Caramelized Veggie Stuffed Sweet Potato

4 large sweet potatoes

2 large white onions, chopped

8 asparagus, chopped

8 large cremini mushrooms, sliced

2 garlic cloves, crushed

3 tablespoons good quality balsamic vinegar

sea salt and black pepper

Preheat oven to 400 F

Rub potatoes with extra virgin olive oil. Season with sea salt and black pepper. Use a metal fork to poke holes in the potatoes. Bake for 1 hour or until soft. Keep warm.

On medium high heat, drizzle a generous amount of extra virgin olive (about three tablespoons) on a large deep sided skillet. When hot, add onions, garlic, mushrooms, asparagus, and balsamic vinegar. Season to taste with sea salt and black pepper. Saute until vegetables are soft and caramelized.

Cut potatoes lengthwise across and fill with the vegetable topping. Sparingly drizzle some of the balsamic reduction from the pan over the top and serve right away.

4 servings

Frito-Lay Chips Not 'All Natural'

www.chicagotribune.com - January 30th, 2012

A New York man sued Frito-Lay on Monday, claiming the company misleads consumers with the claim its popular Tostitos and SunChips products are made with "all-natural ingredients." 

In the proposed class-action lawsuit filed in Brooklyn federal court, plaintiff Chris Shake said the snacks actually contain corn and oils made from genetically engineered plants. 

Shake said he shelled out an additional 10 cents per ounce of chips to buy the allegedly "all-natural" Tostitos and SunChips instead of a product such as Doritos, which makes no such claim. 

Independent testing conducted on samples of Frito-Lay products labeled "all natural" uncovered the presence of ingredients -- including corn and vegetable oils -- made from genetically modified plants, the lawsuit said. 

Had he known that, Shake would never have paid a premium to purchase the "all-natural" chips, the lawsuit said, calling Frito-Lay's labels "deceptive".

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Immunity Booster + Protein

Primary Benefits*:

containing a high concentration of Vitamin C, along with several other beneficial vitamins and minerals, plus added Whey Protein, this is especially aimed at improving the overall immune system, regulating blood sugar, rebuilding bodily tissue, and sustaining healthy muscle tissue - among other benefits

based on information gathered at Livestrong.com

Juice Recipe:

8 strawberries

4 carrots

1/4 cantaloupe

1/2 watermelon

1 knob of ginger 

3 oranges

1 lemon

Makes approx. 40 oz.

(3 to 4 servings)

Protein (optional):

Natural whey protein

1 oz scoop per serving, mix thoroughly with juice after it is poured in glass. I used the following Bluebonnet Natural Whey (original flavor):

Chicken Nuggets: How Bad Are They?

www.health.yahoo.net - January 26th, 2012

When the kids are wailing, the boss wasn’t happy with your presentation, and the kitchen is anything but pristine, what mom hasn’t thrown up her hands and given in to demands for chicken nuggets? Like, three times a week?

Maybe Mom should tell the kids: Be careful what you wish for.

Read about celebrities who dealt with eating disorders.

This week 17-year-old British factory worker Stacey Irvine was rushed to the hospital when she collapsed, struggling to breathe. During the exam, doctors were stunned to learn that Ms. Irvine had never in her life eaten fruit or vegetables; instead she had eaten almost nothing but fast-food chicken nuggets since she was two years old.

Her mother, Evonne Irvine, told reporters she had gone to great lengths to try to feed her daughter more nutritious food, at one point even trying to starve the girl, but it hadn’t worked. Stacey responded that, once she started eating nuggets, she “loved them so much they were all I would eat.”

Learn to grow your own fruits and vegetables.

What’s so bad about nuggets?

They would be bad enough if they were merely chunks of chicken that had been breaded and deep-fried in oil. One documentary describes McDonald's nuggets as chickens “stripped down to the bone, and then 'ground up’ into a chicken mash, then combined with a variety of stabilizers and preservatives, pressed into familiar shapes, breaded and deep fried, freeze dried, and then shipped to a McDonald’s near you.”

Aside from chicken and oil, those “stabilizers and preservatives” are said to include dimethyl poly siloxane, a form of silicone also used in cosmetics. Another additive is tertiary butyl hydroquinone (TBHQ), a form of butane. According to one report, chicken is only about 50 percent of a McNugget; the remainder is a mixture of corn-derived ingredients, sugars and synthetic substances.

