by Rebecca Adele Scarlett

Created on: September 25, 2010   Last Updated: September 26, 2010

For some reason, there is a huge controversy over genetically modified food. The truth is, we have been genetically modifying food ever since agriculture took over from gathering. Ever since we realized it saved time to grow our own food rather than search for it, we have also been genetically modifying it. Whenever a person noticed that certain crops grew faster, he would attempt to cross-pollinate them with his own to produce faster-growing crops. The same was done for crops with higher yields, better colour, and higher nutrition levels, as well as better taste.

The same thing, was, of course, done to animals. Producing a mule by mating a donkey and a horse is genetic modification. Looking for the best characteristics of more than one subspecies, in an effort to elliminate what we didn't like about a food, became the norm hundreds, if not thousands, of years ago. Everything you eat has been genetically modified! Do you think it's normal for cows and pigs to get so large, and for cows to produce milk constantly, year after year?

Having scientific technology to remove genetic material from one thing and put it into another in the lab merely saves time. Rather than breeding animals or plants for generations to get the genes in there, scientists use a syringe. There's no difference, and no danger.

Is there a difference in the taste?

It may surprise you that the taste of everything these days is altered. No one buys fruit or vegetables that are awkwardly shaped or don't have a uniform colour (because we always judge by appearances, even for fruit) so for years, farmers have been breeding for appearance. The result is a bland taste, as taste and nutrients have been ignored in the quest for perfect-looking produce. If you've ever had the priviledge to taste fruit fresh from the tree from a small farm that doesn't care so much about producing 1,000,000 identical apples, you never forget it. It tastes real.

And food these days often doesn't taste real. In the case of processed food, the food itself often tastes like nothing. Manufacturers produce bland food, and add chemicals to it to get just the right taste, colour, and smell. Even natural flavouring is taken from other plants, or animal products, and basically injected into the food to get that test-marketed perfect flavour. Nothing you eat out of a package has the flavour it should - it's all manufactured by the same chemists who study how to make perfume smell so good, and in many cases the same chemicals are used.

So, in conclusion, genetically modified food won't taste any different, because the manufacturers won't let it. They control every drop of natural and artificial flavouring and will continue to do so. It may be possible for genetic engineering to bring back the nutrients food used to have before we began breeding for looks, and before we began overprocessing.

One can only hope so.

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