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Carrion Luggage #1102027 added November 20, 2025 at 9:09am
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Violeting Nature
From a source I know little about, The Packer, here's some good news from the produce section.
Cool. Now do purple cows.
Eating the rainbow has become easier and more flavorful in recent years...
That phrase, "eating the rainbow," always cracks me up. Mainly because I knew this very cute chick in college who went to costume parties as Rainbow Brite.
...especially when it comes to anthocyanins — the purple pigment that’s in blueberries, blackberries, red grape skins, eggplant and now — thanks to genetic modification — the purple tomato.
I suppose it's too much to hope for that they transfer to red wines.
Nathan Pumplin...
One fat-fingered typo away from being the most awesome aptronym ever.
...is CEO of Norfolk Healthy Produce, the company behind the Empress Purple Tomato, a bioengineered tomato made by adding two genes from snapdragons.
Cue "mad scientist" memes.
These tomatoes are a rich source of antioxidants because the purple pigments are in the whole tomato, not just the skin.
More importantly, they look cool.
But the trained molecular biologist, who has worked for nearly 20 years in R&D and commercializing new types of plants that solve problems, says bringing a GMO purple tomato to market has not been without challenges.
I'll bet. On the one side, you have people who have a knee-jerk reaction to anything "new." On the other, you have people who have a knee-jerk reaction to anything that whiffs of "artificial."
Adding to the challenge is the reality that most consumers don’t know what a GMO is, making education critical to driving demand for the purple tomato.
You know, I used to have a knee-jerk reaction, myself: that education would solve many problems. I have since lost my youthful naïveté on the subject, as I have learned that most people flat-out refuse to be educated.
While Pumplin says backlash against GMOs halted innovation and new product development for years, now he sees things coming full circle.
Education or not, sometimes, people just need time to get used to the ideas.
“We also have the Pinkglow pineapple from Del Monte on the market. We have the Arctic Apple, which is growing and doing very well in a lot of segments.”
That said, I'd draw the line at pink pineapple, myself.
Every bit of produce we eat has been genetically modified, either through the process of artificial selection or hybridization, or both. GMOs just continue that fine agricultural tradition. Could they be used for evil? Sure. All technology could. But that's no reason to have a blanket fear of genetic modification. |
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