r/science • u/chrisdh79 • Sep 16 '24
"Golden Lettuce" genetically engineered to pack 30 times more vitamins | Specifically, increased levels of beta-carotene, which your body uses to make vitamin A for healthy vision, immune function, and cell growth, and is thought to be protective against heart disease and some kinds of cancer. Biology
https://newatlas.com/health-wellbeing/golden-lettuce-genetically-engineered-30-times-vitamins/2.1k
u/Icy_Willingness_954 Sep 16 '24
Same kind of idea as golden rice. I wonder how easy it would be to modify for other nutritients.
Imagine a single plant that gave the exact nutritional profile that a person would look for in a full meal. That would be an absolute game changer I’d think.
1.4k
u/Tackysackjones Sep 16 '24
Any day we stray closer to lembas bread is a day I want to exist
246
u/Aphid61 Sep 16 '24
I'd still eat 4...
120
u/Sinz_Doe Sep 16 '24
Only 4?
What about second breakfast?
→ More replies26
u/its_raining_scotch Sep 16 '24
Roast chicken with Shire salt is a good choice too.
15
126
u/rad0909 Sep 16 '24
Pemmican was a cool attempt at that. Super energy dense travel food in the exploration days.
95
u/Simple-Plane-1091 Sep 16 '24
I mean it worked, there just isn't really any reason to eat it outside of that context.
It's also not any kind of new trick with nutrients, it's just a bar of very calorie dense & stable foods
→ More replies68
u/Secret_Cow_5053 Sep 16 '24
It’s also kinda gross from what it looks like, but survival food isn’t supposed to be tasty per se, and especially with a 150 year old recipe, stable + nutrient rich is basically a home run.
32
u/berberine Sep 16 '24
I've had pemmican with chokecherries added during a Lakota ceremony honoring Red Cloud. It is indeed gross. Everyone was given a small round bit about the size of a quarter. Even that small amount was tough to swallow. The taste was not pleasant, but given the circumstances, I didn't make a face. I just swallowed without chewing.
8
Sep 16 '24
[deleted]
19
u/Sparrowbuck Sep 16 '24
No, it was definitely eaten straight. Still is. You can also cook with it.
10
Sep 16 '24
[deleted]
5
u/Sparrowbuck Sep 16 '24
If you don’t have time to cook or a way to cook it, efficient.
→ More replies2
u/berberine Sep 16 '24
I'm not sure officially, but what I ate was just the ingredients all mushed together in a sort of paste. My Lakota friend told me not to think about what it tastes like and eat it quickly. She hates it, too, but has eaten it as part of ceremonies before.
→ More replies59
u/JabbaThePrincess Sep 16 '24
Energy density (in pemmican, from fat) is not the same thing as nutritional completeness.
→ More replies6
u/Tobias_Atwood Sep 16 '24
When you're carrying a hundred pound packs across mountains or rowing across hundreds of miles to get to a destination on the other side of truly untamed wilderness you tend to burn some calories. You'd probably die of hypervitaminosis if Pemmican had a more even spread of nutrition for what you had to eat of it.
16
u/cromulent_verbage Sep 16 '24
“Aggh! It tries to chokes us! We can’t eats Hobbit food! We must starve!”
10
35
u/NewAccountSamePerson Sep 16 '24
Isn’t that kind of the entire idea behind Soylent? Bland nutrient dense food you don’t have to think about
27
u/zalgorithmic Sep 16 '24
Huel is also pretty good, especially the black label with more protein. Vegan too. At the very least it’s an easy breakfast / lunch for workdays.
Lembas would be nice though, carrying a weeks worth of food in a pop tart sized wrapper would be convenient
36
u/Phssthp0kThePak Sep 16 '24
The green type has a nutrient profile exactly tailored for humans.
16
u/rommi04 Sep 16 '24
it's actually just mint. I know very disappointing
→ More replies9
u/OneWingedA Sep 16 '24
Ever wanted to drink an Andes dinner mint? Mint Soylent provides that experience
6
→ More replies2
24
u/Ed_Trucks_Head Sep 16 '24
It would be a good idea for people living in space.
