Will You Eat The New GMO Purple Tomato?
GMOs have been debated since their debut to consumers in 1994, when the FDA approved the Flavr Savr tomato. Calgene, the company who created the Flavr Savr, designed them to last longer ripening on the vine, when the normal process for tomatoes was to pick while green and then use chemicals to ripen them. Ultimately, Calgene ended up selling their business to Monsanto, who pulled production of the Flavr Savr in 1997.
Monsanto is now the leading source of GMOs that exist throughout the world. Most of their products are genetically engineered to save costs for industrial crop producers. Norfolk Plant Sciences’ new purple tomato however, is set to re-test a consumer market similar to the Flavr Savr tomato in the 1990s.
Purple For Your Health
The new purple tomato has several things going for it, but the headlining quality is its high level of anthocyanins, a class of pigment compounds responsible for the dark bluish hue in blackberries, eggplant, and other darker-colored fruits. Anthocynanins are widely known to have beneficial health effects and the purple tomato was even the subject of a study in 2009, that found a diet of the new tomato prolonged the life of cancer-susceptible mice compared with regular red tomatoes.
A New Paradigm for GMOs?
A GMO that could help prevent cancer? This notion is at odds with the public’s association of GMOs with toxicity. But the purple tomato does appear to reflect a new avenue for biotech foods: One focused on the consumer wants instead of the producers’ costs.
Cathie Martin, plant biologist and creator of the purple tomato, spoke to this on the Naked Scientist podcast in February 2015: “I’m a bit fed up of all of the information that you get about food being things that are bad for you…So, I think we need to know whether there are any things that are good in foods for us. And all of the evidence suggests that eating fruit and vegetables is very good for you.”
Purple Stands Out
You may not have noticed, but the majority of GMOs have flown under the radar the last few decades. The federal government hasn’t required labelling since GMOs were first introduced. A product being associated with the term “GMO” has generally not been well received by the public, due to various grassroots campaigns rallying against GMOs.
The majority of GMO crops currently available are engineered to contain either a pesticide within the plant or herbicide resistance, sometimes both. While these changes can make producing crops cheaper, the quality of the final product is questionable and this don’t exactly inspire consumer confidence in the grocery aisle. Anyone for some BT-Roundup Ready Corn with dinner tonight?
Let’s face it, the reasons behind the genetic modification of the Monsanto plants tells a story of patent greed, eliminating family farms, and industrial chemical pollution.
But with the purple tomato comes a different story, at least at the time of this writing. One of better nutrition, health, and enhancement. And the purple color represents that story. A pigment-rich tweak on a beloved classic.
Safety and GMO Regulation
You may have heard the saying “safety is more important than convenience.” That doesn’t always apply to new technologies and GMOs are no exception. I don’t believe any safety studies have been done on this tomato.
The USDA said in an announcement that the purple tomato is not subject to regulation under 7 CFR part 340, meaning they don’t consider the purple tomato to be a plant pest risk.
The FDA already doesn’t require any pre-market safety testing or studies for existing GMOs, so it’s largely a wait-and-see approach. At least in the U.S., emerging technology is often deemed innocuous until proven otherwise (as long as there is profit to be made by bringing it to market).
As for health claims, Nature Biotechnology spoke with Martin in 2021 and stated that no “human intervention studies” comparing the health effects of the purple tomatoes to conventional tomatoes had been done. It also stated that she did “not plan to make health benefit claims” for the purple tomatoes. On the Norfolk Plant Sciences website, they stop just short of that and instead emphasize the health benefits of the anthocyanin compounds present in the genetically modified tomatoes.
Will You Eat Purple?
With Norfolk Plant Sciences planning a 2023 pilot of the purple tomato (pending FDA approval), my question is, will you eat it?
Seeing both the light and dark sides of GMO technology, I’ve always opted to steer away from GMOs in my diet. However, this as an intriguing biotech development. Personally I’m remaining cautiously optimistic on the purple tomato. It would definitely add a visual dimension of color to the plate!
I sense the food-designers are just getting started. Perhaps we will see blue carrots next, or purple pears in the name of health. Japan already has a gene-edited tomato that relaxes you. We may be entering a new era of designer foods.
