Purple tomatoes could land in American grocery stores this year

Would you eat a purple tomato? Would you eat one if you knew it was healthier? Would you eat it if you knew it was genetically modified?

Lesson summary

Hi there, I’m Jeff and this is Plain English lesson number 511. JR is the producer and he has uploaded the full lesson to PlainEnglish.com/511.

Coming up today: A new type of tomato is going to hit American supermarket shelves. It’s purple, it’s healthier, and it’s genetically modified. Will it catch on ? We’ll talk about why this purple tomato is a big step in genetically modified crops.

In the second half of the lesson, I’ll show you what it means to have an edge. And JR has a song of the week. Let’s get going.

The purple tomato: Will it catch on?

Food comes in many varieties. And even seemingly identical food comes in many varieties, too. Seeds for major crops like corn and soybeans are bred for desirable properties, particularly yield. It’s not unlike breeding dogs: you give natural selection a bit of a nudge so that future generations have the most desirable traits. Seed companies carefully guard their varieties, hoping that their specific corn or soybean seeds, for example, give them an edge in the market .

But genetically modified food is different. A seed is genetically modified if DNA from another organism is inserted into the DNA of the seed in question. In that sense, the new seed is a combination of the original plus a little bit of another organism. That’s what makes it genetically modified.

To date, genetically modified food has been produced for the benefit of farmers. Modified seeds help prevent the loss of crops, increasing the yield of each acre and preventing waste. Genetically modified, or GM seeds, come with a variety of benefits. Some are resistant to herbicides. That means that a chemical that kills weeds would not also kill the crop in the field. Other seeds are resistant to insect damage or plant viruses. This reduces the amount of chemical sprays a farmer needs to use to control insects and viruses. Overall, it increases the amount of food produced on an acre of farmland.

One famous example is with the papaya. Papaya farmers in Hawaii discovered a virus was damaging their crops. So plant researchers developed a type of papaya that was resistant to the ringspot virus that was attacking their crops. The land, the crops, and the jobs were saved.

Scientific studies have repeatedly shown that there are no adverse health effects to eating genetically modified crops. Still, not everyone is on board : in many countries, half or more of the population believes that genetically-modified food is unsafe to eat. In a recent survey, about 48 percent of people in 20 countries said GM food was unsafe to eat; just 13 percent said it was safe; and the rest said they didn’t have enough information. France and Germany, among other countries, have banned genetically modified crops.

But now, a new type of GM crop is about to hit supermarket shelves: a food with enhanced nutrition. Scientists at the John Innes Center in the United Kingdom have developed a new variety of tomato that is high in anthocyanin, a chemical found in blackberries and blueberries. Anthocyanin contains antioxidants, which help prevent cancer, reduce inflammation, and protect against type 2 diabetes.

This is new. Previous genetically modified foods were designed to appeal to farmers; sure, they helped supermarket shoppers, but only indirectly by keeping the prices down. And shoppers often didn’t think twice about choosing foods with genetically modified ingredients.

This new tomato is designed to appeal to a health-conscious shopper on the supermarket shelves. In the future, a supermarket shopper will have the choice to reach for a regular tomato or a purple one, knowing the purple one carries additional health benefits of the antioxidants, but also that it’s genetically modified.

Will it fly? The company producing the tomato believes that it will. A lot of the skepticism about GM food comes from older generations, which were skeptical of GM food when it first came out . Younger consumers don’t always share that concern, since GM foods have been on the market for many years.

And the company is hoping that the purple tomato is a conversation-starter. The CEO said that he hopes people engage with the food, asking questions about how it’s developed, how it’s grown, what its nutritional benefits are like, and how it tastes. If people ask the right questions, he believes, the purple tomato will be commercially successful.

Consumers can get anthocyanin from other foods, like blackberries, blueberries, eggplant, and cabbage. The berries can be expensive; the eggplant and cabbage are much less common on American dinner plates. But I think a lot of supermarket shoppers go for taste, appearance, versatility, and general health benefits, rather than specific nutrients like anthocyanin.

Would you try it?

It will be interesting to see if it catches on. “It’s purple, it’s a tomato, it’s better for you” – that would be the winning message. I don’t think a lot of people do the mental math about how much anthocyanin they get in their diet. I would try it. Would you? I’ll post some pictures to our Facebook group at PlainEnglish.com/Facebook .