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Arugula Melon and Turkey Salad

Salad:

6 cups Arugula
1/2 cantaloupe

1 medium onion

1/4 cup kalamata olives

8 thick turkey slices

Sea salt and black pepper

Remove seeds and skin off the rock melon/cantaloupe and chop into bite size pieces. Cut turkey into bite size pieces and slice onion into thin strips. Arrange salad ingredients on a large serving platter (refer to picture).

Vinaigrette:

1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/2 cup good quality balsamic vinegar
1 garlic clove, crushed

1 tablespoon whole grain mustard

Sea salt and black pepper

Combine the garlic, mustard and balsamic vinegar in a blender and blend until smooth. With the motor running, slowly add the oil until emulsified. Season with sea salt and black pepper. Drizzle generously over the salad.

Serves 4

Types of Flour

www.whatscookingamerica.net - January 27th, 2012

Different Types of Flour:

Flour that is used in baking comes mainly from wheat, although it can be milled from corn, rice, nuts, legumes, and some fruits and vegetables. The type of flour of flour used is vital at getting the product right. Different types of flour are suited to different items and all flours are different you cannot switch from one type to another without consequences that could ruin the recipe. To achieve success in baking, it is important to know what the right flour is for the job!

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All-purpose flour is a blend of hard and soft wheat; it may be bleached or unbleached. It is usually translated as "plain flour." All-Purpose Flour has 8% to 11% protein (gluten) . All-purpose flour is one of the most commonly used and readily accessible flour in the United States.

Flour that is bleached naturally as it ages is labeled "unbleached," while chemically treated flour is labeled "bleached." Bleached flour has less protein than unbleached. Bleached is best for pie crusts, cookies, quick breads, pancakes and waffles. Use unbleached flour for yeast breads, Danish pastry, puff pastry, strudel, Yorkshire pudding, éclairs, cream puffs and popovers.

Shelf-Life: For cabinet storage, up to 8 months if properly stored in a sealed container or if tightly wrapped, and for refrigerator storage, up to one year. 

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Bread flour is white flour made from hard, high-protein wheat. It has more gluten strength and protein content than all-purpose flour. It is unbleached and sometimes conditioned with ascorbic acid, which increases volume and creates better texture. Bread flour has 12% to 14% protein (gluten). This is the best choice for yeast products.Shelf Life: Several months in a cool, dry cabinet when stored in a sealed container or if tightly wrapped, and up to one year in the freezer. 

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Buckwheat Flour is gluten-free which makes it a good choice for anybody with gluten sensitivities or celiac disease. It is packed with nutrients, readily available, easy to work with and has a nice nutty flavor. Check out the article Buckwheat Flour - Adds Nutrients and Flavor to Baked Goods.
 

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Cake flour is a fine-textured, soft-wheat flour with a high starch content. It has the lowest protein content of any wheat flour, 8% to 10% protein (gluten). It is chlorinated (a bleaching process which leaves the flour slightly acidic, sets a cake faster and distributes fat more evenly through the batter to improve texture. When you're making baked goods with a high ratio of sugar to flour, this flour will be better able to hold its rise and will be less liable to collapse. This flour is excellent for baking fine-textured cakes with greater volume and is used in some quick breads, muffins and cookies. If you cannot find cake flour, substitute bleached all-purpose flour, but subtract 2 tablespoons of flour for each cup used in the recipe (if using volume measuring). 

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Avocado Egg Pesto Salad

4 hard boiled eggs

2 large avocados

4 large celery stalks with leaves

3 tablespoons basil pesto

1/2 red pepper

extra virgin olive oil

sea salt and black pepper

Remove pit and skin, chop avocados into small bite size pieces. Remove shell off eggs and cut into quarters. Chop celery and leaves into bite size pieces. Chop red pepper into small pieces.

Combine pesto, avocado, eggs, and celery. Season with sea salt and black pepper.

Serve immediately with extra virgin olive oil over the top and red peppers

What Happens to Your Body After You Drink a Soda

www.shine.yahoo.com - June 27th, 2011

Sugar rushes and caffeine highs followed by a depressing energy crash are what happens to your body if you drink a soda right now, but plenty of Blisstree readers actually seem to be okay with that. Some of you think it's alarmist to compare a caffeine and sugar rush to doing drugs, and some just don't really care about the slump they'll find themselves in after drinking 39 grams of sugar, but what makes us really worried about a soda-slurping habit is what happens over the long term.

Here's a quick snapshot of you, in a few years, after drinking soda on a regular basis:

You'll Be Fatter: According to research in the Nurse's Health Study, which monitored the health of 90,000 women for eight years, drinking a single soda every day of the week added 10 pounds over a four-year period.

