Skepticism, Science & Pseudoscience

More than 2000 foods have been created by mutagenesis, including the durum wheat used to make fine Italian pasta. This article from the New York Times lists wheat, barley and even ruby red grapefruits as crops generated through mutagenesis. Imagine that!! The delicious, organic grapefruit from my farmers’ market was developed using radiation to randomly create mutations, and somehow that’s less scary than a GMO.

A similar story unfolded in Texas. In 1929, farmers stumbled on the Ruby Red grapefruit, a natural mutant. Its flesh eventually faded to pink, however, and scientists fired radiation to produce mutants of deeper color — Star Ruby, released in 1971, and Rio Red, released in 1985. The mutant offspring now account for about 75 percent of all grapefruit grown in Texas.