Plant breeding | safe or experimental?

In my arguments about what is healthy now, I rarely talk about what is proven healthy or unhealthy....

Science vs health

Indeed, science is hardly useful when it comes to hard evidence of links in the field of health. There are simply too many variables in terms of people, diet and lifestyle that make linear linking of cause and an effect almost impossible. Yet we see patterns. If we look at the disease, vitality and obesity rates of the last 50 years, they don't look so good. So what has changed in those years?

Clearly, the erosion and processing of food by the food industry is a major change. In addition, we are more exposed to stress, radiation, and chemicals from our environment. However, one factor that is often overlooked is plant breeding.

Plant breeding

It is precisely because we know so little that I recommend staying as close to nature as possible and avoiding health experiments. Many people are averse to genetic modification because of possible health and other risks. Genes with positive properties from a plant or organism are then transferred into another organism through biotechnology.

But is there so much difference between genetic modification and plant breeding?
Actually, plant breeding does almost the same thing, but through targeted crosses of plants with the desired traits. One difference, however, is that no trait from a totally different organism can be crossed in. Incrossing a desired trait does take a lot longer in plant breeding than in genetic modification. Nevertheless, plant breeders have found ways to speed up this process. They have also developed techniques to disrupt cell division in a targeted way with the aim of creating polyploid crops. These polyploid crops would arise in nature only exceptionally and then disappear. Yet pure lines of them are grown because these crops often produce higher yields. I see intensive plant breeding, like genetic modification, as an experiment in health because:

• DNA from plants can change much faster than our own DNA. The question is whether our immune system and gut bacteria can process this food properly and thus whether our gene expression can adapt sufficiently.
• To breed more productive varieties methods are used that deliberately provoke cell division errors. This has happened with wheat varieties, for example. What polyploid crops mean for our health has not been well studied, but the widespread complaints that arise after eating the new wheat varieties speak volumes.
• To breed varieties with better flavour bitter flavours are often outcrossed. Bitters are often known for their health-promoting properties. Increased sweetness is also a desired flavour improvement, however, with increased sugar not known to be healthier either.
• To make varieties more resilient to pests and infections resistance-enhancing traits are purposefully crossed in. We do not really know whether the protective substances produced by the plant are always good for us. In fact, these substances could also be slightly toxic for us.

Therefore, I think it is very important to keep old seeds well stored in seed banks and keep sowing them out. I think there can be market for the old crops that have hardly been bred. And in the future, these seeds will even be indispensable because of the disappearance of diversity of crops.