You'll Probably Have Diabetes: In the Nurses' Health Study, women who said they drank one or more servings a day of a sugar-sweetened soft drink or fruit punch were twice as likely to have developed type 2 diabetes during the study than those who rarely consumed these beverages.

You're Much More Likely to Develop Heart Disease: According to a study published in 2007 in Circulation, the journal of the American Heart Association, subjects who drank a soda every day over a four-year period had a 25% chance of developing high blood sugar levels and a 32% greater chance of developing lower "good" cholesterol levels. The Nurses' Health Study found that women who drank more than two sugary beverages per day had a 40% higher risk of heart attacks or death from heart disease than women who rarely drank sugary beverages.

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Roasted Vegetable Albondigas Soup

1 lb ground/mince sirloin steak

2 cups low sodium beef broth

2 cups whole wheat tube pasta

6 large tomatoes

1/2 onion 

1 head of garlic

12 asparagus

1 red pepper

1 yellow capsicum/pepper

good quality balsamic vinegar

freshly ground black pepper

sea salt

Preheat oven to 400

Cut capsicum/peppers in half and remove seeds. Cut tomatoes in half. Cut onion in large pieces. Cut top off garlic head. Arrange vegetables on a greased baking sheet. Drizzle balsamic vinegar and extra virgin olive oil generously over the veggies. Season with sea salt and black pepper.

Roast vegetables, turning over occasionally for 1 hour. Remove from the oven to cool.

Roll ground meat into small meatballs (teaspoon size)

Blend vegetables and broth until smooth.

On medium heat in a deep sided skillet, add pre-cooked pasta, vegetable blend, and meatballs, bring it all to a boil. Reduce to low temperature and simmer for up 1 hour.

Best when served hot, soon after done.

Organic Yogurt Mogul Has a Warning for Washington

www.seacoastonline.com - January 21st, 2012

EXETER — Stonyfield Farm co-founder Gary Hirshberg said the Londonderry-based yogurt company proves organic makes economic sense and he plans to take that message to Washington in a fight for the nation's health.

Hirshberg, who recently announced he is stepping down as president/chief executive of Stonyfield to bring his messages about health and the environment to a wider audience, was the featured speaker at the inaugural Food and Health Forum Food For Thought dinner and seminar Monday night at Blue Moon Evolution.

As roughly 100 guests dined on a three-course, locally sourced dinner of spinach and kale salad, chicken cacciatore and maple mousse, Hirshberg gave a sobering lecture on the damages done by the last 70 years of experimentation with genetically modified food.

"The data is in, and it's not working," Hirshberg said.

Hirshberg said it was a series of small, well-intentioned steps that led food production in America down an unsustainable path. He said a number of myths, including that of the Earth's "infinite resilience" and that waste and byproducts can be transported somewhere "away," have enabled a system that promotes obesity and other health risks, as well as production methods that harm the environment.

Because of the use of pesticides and the proliferation of genetically modified foods, Hirshberg said, one in three Americans born after the year 2000 will develop Type 2 diabetes and 41 percent of Americans will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetimes.

Those figures are a "devastating indictment of the system of modern living," and the No. 1 cause, he said, is exposure to chemicals. Studies show the average human is exposed to 80,000 to 100,000 chemicals, not all from food, in everyday living, he said.

As insects evolve to resist insecticides and weeds begin to tolerate herbicides, the stakes continue to rise, Hirshberg said. He said 13 million acres of fields in 26 states are no longer controllable by herbicides, and companies have engaged "in a form of insanity" by relying on defoliants.

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Double Chocolate Raspberry Black Bean Brownies

(No Sugar Added! No Wheat! Gluten Free!)

3 eggs

2 bananas

1 cup honey

1 cup fresh raspberries

2 cups black beans

1 cup ground flax seeds

1/2 cups dark chocolate chips

1/4 cup good quality cocoa

1 cup melted chocolate 

1 teaspoon high quality espresso powder (instant)

3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons orange zest

Preheat oven to 400 F

Blend all the ingredients in a blender (except raspberries) until smooth. Pour batter in to a mixing bowl, gently folding in the raspberries. Fill a lined 12 cup muffin pan to 3/4 full. Bake for 30 minutes or until set.

Serve warm or cool on a cookie rack and store in an air tight container (very moist).

