't know that the same kind of fruit can have different levels of nutrients, depending on variety & growing conditions. And nobody can buy based on taste because you don't know if it tastes like cardboard until you buy it and use it.

Why should the public care if we end up with only one or two very unvaried strains of each fruit or veg? Having choices when buying is good, but more importantly biodiversity is essential in growing. If a new disease emerges, natural selection allows some of the crop to survive it. If 95% of corn has the gene genes, a disease can destroy worldwide food supplies. We need to support heirloom, and/or older varieties of plants, and the best way to do it is financial support: buy them when possible.

Take for example the modern banana:


It's one of the world's most popular fruits. We all know bananas to be these big bright yellow things. The reality is the big bright yellow banana was selectively bred, and we're at the point where almost all the world's bananas are closely related (as in same variety of hybrid). Greedy growers and food corporations expand banana plantations without planning, don't bother with biological controls, and refuse to diversify. The result is that our cheap, high-sugar, popular banana may be on the verge of an industry collapse: a wilt is destroying whole regions. We've hybridized this fruit to the point of making the world population of plants too identical, and therefore fragile to any sort of pathogen or insect. (Side note: expect a huge surge in prices of bananas in the coming decades and/or the introduction of a different type of banana)

Of interest to me are those which are manipulated in artificial ways, i.e. genetically modified / transgenic. A common example: they might pull the gene for glyposate (Roundup) resistance out of one plant and, in a lab, insert it into the DNA of corn or wheat. The gene lets the plants make an enzyme that roundup would otherwise block, allowing the plant to survive a total herbicide spray of the field. What nobody knows (or wants to study) is what other proteins or enzymes are being activated or blocked by this insertion. We could accidentally be engineering foods that create new proteins our body cannot handle, which by definition would be toxic and/or carcinogenic.

[Andrew Michaels]

I just added an update you may find interesting, if unconvincing, here.

Originally Posted by funchy

I DO have a problem with the modern carefully-hybridized commercially available fruits, vegetables, and nuts.

Yes, it's true that domestication is the process of using hybridization to select better plants to suit our needs. However in the modern supermarket, the most carefully hybridized are carefully designed for traits the grocery store wants: long shelf life, Round-up herbicide resistance, not likely to bruise, regular size or shape. Compare that with heirloom (older) varieties, and you'll see that modern hybrids trade off flavor & vitamins for shelf life. This is why the health conscious may prefer the heirloom Brandywine tomato over the generic "Plu #4664 BULK ON THE VINE" red tomato-looking bland fruit we find at the big supermarket.



One good article on how nutrition in our fruits/veg has declined over the last 50 yrs:
Fruits, vegetables not as nutritious as 50 years ago

Another page I liked:
Truth About GM Crops

Why do they choose these super-engineered hybrids? Money $$$ Extremely bruise-resistant fruit means easier shipping and less waste, which turns into profit at wholesale and retail levels. Never mind if we have to sacrifice vitamin levels or taste. Most consumers don't know that the same kind of fruit can have different levels of nutrients, depending on variety & growing conditions. And nobody can buy based on taste because you don't know if it tastes like cardboard until you buy it and use it.

Why should the public care if we end up with only one or two very unvaried strains of each fruit or veg? Having choices when buying is good, but more importantly biodiversity is essential in growing. If a new disease emerges, natural selection allows some of the crop to survive it. If 95% of corn has the gene genes, a disease can destroy worldwide food supplies. We need to support heirloom, and/or older varieties of plants, and the best way to do it is financial support: buy them when possible.

Take for example the modern banana:


It's one of the world's most popular fruits. We all know bananas to be these big bright yellow things. The reality is the big bright yellow banana was selectively bred, and we're at the point where almost all the world's bananas are closely related (as in same variety of hybrid). Greedy growers and food corporations expand banana plantations without planning, don't bother with biological controls, and refuse to diversify. The result is that our cheap, high-sugar, popular banana may be on the verge of an industry collapse: a wilt is destroying whole regions. We've hybridized this fruit to the point of making the world population of plants too identical, and therefore fragile to any sort of pathogen or insect. (Side note: expect a huge surge in prices of bananas in the coming decades and/or the introduction of a different type of banana)

Of interest to me are those which are manipulated in artificial ways, i.e. genetically modified / transgenic. A common example: they might pull the gene for glyposate (Roundup) resistance out of one plant and, in a lab, insert it into the DNA of corn or wheat. The gene lets the plants make an enzyme that roundup would otherwise block, allowing the plant to survive a total herbicide spray of the field. What nobody knows (or wants to study) is what other proteins or enzymes are being activated or blocked by this insertion. We could accidentally be engineering foods that create new proteins our body cannot handle, which by definition would be toxic and/or carcinogenic.

[funchy]

thanks for the reply! I'm reading your site now.

[Byron]

Originally Posted by funchy

I DO have a problem with the modern carefully-hybridized commercially available fruits, vegetables, and nuts.

Yes, it's true that domestication is the process of using hybridization to select better plants to suit our needs.

...

Take for example the modern banana:

It's one of the world's most popular fruits. We all know bananas to be these big bright yellow things. The reality is the big bright yellow banana was selectively bred, and we're at the point where almost all the world's bananas are closely related (as in same variety of hybrid).

Your use of the term 'hybrid' is inaccurate. The fruits in the modern supermarket are not hybridized, they are selected. The plants display certain traits when they breed, and those with beneficial traits for transport and sale are SELECTED and bred further.

Very few fruits are actually artificially hybridized, whether within the same species, or between species.

Fruits naturally hybridize on their own, which resulted in citrus fruits, for example, and the modern banana. The type of banana that is sold in supermarkets today was naturally bred and found in a garden, and planted worldwide. It was not hybridized, and has not been selected or cultivated since then, and THAT is actually a problem, because there is no variation in the species. But those fruits are not artificial hybrids.

Cross-species hybrid fruits, like the pluot and aprium, are some of the few true hybrids that humans have created. They are not common, and are only a small percentage of the produce sold in the modern market.



As for the OPs article, the points are true, and plants naturally hybridize themselves in the wild. When this is done naturally, it is healthy and beneficial for the plant, and strengthens the species and its produce.

[Trey Baird]

In the 21st century, diet habits have turned into almost religious dogma. People will defend to their dying days their diet habits, and you can find someone doing just that for any diet plan that you can think of.

I know a guy who eats fruit as a replacement for 2 of his 3 meals, and he seems to be in awesome health. He doesn't count calories or carbs or anything like that. He just goes to the market every day and buys what he's craving.

And he's one of the healthiest people I know.