New Cottonseed Is Safe for People to Eat
npr.org
npr.org
Before the seeds can be sold as food or feed, they'll need approval from the Food and Drug Administration
I'm honestly tired of nonsense headlines like this -- officially the FDA has not approved Cottonseed for human consumption, the only thing that has happened is that the US Dept of Agriculture has deregulated the growing of it.[0]
Now, aside from the fact that most people here on HN would be shouting about the nasty effects that deregulation can have, we have an irresponsible headline from NPR of all places about how it is "safe". This is patently false -- nobody has declared this safe except for the typist who wrote this article.
[0]: https://www.aphis.usda.gov/aphis/ourfocus/biotechnology/brs-...
This article merely explains that a new strain of cotton has been developed that does not have the qualities that typically make cottonseed poisonous.
FDA approval is still needed, but that doesn’t make the article a lie.
If you like to think in probabilities, the likelihood that this is unsafe is far greater, if you judge based on other modern, engineered foods.
Heck, judging by the damage of vegetable oils which are still considered to be “heart healthy”, I wouldn’t be surprised if this were approved only to discover it was a poison, a decade or two from now, which is about the time it takes to see the effects at large. Plus another two decades for health professionals to finally acknowledge it.
The burden of proof is on the inventor, not on the FDA or other organizations.
Given the complete clusterfuck that is nutrition, the though that this new cottonseed could be fed to the livestock we eat is terrifying.
https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jo...
Bidaou (aka Tricholoma auratum), for instance, grows in south-western France, and was rated as delicious in some mushroom books as recently as 20 years ago. Selling it has only been banned since 2005. The last recorded death it caused was in 2009. [1] [2]
Fools webcap [3] and Deadly webcap [4] were likewise thought to be edible until last century.
[1]: https://www.mycodb.fr/fiche.php?genre=Tricholoma&espece=aura... [French]
[2]: https://www.mycofrance.fr/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Lettre-... [French]
I think the fact that cottonseed can now be fed to other types of livestock is far more important than it being used by humans. But unless there is something that you can specifically see or a very simple test the chance of getting the wrong kind is high.
Here in Michigan flame retardant got accidentally mixed in animal feed causing the PBB crisis. As a result most citizens of the state have measurable levels in their blood. There was even a TV movie with Art Carney and Ron Howard. I was friends with the farmer who wrote the book upon which the movie was based.
http://www.michiganradio.org/post/michigans-toxic-1973-pbb-f...
Cottonseed is considered as a nutritious source of food in Madurai, India (and perhaps in other parts of the world). They don't genetically modify cotton, but they process cottonseed to create cottonseed "milk", a healthy, nutritious drink
ddg couldn't find many online references to cottonseed milk (Paruthi Paal in Tamil). However, here are a couple of links
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlD9gxef5mo Starting from around minute 18:00 onwards, this video shows a vendor talking about how he makes cottonseed milk. Unfortunately, the video doesn't have English subtitles, but it might be interesting anyway :)
The most cooking can do is reduce or mitigate the harmful effects to some extent. Fermentation is another technique but neither reduces the risk to zero.
"(as any other protein)" is not true either, consider for example peanut allergies, and related allergies such as tree nuts and soy. Cupins, prolamins, profilins are known protein families which can cause allergic reactions. Hence the warning you may see on food labels:
Allergy information: This product was processed in a facility that processes peanuts, tree nuts, soy, wheat, and dairy products.
even if they are cooked.
Therefore for marketing and legal reasons one may want to still use really inefficient form of genetic modification just to avoid those additional loopholes users of the more efficient method must jump trough.
That cottonseed oil is permitted in food is among the most egregious loopholes in US food regulation. When you see cottonseed oil in the ingredients you know that the manufacturer has cut cost and quality of every other ingredient to the absolute limit.
Cows' tolerance for cottonseed toxin is exaggerated -- recommendations are that cottonseed meal be no more than 10% of their diet. The attraction for ranchers has been that cottonseed meal is practically free, because it is toxic waste.
Growing cotton is terrible for the soil, and cotton needs huge amounts of water. Anything that increases acres under cotton cultivation is an evil.
The vegetarian equivalent of tastes like chicken
If you want to feed an engineered plant seed, which is already being consumed by some livestock and humans to more livestock than you did previously then you need to win a Nobel Prize and get Knighted by the Queen of England before the HN crowd will even consider that there's a remote chance your new engineered seed is safe.