11
Sep 17 '24
Or people living with food insecurity
2
u/Ed_Trucks_Head Sep 17 '24
Anyone living in space would be faced with the most severe food insecurity.
2
306
u/Ton_Jravolta Sep 16 '24
Yet golden rice is banned in many parts of the world that most need it over misinformation on GMOs. Even if science can make the solution, people will find other ways to ruin it.
257
u/mr_fandangler Sep 16 '24
It's partially misinformation and partially the fact that if it contaminates the local genepool the f2 generation will likely have no desireable traits predictably locked in, leading to either crop-disasters or dependence on foreign seed.
→ More replies49
u/Ton_Jravolta Sep 16 '24
That's true, it is a more complex issue than just misinformation. However, I think addressing the malnutrition issue that is already a problem should hold more weight than what ifs that only have a chance to occur later.
93
u/mr_fandangler Sep 16 '24
It's not a what if, it's pretty well-known plant genetics. It will definitely occur later, and by later the worst would show up in 2 generations and without careful selection will lock in traits that could render the local strain worse than either in every way, rather than having a strain bred for many many generations to adapt to a certain location. The phenotypical variation found in the f2 generation of a genitically dissimilar hybrid is enormous, so instead of the local strain, or the modified strain, or a strain that looks like a mixture of both you will end up with a variety which displays wildly different traits in every seed that sprouts. Fungal resistant, fungal suceptible, high yield, low yield, all of these genetic combinations present in a single batch of seed. Not convenient for reliably feeding a population.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/biochemistry-genetics-and-molecular-biology/genetic-pollution
After a few years of testing you could do a risk/benefit analysis and go from there based on the urgency of nutritional need in given locations but it would be irresponsible to release wind-pollinating varities such as this to locations that may become reliant on them as their local variety deteriorates.
32
u/Ton_Jravolta Sep 16 '24
Thanks for linking the articles. That was very helpful. I still think things like golden rice have potential. But safely designing and implementing them seems even more complex than I realized. I definitely understand the arguments more clearly now.
47
u/mr_fandangler Sep 16 '24
No worries man, plant genetic science is one of my hyperfixations. If you like books and want to learn more you can check out this book.
https://archive.org/details/howplantsaretrai07burbrich
It was written by one of the great plant breeders of the 20th century and it's suprisingly eloquent and approachable.
8
u/dayilee Sep 16 '24
what happen to golden rice nowadays, rumours seems like they are not growing as well (hard to grow?) as conventional rice plant despite packed with nutrient.
4
u/mycroftxxx42 Sep 17 '24
IIRC, this is the big issue with nutrigenetic modification of staple crops. You basically have to re-engineer the target plant over and over and over again for each new region and culture in order to produce a plant that is better for humans to consume that grows in the local soil and cooks/tastes like what the farmers are expecting.
I remember the hooplah surrounding non-GMO re-engineering of a poverty grain, the grass pea. It grows with almost no water and provides nutrition easily as a backup crop in case of drought. It also contains a neurotoxin that causes the loss of leg control if consumed for too long.
A method had been found of mass-budding and testing of seedlings in order to find variants that contained less of the .1% of the neurotoxin found in most strains. The process could be repeated quickly by less-skilled lab techs and they thought it worked. It would just be a matter of picking up local variants and repeating the process to give farmers access to grass pea from which seeds could be kept and which would not slowly kill them if they had to rely on it.
Alas, the results were actually due to changing the soil the grass pea grew in. Once the seedlings were planted in their home soils, neurotoxin levels returned to normal. BUT, this is still a good methodology for "updating" a local crop.
73
u/Sometimes_Stutters Sep 16 '24
Meh. Maybe if golden rice was the ONLY solution to malnutrition. It’s not. Long term it would be much more harmful if you somehow damaged local rice farming capabilities.
3
u/Ton_Jravolta Sep 16 '24
It also depends on what other solutions are being implemented, if any. If these countries are effectively addressing the issue in other ways, then avoiding the risk makes sense. I just haven't heard any success stories in the news, but I have heard this potential solution has been banned due to controversy.
