Reality imitates comedy
I’m actually trying to get some work done today but a friend shared the Times Online article Scientists grow pork meat in a laboratory on Facebook, which immediately made me think of the Better Off Ted episode Heroes, which I happened to watch this weekend. If you have a chance, watch it. Funny stuff. This new article about cultured pork follows one about cultured beef from about a year ago. Does cultured meat have a future beyond sitcoms?
Healthy food example set by White House
Since her husband took office, Mrs. Obama has been setting a wonderful example, encouraging healthy food options like fresh fruits and vegetables. The state dinner at the White House is a beautiful demonstration that food can be healthy as well as fancy!
Modern Flourishes at Obamas’ State Dinner in the New York Times leaves me hungry. How wonderful: “the meatless menu included a mix of Indian and American favorites, including some African-American standards. Collard greens and curried prawns, chickpeas and okra, nan and cornbread”. Sounds like a lot of agricultural biodiversity to me! Cheers to Mrs. Obama for continuing to encourage Americans to consider healthy food options by setting such an exquisite example.
For the full menu, see this official press release from the White House (pdf). For pictures, you must see the slide show at the Times – there are very few pictures of the event online.
Karl, you’ll be happy to hear that the pears served for dessert were poached in honey from the White House’s own beehive!
High Health Care Costs Lead to Healthier Eating?
As employers desperately try to keep health care costs down, some are turning to unexpected measures, according to Health Care Savings Could Start in the Cafeteria in Sunday’s New York Times. Employers, including some big ones like IBM, have programs that reward their employees for joining a gym or following a preventive health care regimen. Now, some employers are trying to affect their employees diets by offering healthier foods in their cafeterias and giving employees coupons for healthy prepared food items stocked in local grocery stores. Full Yield (a company that does not seem to have a website!) is a new company working to prepare the healthy food offerings that employees are encouraged to buy. Together with Harvard Pilgrim, an insurance company, Full Yield will track employee health to see if it improves with their food options.
Why am I bringing this up at Biofortified?
A Vf gene a day keeps the fungus away
Ever gotten apples from the farmer’s market or grocery store only to have them go bad in the back of your fridge? I know I have. Just a few weeks ago, I got about 20 apples from the CSA. Unfortunately, I can only eat so many per day and they started to go bad before I got to eat them. Some of them got really nasty (as you can see to the right) within just a few days despite being in the fridge.
Eating locally is great, but since apples only ripen once per year, and they spoil relatively fast, that means we only have fresh apples for a short time each year. That’s too bad, since apples are a wonderful crunchy snack loved by kids and adults that provide health benefits from their fiber and antioxidants.
Sweet, sweet corn
I met Kevin Montgomery of Montgomery Consulting at NCCC167 at Allerton Park, Illinois back in March. He specializes in native trait development, such as herbicide tolerance, enhanced nutritional quality, high yield, improved germination, and good stand establishment.
Corn earworm larva by W. Cranshaw.
One of the most interesting of these native traits is what Kevin calls FACE (fall armyworm corn earworm). This trait, which confers resistance to armyworm and earworm, originates in tropical germplasm. Kevin is hoping to provide an alternative to Bt. One benefit of using a non-biotech trait is reduced cost. However, even native traits are not without added cost. This isn’t a single gene trait, so it’s extremely difficult to move out of the tropical lines. While the trait isn’t ready for licensing and distribution, it is very promising so far. Plants with the trait survived the entire growing season without damage from worms and without insecticide in Puerto Rico. This has great potential for the organic sweet corn market.
Kevin gave a pre-tasting lesson to the tasters.
Currently, Kevin has a client asking for hybrid sweet corn varieties suitable for the fresh market, such as roadside stands and farmers’ markets. He breeds with his own genetic resources, but grows commercial hybrids like Vision alongside his experimental hybrids as checks. In the breeding program, he crosses promising (read: tasty) inbred lines to many other inbred lines, looking for the best hybrids. Just as in any other hybrid breeding program for any species, some inbreds combine better than others. He is also developing some improved open pollinated varieties for specialty markets.
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