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Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Fueling Paranoia with Science

Alinea, Chicago, IL

If I haven't been clear before on my position, I think the "organic" appellation is meaningless, and does not (should not) signify correlation with food quality. Moreover, the whole brouhaha over transgenics (aka "GMO") is hysteria with no real basis in science.

Ok, that out of the way, let's get into some meaty speculation.

Most of the DNA in human genome doesn't encode information that translates into proteins - the old mind set was that since proteins are main movers and shakers of cellular biochemistry, then most of the human genome is useless, hence, the term "junk DNA". We know now, of course, that there's very little actual junk there. In fact, a huge proportion of the DNA (perhaps most of the human genome) is involved in regulation, small pieces of information that modulate the actions of the main "coding" regions. It's like any big organization; middle management makes up the bulk.
Liquid nitrogen, FlipBurger, Atlanta, GA
Well, this recent work from China shows that if humans who consume plants encoding one of these regulatory pieces, the plant DNA can modulate the diner's metabolism. This is astounding - it means that items we eat can transmit and modulate information to our own physiology. Conspiracy theorists can therefore have a leg to stand on against transgenics - after all, why would we allow some malicious entity to control our physiology or behavior through our food by encoding it into the DNA of the crop.

But would avoiding transgenics be a panacea? Maybe not.

When regular mice are transplanted with gut bacteria from obese mice, they start developing the propensity to gain weight. Scientists postulated that this is because the gut bacteria act as the gateway to nutrition, allowing more absorption or less depending on the set up. But more recent work indicates that since gut bacteria populations can affect mood and behavior, perhaps these the bacteria were actually modifying the mood of the mice so that they ate more.

Combine these discoveries, that eating "genetic information" is sufficient to transfer it, and that bacteria can be confer behavioral changes without modification, and one can speculate a grand conspiracy where food providers control our predilections and medical conditions.

And this can all be done "organically".

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