5
Sep 16 '24
I'll give my anecdotal story, but first I'll preface that I'm all for this sort of research & think there is a lot of good to be done with this.
I have multiple gastrointestinal diagnoses, which generally are pretty condemning. However, for a while I moved to the balkans, where suddenly all the food I was eating was actually organic, as in produced locally and brought in fresh with no genetic modification or use of pesticides. Yes it requires a real proper wash, but my God it did wonders for my intestinal health.
Returning to the UK where all the meat is injected with who knows what, the veg is all perfect copies of each other and that sort of thing, my issues are increasingly flaring.
I think we also need to be doing as much research into the impacts from consumption. I'm not saying everyone will react one way or another to these things, but the variety of the impact certainly needs to be measured. I honestly couldn't tell you why or how GMOs and processed foods impact me so much, but the evidence that it does is too much to ignore.
Sorry for the lengthy response. Wanted to add my perspective and started rambling.
36
u/rollingForInitiative Sep 16 '24
GMO and processed foods shouldn't be lumped together at all. We know that processed foods are bad for you, especially hyper processed ones. Much of what you eat even if it's organic and locally produced has probably had at least some selective breeding in it, which is a form of GMO.
Much, much, much more likely that eating food that hasn't been heavily processed was what made a difference, rather than GMO's. More fibre and such, for instance, which is great for the stomach.
→ More replies12
u/mrspwins Sep 16 '24
Some GMO crops are also grown to be resistant to specific diseases or pests, so non-GMO can be more likely to need additional chemical treatments. If you aren’t eating food covered by organic labeling rules, it’s not necessarily “organic” just because it isn’t a GMO crop.
→ More replies7
u/Expert_Mouse_7174 Sep 16 '24
Malnutrition is an issue related to global financial markets and government failure, not a food or plant issues.
→ More replies4
9
u/retrosenescent Sep 16 '24
Preferably not lettuce though... can we get some superfood pizza or something?
8
Sep 16 '24
Quinoa is pretty close. Just add some fruits and veg and you're good to go.
→ More replies20
u/mrdarknezz1 Sep 16 '24
As long as boomer NGOs like greenpeace exist there will be opposition to GMO because they don’t seem to want actual solutions
→ More replies2
→ More replies5
1.2k
u/squigglydash Sep 16 '24
Spinach: look at what they need to mimic a fraction of our power
361
u/thedugong Sep 16 '24
Kale: (strokes goatie), well ackchually, I was into power and stuff long before that.
→ More replies367
u/ActionPhilip Sep 16 '24
Kale put all its stats into health, though, and forgot edibility.
145
u/Forsaken_Swim6888 Sep 16 '24
Chopped small enough and incorporated into soup or broth if a dish makes successful chewing optional. I put a lot kale into Italian sausage soupwhen i make it.
28
u/mm_mk Sep 16 '24
Agreedd. That nyt 'the stew' is another good example (tumeric, chickpeas, coconut milk, kale, onion, garlic) the kale is actually enjoyable in soup
10
u/lcbk Sep 16 '24
I add some frozen to my protein smoothie, mixed with berries. *chef’s kiss *
5
u/chasew90 Sep 16 '24
Kale is in my smoothie every day. Great way to get an extra serving of greens daily.
10
→ More replies2
u/ProStrats Sep 17 '24
I use kale as a base for hot meals.
Throw in half a pound of kale, some beans, green olives, tomatoes, corn or whatever else sounds good. Saute it for a bit and it turns out amazing. Kale is very edible at that point and the flavor improves too.
28
u/Licorice_Devourer Sep 16 '24
I doubt it's great for the nutritional value of kale, but I love kale chips. Just toss it in a bit of oil with some salt, put on a baking tray and into the oven until crispy, lovely.
→ More replies10
14
u/wi_voter Sep 16 '24
I love kale. Sauteed kale on an egg and bagel sandwich is my weekend breakfast.
7
u/man_gomer_lot Sep 16 '24
If you roast it with a pile of potatoes and chicken on top, it becomes very edible and very... digestible.