Top 10 Food Label Tricks to Avoid in 2012

www.huffingtonpost.com - January 3rd, 2012

After overindulging during the holidays, many of us have resolved to eat a healthier diet in the new year. But doing so means choosing the right foods, and too often misleading food labels prompt us to purchase items that we think are good for us but really aren't. Here are 10 common labeling tricks to be aware of as you beef up your diet in 2012.

On labels anything less than 0.5 grams of trans fat -- a "bad" fat that's been linked to heart disease and other conditions -- can be legally rounded down to zero. That means if you eat several servings of a so-called trans fat-free food -- or a few such foods a day -- you can wind up consuming measurable amounts of trans fat. To avoid it, check ingredient labels and steer clear of anything containing partially hydrogenated oils.

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Radical C

Primary Benefits*:

strong blend of fruits and vegetables especially rich in vitamin C (plus other vitamins and minerals), providing strong immunity support, free radical reduction through powerful anti-oxidants, rapid wound repair and anti-aging properties, improved brain and nervous system function, as well as lowered blood pressure and ocular support.

*based on information gathered at OrganicFacts.net

Juice Recipe:

4 oranges

6 carrots

1/2 cabbage

1/2 cauliflower

2 cups spinach

8 strawberries

1 apple

Makes approx. 40 oz.

(3 to 4 servings)

Cooked Food Contains More Calories

www.forbes.com - December 28th, 2011

We’re often encouraged to get into the kitchen and prepare more home-cooked meals. In fact, nutrition experts suggest that this strategy could go some way toward a healthier, thinner nation. But, if the results of a study published last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences is anything to go by, we should be encouraging people to cook less, or rather, to eat more raw foods – especially if they have a few extra pounds they need to shift. The reason? Harvard scientists responsible for the research, found that cooking food increases the amount of energy or calories that it provides to your body.

This disparity  between cooked and raw fodder is due to the fact that the body uses more energy in digesting raw food than it does cooked food; that more of the energy available from raw food is lost to bacteria in our gut than is the case with cooked food, and that the body expends energy fighting off pathogens that are more prolific in raw food than in cooked.

The unique study which lasted 40 days, relied on 2 groups of mice that were fed a series of diets that consisted of either cooked or raw meat or cooked or raw sweet potatoes. Over the course of the study, the researchers tracked changes in the body mass of the mice, controlling for how much they ate and ran on an exercise wheel.

The results clearly demonstrated that both the cooked protein and cooked starch-rich tuber delivered more energy to the mice than raw variants of both.

“The starting energetic value of a food is based on the composition of that specific food, and that’s not going to change by cooking,” says Rachel Carmbody, the lead researcher on the study. “What cooking alters is the proportion of the energy that our bodies absorbs versus what is lost to gut bacteria, and what is excreted by our bodies. Specifically we believe that cooking reduces the energy that we use up in digestion, while increasing the amount that we absorb.”

“Because cooked food has been processed before it entered the body, some of the work in terms of breaking down that food has already been down so it saves our digestive system from working as hard. Basically cooking externalizes part of the digestive process.”

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Garbanzo Avocado Pepper Salad

2 cups cooked garbanzo beans
1/2 small white onion, chopped
1 red capsicum/pepper, chopped
1 yellow capsicum/pepper, chopped
1 large avocado, chopped
1 small garlic cloves, crushed
1/2 lemon, juiced
handful fresh parsley, chopped
1 teaspoon good quality balsamic vinegar
extra virgin olive oil
sea salt and black pepper

Combine all the ingredients and stir well to combine.  Season to your liking with sea salt and fresh black pepper before serving.

What is Aspartame?

www.naturalnews.com - December 04, 2011

Over a billion people consume aspartame in their foods and beverages across the world, believing it to be a safe ingredient, but what they probably don't know is that aspartame currently accounts forover 75% of all side effects complaints received by the FDA's Adverse Reaction Monitoring System (ARMS) for the past 4 years. It is banned by health-conscious countries all over the world, especially where there is a national healthcare system in place.

Aspartame is best known by the brand namesNutraSweet, Equal, Sweet One and Spoonful. Aspartame is asynthetic chemical combination which is comprised of approximately50% phenylalanine, 40% aspartic acid, and 10% methanol. Aspartame is found in thousands of foods, drinks, candy, gum, vitamins, health supplements and even pharmaceuticals. (http://www.wellsphere.com/wellpage/...)...

Each of the three ingredients in Aspartame poses its own dangersand each is well documented as causing a long list of side effects and dangerous health conditions. Watch for the ingredient Acesulfame Potassium, which is just another name for Aspartame.

