The Newest Apple: Red to the Core

7-16-2010 @7:05PM jeff said... haggie, did you even read the article?

"Redlove Era is not a genetically engineered apple. It did take Markus Kobelt, a Swiss fruit grower, 20 years to develop, but he did it the old-fashioned way -- through cross-pollination and grafting."

7-17-2010 @12:50AM Dray said... And Lita, encouraging someone else to kill themselves stating that it would make everyone around them happy is the paragon of non-jackassness?...
It might be best if you're going to call someone out on some social no-no that you don't actually make a comparable or worse one yourself.
That said, I hope you have a good rest of your day/evening/night/etc... because if you're making comments like that, it sounds like you might be in a bad mood.

7-16-2010 @8:39PM UpStateHillBilly said... Every Apple, Peach, Pear, Apricot, Cherry, Blue Berry, Grain of Wheat and most meats you eat are from cross pollination or cross breeding. Just about every Fruit or nut from an Orchard, every vegetable from a field and animal from a farm has been modified from its parent species from the wild. Are you that uninformed or do you intend not to eat any more.

7-16-2010 @8:02PM Erica said... To: UpStateHillBilly,

I guess i'm "that" uninformed then ... I suppose everything we eat is unnatural, all because humans have ruined it one way or another with modification. Most everything we eat may cause cancer, geeez I wonder why. AOL has a new story all the time on how so many things are loaded with carcinogens. The disease comes from somewhere, i'm sure it's our food, nothing we could do about it though. : )

7-17-2010 @12:50AM Dray said... There are plenty of things that have been modified without adding carcinogens or making them unhealthy... some foods have been merely modified to increase or decrease their size, change their color, or slightly alter the taste (more sweet vs. bitter, etc).
It's true that pretty much all grocery items that have been around for a while have been altered in some way, but a lot of that can simply be because people decided they liked it more if it was bigger/redder/sweeter/heartier...

7-18-2010 @3:53AM Cola said... Oh goodness... If there are carcinogens in apples it's because of pollution, not because of good old fashioned selection. Ever heard of teosinte? That's the wild version of corn, and it looks like this. It didn't get that way by knocking out genes in a lab under a microscope, although I fail to see how that would generate carcinogens.

Your statement about everything causing cancer is pretty empty, too. Cancer is multifactorial and complicated, yes, but not everything causes cancer.

I assume you don't eat lichen, because every variety of domesticated produce has been selected for by human beings for the most desirable traits (size, hardiness, taste). This form of selection may have been done by humans, but that hardly makes it any different from evolution. Other animals are as much of an "environmental pressure" as wind and rain. We aren't the first or the last species to cause another species to change its form in a major way. And think about it. Corn, apples, and filberts et al. have all benefited from their relationship to us.

Nothing says evolutionary success like so much of the stuff that the cultivators have so much of it that they put the surplus in their gas tanks. Not all species are happy about the competition, I'm sure, and I want a healthy world with tigers and polar bears as much as you probably do, but we're not the pestilence upon the globe that some people make us out to be, either.

7-18-2010 @3:56AM Cola said... Ugh... the link to Teosinte: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teosinte

7-18-2010 @6:01PM Erica said... To Cola :

I can't get over people who are completely genius. I personally eat mostly everything, there's not much i can do about wether or not it's a carcinogen or modified "obviously", if we chose to be choosy we would eventually starve to death. I'm not sure if you've noticed, since you seem to know just about everything, but nowadays if you either watch the news or read the news, it seems like most everything may cause cancer. It seems to me like we have to assume everything we do or eat may be the cause, since the source has not yet been found. Plus, i only choose not to eat an apple with a red core because it's just one of the things that have been seriously altered in some way, i don't recall seeing one as a child, so why eat it now ... and I have absolutely no idea why i'm still here trying to explain anything to anyone ... Fact of the matter is Humans Suck, you mention pollution, humans are the problem, so anything that may go wrong is obviously caused by humans. Anything they touch, they may destroy ... does oil come to mind ? : )

7-19-2010 @1:05PM Matt said... To Erica: If humans suck so much, then you may board your spacecraft and fly back to Pandora or whatever dreamworld Utopia you've had the misfortune to leave in the first place. Either that, or sell your car(s), get rid of all your electronics, stop eating meat, and subsist on unmodified foods - do grass and tubers come to mind? Because thats all we had before we took charge of our environment; it was either that or starve. You're statements are naive and extremely hypocritical.

To Cola and all the others who have injected common sense into the discussion: thank you, it is so nice to see informed opinions in the midst of this verbal - what was the word Erica used? pollution.

7-19-2010 @2:54PM Ishutemdown said... Ok, I would really like to know what the first apple looked like, beacuse obviously you have seen it.... right?

7-19-2010 @3:06PM SusanRandy said... If we didn't have grafting, you wouldn't have most of the apples and other fruit we have today. It's not being artificially genetically altered. It's called grafting. You can read about it here....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grafting

I come from a family who has 4 generations of apple/pear growers. My Dad was a master at grafting.
Proud orchardist's daughter from WA State

7-19-2010 @6:16PM urbantchr said... Erica. Causes of cancer ARE known. Cancers are a result of mutations which occur constantly. Mutations occur constantly, and although most are harmless, sometimes they cause cancer, and sometimes they cause an improvement. Yes, mutations can be caused by environmental factors such as radiation (e.g. sun), or chemicals (food, pesticides etc), mutations also occuir during cell division (mitosis) when cells reproduce. Mutations are the basis of evolution without which we would not exist. Ultimately, EVERYTHING costs something, the mechanism of mutation not withstanding

7-20-2010 @12:16AM Erica said... Truth Hurts ... : /

Please let it go ...

Everyone's entitled to an opinion and nobody's expected to agree with anyone else.

: )

7-18-2010 @2:06PM John Stoner said... er, breed your own plants from wild plants and cultivate and eat those. You might be hungry for a good long while.

That's actually interesting, We bred modern corn from ancient teosinte, but what untouched species are out there that would also be good to try? How lucky were the ancients?

As for carcinogens, cancer is a risk in everyday life. In fact, we all have some cancerous cells, whether due to exogenous or endogenous causes. What we call 'cancer' is a failure of your immune system to stop it before it gets beyond the first few cells.