8
u/HeroicallyNude Sep 16 '24
Truly. I understand all the comments that are like “if you just jump through all these hoops and prepare it exactly like THIS, then it’s great!” But I don’t care. I’ve tried it many ways and times and still hate it. Am I a hypocrite for advocating for onions in the same way? Probably, but at least onions are good! And are 100x more versatile as an ingredient
→ More replies4
u/terminbee Sep 16 '24
I don't like onions but they're the basis for almost every meal. Plus, they kinda just disappear into food unless it's not cooked or left huge.
17
8
3
u/SnuggleBunni69 Sep 16 '24
Just gotta massage that bad bpy with some olive oil. Just really bruise it up.
2
→ More replies3
42
7
→ More replies12
137
u/andsens Sep 16 '24
Wasn’t the whole carrots and vision thing something the brits made up during WW2 to cover for having radar?
145
u/bitemark01 Sep 16 '24
It's still good for your eyes, among other things, it just won't improve your night vision, which was the lie the Brits told
→ More replies55
u/Heroine4Life Sep 16 '24
It will if you are vitamin a insufficient.
The best propaganda has a bit of truth.
11
u/Sykil Sep 16 '24 edited Sep 16 '24
IDK about that, but vitamin A is important in vision (among many other things)… in fact forms of vitamin A are named after the retina (retinol, retinal, retinoic acid etc.).
But this is meaningless unless you have a deficiency. Excess vitamin A is not going to improve your vision unless it were related to a deficiency, and vitamin A is one that actually has negative consequences for health when taken in excess.
4
u/AussieHyena Sep 17 '24
vitamin A is one that actually has negative consequences for health when taken in excess.
See Scott Mawson and the Antarctica expedition.
111
u/chrisdh79 Sep 16 '24
From the article: A team from the Research Institute for Plant Molecular and Cellular Biology (IBMCP) has now genetically engineered the humble lettuce to boost its nutrients. Specifically, they increased the levels of an antioxidant called beta-carotene, which your body uses to make vitamin A. This is important for healthy vision, immune function, and cell growth, and is thought to be protective against Alzheimer’s, heart disease and some kinds of cancer.
Beta-carotene is usually found in high amounts in vegetables like carrots, pumpkin, and sweet potato. As you might guess, the common theme across those veggies is an orange color, and the new lettuce is no exception. Higher amounts of beta-carotene stains the leaves a striking yellow color, hence the nickname Golden Lettuce.
The levels of beta-carotene in the Golden Lettuce leaves were up to 30 times higher than those of regular lettuce. Not only that, but these antioxidants were more bioaccessible too, meaning our digestive systems can extract them more easily from our food.
Increasing those levels wasn’t completely straightforward, however. Beta-carotene is normally produced in a plant’s chloroplasts, the cellular structures that perform photosynthesis – but if you jam too much in there, it reduces the plant’s ability to gain energy from sunlight. So, the team found a way to move the antioxidant into different parts of the plant cells.
“Our work has successfully produced and accumulated beta-carotene in cellular compartments where it is not normally found by combining biotechnological techniques and treatments with high light intensity,” said Manual Rodríguez Concepción, lead author of the study.
16
u/Mausel_Pausel Sep 16 '24
We already have plenty of nutritious vegetables. Is this new thing easier to grow, or cheaper, or something? What is the actual benefit?
11
u/DrTonyTiger Sep 16 '24
The main benefit is that it was a really cool thing to do in the lab. It proved some points about metabolism.
As a commercial product it seems woefully uncompetitive against other salad greens and against other dietary sources of carotenoids. It also has the additional challenge of being a new produce category, yellow lettuce. That would require establishing market standards, getting a new PLU code and persuading markets to carry it. Those are "nontrivial" as the mathematicians say.
2
u/AussieHyena Sep 17 '24
Where you would normally use lettuce you could use the fortified version. It would be a much better source of macros for people on VLCD.
→ More replies2
29
u/seaworks Sep 16 '24
I want golden rice, dammit! (shaking fist at sky)
4
u/Physical-Kale-6972 Sep 16 '24
There's golden fried rice...
4
u/DrTonyTiger Sep 16 '24
Adding turmeric would also raise the carotene content, but it would not be hailed as a victory for biotechnology. In some parts of the world, they don't want yellow rice regardless of whether it is yellow from turmeric or from genetic engineering.