Phenylalanine: Even a single use of Aspartame raises the blood phenylalanine levels. High blood phenylalanine can be concentrated in parts of the brain and isespecially dangerous for infants and fetuses. Because it is metabolized much more efficiently by rodents than humans, testing and research on rats alone is not sufficient enough to denounce the dangers of Aspartame for human consumption. Excessive levels of phenylalanine in the brain cause serotonin levels to decrease,leading to emotional disorders like depression.

Aspartic Acid: Aspartic acid is considered anexcito-toxin, which means it over stimulates certain neurons in the body until they die. Much like nitrates and MSG, aspartic acid can cause amino acid imbalances in the body and result in the interruption of normal neurotransmitter metabolism of the brain. (http://www.holisticmed.net/aspartam...)

Methanol becomes Formaldehyde(Embalming fluid): The most prominent danger of Aspartame is that when ingested, the methanol (wood alcohol) is distributed throughout the body, including the brain, muscle, fat and nervous tissues, and is thenmetabolized to form formaldehyde, which enters cells and binds to proteins and genetic material (DNA). Methanol is a dangerous neurotoxin and aknown carcinogen, which causes retinal damage in the eye, interferes with DNA processes, and can cause birth defects. (http://aspartame.mercola.com/)

The EPA's recommended limit of consumption of Methanol is 7.8 milligrams per day, but a one liter bottle of an Aspartame-sweetened beverage contains over 50 mg of methanol. Heavy users of Aspartame-containing products consume as much as 250 mg of methanol daily,which is over 30 times the EPA limit.

Suspiciously similar to the symptoms of Fibromyalgia and Multiple Sclerosis, Aspartame's long list includes dizziness, headaches, behavioral changes, hallucinations, depression, nausea, numbness, muscle spasms, weight gain, rashes, fatigue, irritability, insomnia, vision problems, hearing loss, heart palpitations, breathing difficulties, anxiety attacks, slurred speech, loss of taste, tinnitus, vertigo, memory loss, and joint pain. Also,many illnesses can be worsened by ingesting Aspartame, including chronic fatigue syndrome, brain tumors, epilepsy, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, mental retardation, and especially diabetes.

Birth defects: According to Dr. Louis Elsas, Pediatrician Professor of Genetics at Emory University, Phenylalanine can concentrate in the placenta, causing mental retardation of a fetus. Also, formaldehyde in the blood stream of a pregnant woman can cause her immune system to target the fetal tissue as a foreign substance and destroy it, the result being a miscarriage. This can happen before she even knows she is pregnant. (http://www.dorway.com/dr-elsas.txt)

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Turkey and Mixed Green Salad

Salad:

3 large hard boiled eggs, remove shell and chop into small pieces

6 cups mixed salad greens

1 medium onion, slice into thin strips

1 large tomato, slice into thick strips

1/2 yellow pepper, remove seeds and cut into thin strips

6 thick turkey slices

6 black olives, chopped

Sea salt and black pepper

Arrange salad ingredients on a large serving platter (refer to picture).

Vinaigrette:

8 large garlic cloves, roasted and peeled

3 tablespoons red wine vinegar

1 tablespoon whole grain mustard

1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil

Sea salt and black pepper

Combine the garlic, vinegar, mustard, lemon juice and sea salt and black pepper in a blender and blend until smooth. With the motor running, slowly add the oil until emulsified. Drizzle generously over the salad.

Serves 4

How Food Additives Threaten Your Health

www.theecologist.org - January 18th, 2012

In an extract from his new book, The Power of Self-Healing, Dr Fabrizio Mancini explains why sugar and food additives - from aspartame to trans fats - could have a severely detrimental effect on your health.

More than ever, I believe that we’ve become increasingly concerned about what’s in the 1,500 pounds of food each of us eats every year. We’re enjoying more lean meat, vegetables and fruits - and trying to cut back on fattening stuff like desserts and fried foods. All of this is certainly a step in the right direction, but many of us still have a long way to go. Our misconceptions run rampant, too. Some people still think margarine is much better than butter (it’s not - margarine is high in nasty, artery-clogging trans fats), so they’ll use twice as much. Or they think granola bars are a healthy snack, when they’re actually processed foods, loaded with fat and sugar.

The Suppressors

Any dietary problem can turn into a health problem. What I’d like to do is look at what I call the suppressors, foods that negate self-healing. They can make an unexpected appearance in your lifestyle, and you might not even be aware of them. Fortunately, I don’t have a long list so a few little tweaks will obliterate suppressors from your diet.

