Clark Wolf is the host and organizer. The panel—on food and politics—includes me, talking about my memoir, Slow Cooked, An Unexpected Life in Food Politics; Chloe Sorvino, author of Raw Deal: Hidden Corruption, Corporate Greed, and the Fight for the Future of Meat; Alex Prud’homme, author of Dinner With The President: Food, Politics and the History of Breaking Bread at the White House; and Tanya Holland, author of Tanya Holland’s California Soul. Free, but register here. It starts at 5:00 p.m. and lasts one hour.
by Marion Nestle
Jun
30
2022
Tomatoes as a source of vitamin D? Gene editing in action.
You can’t make this stuff up.
The latest in gene editing is to get tomatoes to produce a precursor to vitamin D.
Why do this?
Gene-edited tomato plants that produce a precursor to vitamin D could one day provide an animal-free source of the crucial nutrient…When the gene-edited tomatoes, described in Nature Plants on 23 May, are exposed to ultraviolet light in the laboratory, some of the precursor, called provitamin D3, is converted to vitamin D3. But the plants have not yet been developed for commercial use, and it is not known how they will fare when grown outside.
So far, this is totally theoretical.
Even if it turns out to be possible, why bother?
If you want an animal-free source of vitamin D, just go outside and get some sunlight on your skin.
Gene editors must need ideas for projects.