Information about the Aspen Ideas Festival is here. I am scheduled for a session, The American Wellness Paradox, currently scheduled from 11:00-11:50 a.m., at the East Lawn Tent. This will be a discussion with senior HHS policy advisor, Calley Means. Here’s the blurb on it: “Americans are spending more than ever on healthcare, supplements, wellness trends, and “clean eating,” yet rates of chronic disease and metabolic illness continue to climb. As skepticism fuels the rise of movements like MAHA, debates over what Americans should eat have become deeply cultural, political, and economic. Two influential voices with sharply different perspectives on nutrition and food science explore how food systems, farming practices, consumer culture, and the wellness industry collided to create one of the defining public health debates of our time.”
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.
