by Karl Haro von Mogel on 5 October 2011 Most of you are familiar with Monsanto the seed giant. All of you are familiar with the cruciferous vegetable, broccoli. Some of you may know that Monsanto released a variety of broccoli last year purported to be better for you, called “Beneforté.” One year later, an article by a newly-registered dietitian named Andy Bellatti appeared on Grist to bust Monsanto’s ‘better’ broccoli, which some of you may have noticed. But none of you who finish reading this post will believe that Bellatti “busted” the Beneforté broccoli at all. The only thing he busted was his own research, journalistic, and dietetic integrity.
Glusosino-What?
 There has been considerable interest in investigating the composition of foods to determine what parts of them can contribute to our health. (And what detracts from it too.) Broccoli and other cruciferous vegetables have garnered considerable attention for their effects on the development of cancer. Research has revealed an important class of compounds called Glucosinolates, particularly one known as Glucoraphanin. When this sulfur-containing compound is metabolized by a plant enzyme called Myrosinase, it becomes one of two different compounds: Sulforaphane and Sulforaphane Nitrile. These two Isothiocyanates have been found to have preventative effects against cancer, and Sulforaphane is by far the more potent of the two. And this year, an important paper found that even the precursor, Glucoraphanin, also has important effects.
I apologize for the dizzying array of chemical names. So let me see if I can make them easier to understand. Glucosinolates include many similar kinds of compounds, and Glucoraphanin at the top of the picture here is one example. It gets the Gluco- from having a glucose sugar molecule bonded to it, which is that ring on the right hand side. Isothiocyanates are another class of compounds, and the main example is Sulforaphane. You can distinguish them by that N=C=S group on the Sulforaphane above. There are many Glucosinolates and Isothiocyanates important for this topic, so rather than bring up so many names I’ll only talk about the groups (end in -ates) and the two specific ones I mentioned (Glucoraphanin and Sulforaphane both have -raph- in them).
How do they work? Well, there is a huge amount of research on this topic, and while I could send you on a journey through a google or PubMed search, there are a few clear things that we know.
Continue reading…
by Anastasia on 21 September 2011 If you read my post “I’m back!” then you know that I recently finished my thesis. Now that it’s all safely submitted and I can’t make any more changes anyway, I wanted to post parts of the thesis for anyone who might be interested. Here, I’ll start off with the abstract, rationale, and organization scheme. In subsequent posts, I’ll have parts of the introduction and conclusion chapters. I haven’t decided what I’ll do with the 2 unpublished research chapters. If you have any ideas, please let me know in the comments.
by Matt DiLeo on 20 September 2011 The September issue of CSA news has a nice (open access) article entitled: “Do polycultures have a role in modern agriculture?”
Some key caveats: * While diverse plant mixtures have been associated with many benefits, high biomass yield (i.e. what farmers get paid for) is usually not one of them. * It’s very difficult to maintain complex plant mixtures – usually a single species will come to dominate. * Our crop monocultures represent those
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by Anastasia on 6 September 2011
Threadless recently hosted* a t-shirt contest for Jeffery Smith‘s Institute for Responsible Technology: the No GMO t-shirt design challenge (see Karl’s post Vote for talking, not fighting for more details). One of the shirts really struck me: GMO Shortens Life Span by Michael. The artist proposes an equation:
plants + DNA = death
This slogan really makes me wonder – does the artist know that plants have DNA? Does he know that his own cells are teeming with DNA? That without DNA, life wouldn’t exist? Do most people know that DNA is essential for life? What would the average person say if told that they eat about 100 thousand miles of DNA in the average meal?
If this is the level of understanding, or rather, misunderstanding, that persons have, can we ever expect to have useful discourse on the subject of biotechnology or even biology itself? This worries me greatly. Just in case anyone out there reading this is concerned that DNA is dangerous, I’d like to provide a simple recipe that anyone can use to see and touch DNA for themselves.
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Busting Bellatti’s Bad Broccoli Breath
Most of you are familiar with Monsanto the seed giant. All of you are familiar with the cruciferous vegetable, broccoli. Some of you may know that Monsanto released a variety of broccoli last year purported to be better for you, called “Beneforté.” One year later, an article by a newly-registered dietitian named Andy Bellatti appeared on Grist to bust Monsanto’s ‘better’ broccoli, which some of you may have noticed. But none of you who finish reading this post will believe that Bellatti “busted” the Beneforté broccoli at all. The only thing he busted was his own research, journalistic, and dietetic integrity.
Glusosino-What?
I apologize for the dizzying array of chemical names. So let me see if I can make them easier to understand. Glucosinolates include many similar kinds of compounds, and Glucoraphanin at the top of the picture here is one example. It gets the Gluco- from having a glucose sugar molecule bonded to it, which is that ring on the right hand side. Isothiocyanates are another class of compounds, and the main example is Sulforaphane. You can distinguish them by that N=C=S group on the Sulforaphane above. There are many Glucosinolates and Isothiocyanates important for this topic, so rather than bring up so many names I’ll only talk about the groups (end in -ates) and the two specific ones I mentioned (Glucoraphanin and Sulforaphane both have -raph- in them).
How do they work? Well, there is a huge amount of research on this topic, and while I could send you on a journey through a google or PubMed search, there are a few clear things that we know.
Continue reading…