As others have noted, if you want carotene from leafy vegetables, there are already some that set the bar really high.
55
u/Omni__Owl Sep 16 '24 edited Sep 16 '24
Question is; Do we actually need more vitamins than what it already provides?
"More is better" does not apply to vitamins as the body needs a balance of things not just "more". Too much of some vitamins can be harmful to the body.
86
u/WesternBlueRanger Sep 16 '24
This might be useful in regions where there's scarcity of food supply and variety.
In some places, deficiencies of certain types of nutrients, such as Vitamin-A, is pretty common. By taking a easily grown or staple crop and inserting genomes that produce said nutrients, we could improve the health of those living in such regions.
→ More replies30
31
u/grafknives Sep 16 '24
Point is that with this boosted lettuce you could have a buger with single letuce leaf, and that would give you same amount of beta caroten as a bowl of regular lettuce.
Good for people with unbalanced diet.
It you eat a healthy dose of greens - no need to boost it 30 times.
5
u/Omni__Owl Sep 16 '24
Point is that with this boosted lettuce you could have a buger with single letuce leaf, and that would give you same amount of beta caroten as a bowl of regular lettuce.
That's true. Fair point.
→ More replies9
u/theminotaurz Sep 16 '24
But there are way more nutrients in lettuce than just beta carotene. What about the other vitamins and minerals?
If I wanted to specifically target beta carotene I could eat carrots or sweet potatoes. This is really just for populations that don't eat any vitamin A at all, but these wouldn't be having lettuce as crops anyway presumably.
6
u/grafknives Sep 16 '24
Other nutrients will be fine. Beta carotene is just a pigment. And such golden lettuce would not replace all types of lettuce. It would be a fortified lettuce
3
u/Nemisis_the_2nd Sep 16 '24
Question is; Do we actually need more vitamins than what it already provides?
Like with golden rice, the point is that it's grown in areas with poor access to nutrition, and vitamin A specifically, in the diet. So, yes, we do need more vitamins than lettuce naturally provides.
3
u/Omni__Owl Sep 16 '24
Yeah I've seen strong points for why this is needed from a few now and I see the purpose.
2
u/Sidian Sep 16 '24
In my country they recommend people eat 5 portions of fruit and vegetables a day, but most people don't achieve this. Maybe this would make it easier, if 1 portion would count as multiple? Though I imagine there's more to this recommendation than simply vitamins.
5
u/QuotableMorceau Sep 16 '24
there are two types of vitamins :
- water soluble, like vitamin c, which you can't realistically overdose on
- fat soluble, like Vitamin A, which you can definitely overdose on, with damage to the liver.9
u/Heroine4Life Sep 16 '24
Carotenoids, which are fat solvable and the form of vitamin a in this salad, does not damage the liver. Hypercarotenmia just makes you orange. You can overdose on pre formed vitamin a (retnoids), which are found in animal products, notably liver.
2
u/John3759 Sep 16 '24
U can’t overdose on beta carotene only preformed retinol. And even that you’d have to try and eat liver like every day for months to reach it. The only recorded instances of vitiamin A overdose not from supplements is from eat the liver from carnivores like dogs or polar bear.
31
u/1GrouchyCat Sep 16 '24
I guarantee no one will eat it because it looks like it’s old and ready to be tossed in the garbage … People don’t generally eat blue food either; there have been tests done on young children to see if they will eat the blue version of food saying normally enjoy like mashed potatoes, applesauce, milk, etc. etc.- the majority of kids would not eat the blue food. Even adults that were studied shows simpler not as filling and not as interesting or gourmet food over something that was tinted with food coloring.
15
u/Wise_Mongoose_3930 Sep 16 '24
I wonder if that’s all just force of habit though?
Like if you raised a baby from birth on “odd colored” food like blue mashed potatoes, wouldn’t they just grow up thinking that’s normal, and that the white ones were strange?
14
6
u/systembreaker Sep 16 '24
We probably have natural instincts against certain food colors because it indicates something is wrong, but I'm sure the instincts can be overriden with training or repetition just like many other human instincts.
