The genetically engineered pause that refreshes

Corn chips and sodas are just two examples of today's "Frankenfoods," says the author of "Dinner at the New Gene Café."

By Katharine Mieszkowski

Oct. 18, 2001 | We're still waiting for extinct wooly mammoths to come back from the dead, and for that first human infant clone to creep us all out with its unearthly cry.

But impatient biopunks can take heart. There's one area of American life where fun with genes has already become not just a weird, sci-fi novelty of the future, but the norm. In fact, it's as ordinary as a bag of salty corn chips or a 32-oz. ice-cold soda.

In his new book, "Dinner at the New Gene Cafi," journalist Bill Lambrecht unravels the politics and polemics around genetically engineered food, already appearing in never-found-in-nature combinations on a plate near you.

A writer for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Lambrecht explains why the technology inspires protesters to rail against so-called Frankenfoods as a threat to the environment and public health, even as scientists claim they will one day help feed the world's hungry and give us foods that can cure disease.

To these food tinkers, the specter of a chocolate-chip cookie that could help prevent prostate cancer is not a guilty glutton's pipe dream, but a scientific possibility. And to Lambrecht it is rich fodder for a book that takes him as far afield as a Panamanian jungle to hang out with bioprospectors panning for rare plants and as close to home as his own backyard in Maryland where he grows genetically modified soybeans.

Lambrecht spoke with Salon about his views on the future of "genetically modified organisms" (GMOs) and why his own farming experiment didn't go exactly as planned.

Since there are no proven health risks yet from genetically modified foods, much less people getting sick or dying, why should we care about this? Why is it important?

There haven't been, in my estimation, credible threats or contentions about allergy or other health effects. But it seems to me that food, water and shelter are the most important parts of life. And that people might want to know what they're eating and where their food comes from. And there are a lot of unknowns when it comes to the environment when we are in effect planting new organisms in the soil.

As much as 70 percent of processed foods may already contain genetically modified foods in the U.S., according to one food industry spokesperson quoted in your book. How likely is it that people reading this have already eaten genetically modified foods?

Unless they restrict themselves to a diet of whole foods and by and large organic eating, there is a very good chance that the food they've consumed recently has had some ingredients derived from genetic engineering.

That would primarily be soybeans and corn, be it the chips they eat or the soda they consume with high fructose corn syrup or the cake mix or the muffins and until recently the French fries at fast-food outlets.

What is the purpose of these modifications? To fight insects and weeds or to enhance the quality and nutrition of the food?

The genetic applications so far have been almost solely for production ease. There is herbicide tolerance [sold in products such as "Roundup Ready"], which enables farmers to put heavy applications of proprietary chemicals directly over the top of plants without killing them, but killing the weeds.

That's the major application. Second is insect resistance in which a gene enables the plant to produce its own protein toxin that kills pests -- in effect turning the plant into a living insecticide.

Do you eat only organic food? Or do you think that fears about modified foods have been overblown?

I eat primarily whole foods, but not because of my fears about GMOs. I have more concerns about pesticides and chemicals than I do about GMOs, and if I'm hungry late some night and somebody sticks a bag of chips in front of me, I'm not about to pull my hand away at the prospect of there being a trace of modified ingredients in the bag.

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