I'm not sure what this says about HN or human nature in general but it's at least an amusing contradiction.
We are beginning to understand the effects of seed oils (marketing term: vegetable oils) and it is not looking good. Excerpt from _Don't Eat The Oil! The Health Consequences of Consuming "Vegetable" Oils_ by Thomas L. Copmann:
---
This book is a compilation of two and a half years of research based entirely on peer-reviewed publications. While I wasn't planning on publishing a book, the further I looked into the interrelationship of a number of major diseases, there slowly appeared to be a common denominator - the levels of polyunsaturated oils in our fatty tissues from consuming vegetable oils. Finally, the weight of evidence compelled me to write this book.
Polyunsaturated oils are a fairly new addition to the modern diet. Prior to their introduction at the turn of the century, cooking fats were mostly beef tallow and butter. Corn oil was introduced in 1911, followed by cottonseed, soybean, and rapeseed (Canola) oil labeled as "vegetable" oils. The fact is however, these oils have nothing in common with vegetables, but are the product of solvent extraction of oils from seeds.
The problem with these oils is their molecular structure. They are rich in polyunsaturated fats which means they have multiple double bonds between carbon atoms. Oxygen reacts with the double bonds in a process called _lipid peroxidation_. The end result is the formation of highly reactive free radicals which interact with cellular membranes, nuclear DNA, and deplete cells of their antioxidant defenses.
As you read the following chapters, the important thing to remember is exposing polyunsaturated fats to oxygen leads to free radical formation, while saturated fat cannot undergo this reaction because of their lack of double bonds. During the process of oil extraction, the oil is subject to high temperatures which accelerate the peroxidation reaction.
Polyunsaturated fats break down as their double bonds are exposed to oxygen. And heating accelerated this process. Therefore, lipid peroxidation is the degradation process involving the double bond(s) found in polyunsaturated fatty acids, causing a deterioration of food quality (odor, flavor, color, texture, toxicity). This is collectively known as turning "rancid". According to one analysis, a total of 130 volatile compounds were isolated from a piece of fried chicken alone!
... In summary, polyunsaturated fats are highly unstable and are readily oxidized to form toxic compounds that are implicated in most of our modern diseases (cardiovascular disease, cancer, obesity, immunological disorders, neurological disease processes, dysbiosis, lipofuscin, and premature aging). We will explore each of these in detail looking at mechanistic as well as epidemiological evidence.
---
Long story short, it took nearly a century to assess the consequences of the oil of cottonseed, declaring "New Cottonseed Is Safe for People to Eat" is irresponsibly premature. Only time will tell.
I keep coming back to Nassim Nicholas Taleb's book _Antifragile_, where he explains how he doesn't eat any fruit that doesn't have an ancient Greek/Hebrew name, and doesn't drink any liquid that hasn't existed for a thousand years. Will this new "safe" cottonseed survive the test of time, or be looked upon hundreds of years from now as another catastrophic dietary mistake?
Even brussels sprouts doesn’t pass that test.
In general I think it's best, when possible, to stick with foods that have been around for a long long time. I think a lot of the new stuff we've introduced this century has some pretty nasty medium to long term consequences, even if it won't give you acute poisoning right off the bat. If a food/dish has been around for a few centuries or millenia then chances are we've already worked those kinks out.
I think Taleb's heuristic here is for him to eat only fruits his ancestors have been eating for at least 1000 years. IIUC, his advice to a person of Chinese ancestry would be to eat only fruits with a Chinese name.
(Also, you changed the "Greek/Hebrew" in the earlier comment to "Greek/Latin".)
They said "Greek/Hebrew" not "Greek/Latin".
>which isn't really a good look
How is that exactly? Why would it be bad for a Greek person to embrace Greek culture, history and tradition?
>The Romans also ignored the risks of lead, which is just ironic in this context.
It is not ironic, it is the point. He's not saying "do anything Romans did!" (even if we pretend he said Romans when that's something you made up). He's saying "do things that have been around since Roman times and nobody has found any health problems with in the 2000 years since then." We had lots of time to find out lead is bad, we found that out, told everyone, and now we eat less of it. We've only been eating seed oils for 100 years. They are probably bad too but we haven't had the time to figure it out and tell everyone yet. So you take a risk by eating them.