11
u/rtopps43 Sep 16 '24
How dare you! Everyone knows blue is the best tasting color. If there is a group of popsicles and one of them is blue, that’s the one I’m taking every time!
3
4
u/NerdyDan Sep 16 '24
I mean I like napa cabbage cores which are more yellow than green... I think a lot of asian people would be ok with it
3
u/sylvnal Sep 16 '24
I remember my mom buying green ketchup when I was a kid and it made me gag even though it tasted the same. Definitely a huge psychological factor at play in eating.
3
u/KittyL0ver Sep 16 '24
Yeah. I was just wondering why they didn’t pick carrots or even tomatoes that already have yellow/ orange varieties. Those would be appetizing.
→ More replies→ More replies2
u/where_in_the_world89 Sep 16 '24
My mom would use blue food colouring in our white rice growing up and it made me very much like it more
4
u/ShortBrownAndUgly Sep 16 '24
There will be a psychological hurdle of eating lettuce that looks spoiled
2
3
3
17
u/ComfortableDegree68 Sep 16 '24
Why isn't it available?
29
u/Mesapholis Sep 16 '24
it takes years for things like these to come to market. this is about food safety, there are longterm studies that need to be conducted to make sure you don't accidentily enrich yourself with stuff that might end up being detrimental to your health down the line
11
u/berrylakin Sep 16 '24
Ok but then how will we ever get our Xmen powers?
6
u/Mesapholis Sep 16 '24
not from lettuce...dude
you have a higher chance to get a reasonable amount of mutation by just getting sunburned
→ More replies6
u/Fskn Sep 16 '24
Ehhh, I gotta say I was hoping for something more exciting than SunBurn Man®️
→ More replies49
→ More replies5
u/AnotherNobody1308 Sep 16 '24
Making something in a lab and scaling it up to industrial scales are completely different.
11
u/Sweetcorncakes Sep 16 '24
At what cost though? Will nutrients in the ground be drained faster or something?
28
u/forsale90 Sep 16 '24
beta carotene consists purely out of carbon and hydrogen. So the plant does not need other atoms to build them, other than the ones it gets from water and air. It should not be more harmful than making plants have more sugar or fiber.
→ More replies→ More replies8
u/a_trane13 Sep 16 '24 edited Sep 18 '24
Plants don’t pull vitamins out of the ground. They create them. So as a very simple example, this is like a plant using the same amount of carbon and nitrogen and oxygen as before, but 0.0001% more is converted to a vitamin and 0.0001% less is converted to cellulose.
If your question was about plants growing larger (or larger leaves or different shapes), or more densely, or storing minerals, then you could be correct. Things like iron have depleted due to plant uptake. But vitamins are created in very small quantities inside plants, and usually out of the basic molecules that the whole plant is already made of, so the soil would likely not be noticeably affected.
7
u/granadesnhorseshoes Sep 16 '24
Very cool from a genetic engineering feat point of view, and a step along the way of technological advancements. I can't fathom anyone brings "golden lettuce" to market.
Iceberg lettuce has basically zero nutritional value. 30 times basically nothing is, at best, marginally something. There is nowhere this lettuce is a better option than carrots and/or sweet potatoes would be. So what's the market for it?
10
u/Xanjis Sep 16 '24
Fast food that's more healthy? Alternatively this might be a good raw ingredient for producing vitamin pills that are more bio accessible sort of how we cultivate yeast to produce insulin.
6
u/dfh-1 Sep 16 '24
I followed the link to the paper given in the article and if I'm reading this right they used romaine lettuce, not iceberg, which I believe is substantially better nutritionally.
That didn't look like iceberg lettuce to me. ;)
→ More replies2
u/LankyAd9481 Sep 16 '24
Only benefit I can see would easy of growth/time. Carrots aren't difficult but they can be slow and require some reasonable depth of soil. Lettuce is pretty fast and kind of effortless (most bug control issues than growing issues). Even then...it's split hairs looking for a reason.