Added Sugar 

Ever wondered why you get cold sores or canker sores after eating candy or sweets? The reason is this: sugar is an ‘immunosuppressant.’ It interferes with the activity of immune-boosting lymphocytes. Your natural defences go down - and you get infections. Imagine 150 bags of sugar piled up in your garage. That’s how much sugar the average person consumes in a year! This means many of us are suppressing our immune systems by eating too much sugar. I believe that if we stopped eating such large amounts, we’d see a major decrease in colds, flu, and other infections.

You may have heard that sugar feeds cancer cells. There is evidence for this, but here is actually what happens: A diet high in sugar and refined foods makes blood sugar, or glucose, spike really high. This spike increases insulin production in the body (insulin helps your cells store and use glucose). Blood chemistry marked by chronically elevated glucose and elevated insulin sets the stage for cancer and its spread. Cancer cells are studded with insulin receptors. Receptors operate like door locks. Once insulin gets to the receptor, it acts like a key and unlocks the receptors on the cell wall. The cell opens up and lets insulin in the cancer cell, where it stimulates the division of the cell. Can you circumvent this process? Yes - in the following ways: avoiding refined sugars and flours, exercising regularly, cutting back on alcohol, reducing stress, and taking certain nutritional supplements. Sugar in all its various forms, including corn syrup, contributes to obesity and therefore to a whole range of related problems such as high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, and depression. We don’t really need sugar to live.

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Peach Blueberry Compote

4 large peaches

2 cups blueberries

1 cup maple syrup

1 cinnamon stick

pinch of cloves

pinch of nutmeg

1/2 orange, juiced

1 orange, zest

Remove skin and pit of the peaches and slice into thick strips.  In a medium pot on high heat, add maple syrup, orange juice and zest, nutmeg, cloves, and cinnamon stick. Bring to a rolling boil until the liquid has reduced to a syrup that will coat the back of a spoon. Lower temperature to medium low and add the fruit. Cover and gently simmer for about 5 minutes or until the peaches are soft.

Remove cinnamon stick and serve warm by itself or as a sidekick to your favorite dessert.

Makes 6 servings id served on it's own.

The Tampered Apple

www.care2.com - January 16th, 2012

“A bowl of apples is like a piece of art,” says Tony Freytag, marketing director at Crunch Pak, an apple-processing company. “It’s display. People won’t touch it. But you put out a tray of cut-up apples — that’s food.”

From a 2006 New York Times article looking at the booming industry of sliced and packaged apples

Apples, beyond looking like art and being the symbolic embodiment of the fertile, natural world, are also a hugely popular and profitable “natural” commodity. But as the above quote implies, cut apples are seen as more inviting and approachable than even the most perfect and flawless apple. This would explain why the cut and packaged apple industry is utterly booming. According to The New York Times, in 2006 “McDonald’s stocked 54 million pounds of pre-sliced apples, to sell with caramel dip or in salads, and this increased visibility boosted enthusiasm for them in school cafeterias and among time-strapped, health-conscious parents nationwide.” Crunch Pak, and the entire pre-sliced apple industry have greatly impacted how apples are sold, packaged, and consumed, and this, in large part, is due to the technological innovation employed to keep apples from browning. Apples, upon being sliced and exposed to oxygen, naturally begin to discolor, or brown, but companies like Crunch Pak have figured out how to cheat nature by rinsing apples in a combination of calcium and ascorbic acid — vitamin C — to maintain “freshness” and color. This is because a package of beige apple slices, no matter how delicious, will just not sell.

While this little preservation method has insured the viability of the apple-processing industry, it has also brought forth other entrepreneurial enterprise – namely the introduction of the genetically modified (GM) apple. A Canadian biotechnology company, Okanagan Specialty Fruits, has asked the United States to approve a genetically modified apple that won’t brown soon after its sliced, saying this improvement could boost sales of apples for snacks, salads and other uses. The conceit is that this biotech development, called the “Arctic” Apple, will improve upon Mother Nature, and will provide greater shelf stability and durability for retailers (no word yet on how this will at all benefit consumers). This would not be the first genetically modified fruit on the market. Back in 1992, the US Department of Agriculture approved a genetically modified tomato that was proven to ripen more slowly, and genetically modified salmon are still working their way through the system, hoping to hit the market as early as 2011. And domestically produced apples (at least the ones that are conventionally grown) are far from being wholly natural, with lots of cloning, spraying, and tinkering done behind the scenes. Even still, the leap from relatively natural to GM is a hard bite to swallow.

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