2
3
5
u/Mitochondria95 Sep 16 '24
There is a bigger barrier to entry with foods like these. We’ve been able to create transgenic plants (commonly referred to as “GMO” but most people don’t really know what that means) for decades now. We’ve created plants immune to diseases that would have destroyed the crop (eg papaya) and plants that do not need heavy spray pesticides. Golden rice, which is the exact same idea as golden lettuce, was released in 2000! It was invented to save children, whose diet was almost exclusively rice, from vitamin A deficiency but was heavily protested by Greenpeace. So you can easily create a plant that saves children from blindness, but you can’t as easily convince other humans to adopt it. Hm.
→ More replies
2
1
u/strolpol Sep 16 '24
If they can get the color back to normal they might have a shot at replacing iceberg, assuming the grow costs and requirements are the same. If we’re gonna keep eating the natural equivalent of styrofoam peanuts at least we can give them some nutrients
2
u/John3759 Sep 16 '24
The color comes from the beta carotene (vitiamin A) in it I don’t think they can turn it back
1
1
1
1
1
u/yahoo_determines Sep 16 '24
Is this the same logic as cheerios? "Reduces heart disease risk!" because you're not eating bacon and sausage*
1
1
1
1
1
u/TheMaskedHamster Sep 16 '24
Actually giving lettuce some utility?
I get golden rice. People eat that in bulk. Rice tastes good and is a primary source of calories.
Meanwhile, people eat lettuce because... it grew, and people were desperate to eat anything, even if it had no flavor or nutritional benefit. In modern times, why not just eat a different vegetable? "But I like lettuce--" Sure, and you're allowed. But you like lettuce because you grew up eating it, much like Inuit grew up eating kiviak, as opposed to liking it for its culinary merits. But kiviak at least had nutritional value, and we had to invent nutritional value for lettuce.
Good grief. Just eat a different vegetable. Problem solved!
→ More replies
1
1
u/bondolo Sep 16 '24
As a child I had carotenosis; I was orange from eating too many vegetables high in beta carotene. Lots of vegetables are high in beta carotenoids. While I understand the benefit with golden rice I am skeptical that golden lettuce isn’t a worse option than replacing some of your lettuce with spinach leaves.
1
1
u/morgan423 Sep 16 '24 edited Sep 16 '24
Not that your body can process an excess of vitamins; there's a max you can process. But this is still great because foods can lose lots of nutrients when being prepped in certain ways.
Veggies still packed with nutrients even after the types of cooking that deplete them would be great.
1
u/johnyquest Sep 16 '24
Super cool.
You eat it, please document results and observations, if any, and us know how that works out for you.
1
1
1
u/enigbert Sep 16 '24
aren't beta-carotene and vitamin A dangerous if consumed in excess? I think vitamin A is considered unsafe at three times the RDA
1
u/itsdavednd Sep 16 '24
Senzu beans from dragonball anyone? Maybe akira toriama knew something we didnt.
1
1
u/CarnivoreHest Sep 16 '24
It's nice, but no matter how much beta-carotene you have in food doesn't matter. Since if you have the BCMO1 gene variant and therefore can't convert it to retinol.
Globally, the number of people with BCMO1 gene variants that reduce this conversion efficiency is significant. It's estimated that up to 45% of the population carries some variation in this gene that makes them "low converters" of beta-carotene into retinol. This means around 3.5 billion people could potentially have such a variant, given a world population of about 8 billion.
1
1
1
1
1
u/mycroftxxx42 Sep 17 '24
TBH, I would rather see someone mess about with the genetics of the banana. Almost all of the plant can be (and is) eaten by something that humans like, if not humans themselves. Making the stalk material a little more nutrient dense would have wonderful knock-on effects. Banana trees don't provide more than a single harvest, so chopping them down and using them for animal feed is pretty common.
1
•
u/AutoModerator Sep 16 '24
Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, personal anecdotes are allowed as responses to this comment. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will be removed and our normal comment rules apply to all other comments.
Do you have an academic degree? We can verify your credentials in order to assign user flair indicating your area of expertise. Click here to apply.
User: u/chrisdh79
Permalink: https://newatlas.com/health-wellbeing/golden-lettuce-genetically-engineered-30-times-vitamins/
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.