What foods are hybridized and do you think it is unhealthy to eat them?
If a food is organic does not that mean that it is not hybridized?
Is hybridization the same as GMO?

I just found this article that criticizes raw foodists for being against hybridized fruits:
[www.raw-food-health.net]

What do you think?

On Wikipedia it there is a list of fruits that include grapes, apricots, & many berries [en.wikipedia.org]

In Victoria Boutenko's "Green for Life", she includes many of these fruits in her smoothies.

People have been breeding plants for as almost as long as we've been planting them. We take the examples with traits we like, good taste, quick growing, bigger size, whatever. We breed these examples and see what we get. After enough plant-generations the original plant can be radically altered. The article you linked to points out that this process is indispensable if we're to produce the amount and quality of fruits and vegetables that we need.

The article didn't really touch on some of the risks of this hybridization, which include breeding out desirable traits, like drought resistance. The new varieties are often less hardy than the ones we started with, leading to increased risk of famine in bad years. But what's the alternative? If you remove millennia of human intervention in plant life, the world's plants would be far from suitable for maintaining the civilization we have now.

GMO, or genetically-modified organisms, are a whole different matter. In one sense, it's an attempt to speed up the process that used to require slow breeding over generations, by directly rearranging the genetic code of the plant. One problem with this is that we don't understand the genetic code all that well to begin with, so we often don't know what we're doing. Also, the manipulated genetic structures have been found to be much less stable than naturally occurring ones, increasing the probability that GMO food will break down in your body at the DNA level, leaving DNA fragments that can bond with your own DNA and cause problems. Thirdly, new designer DNA patterns are often mass produced so that hundreds of acres of crops may be planted with plants that are all genetically identical. Because each plant is a genetic twin to every other, a disease that kills off one plant will probably kill off all his twins. In a normal situation, when a new disease strain appears, there is usually a number of plants that endure better than the others, and these can be the parents for the following year's more resistant crop. Without this necessary biodiversity, entire crops can be destroyed, leading to famine. The common solution to prevent this is to make sure that no diseases can approach the crops, by growing them in a soup of pesticides, fungicides and herbicides that can poison wildlife, plants, and people.



So... I don't have any issues with old-fashioned hybridization, though I think it's important to move slowly and keep the original plants for a while in case your new varieties turn out to have serious unexpected weaknesses. GMO, though, sucks. Scientists definitely shouldn't be allowed to do that as recklessly as they currently are.

Jeni:

David Wolfe has written about hybridized foods and doesn't appear too keen on them. I just cannot imagine eschewing bananas, though, and he claims that they (the regular ones, at least) are hybridized. I perused the article and I have to say that I do feel that there are produce that seem more sugary. For instance, I really do not enjoy buying corn much anymore. It seems that it is much sweeter than I remember it. In addition to how it makes me feel to consume it, I also don't enjoy the flavor, which is more sugary and less "corny." That is one of the major issues I have with hybrid produce. I am not feeling grape tomatoes for the same reason. They are super sweet, but the tomato taste goes a'beggin'. Plus, where did this type come from? I am 44 and have only seen grape tomatoes in the last ten years or so, so I suspect they are hybrids

I just watched a documentary called The Botany of Desire, it talks about how plants have been using humans for their own propagation and development, i.e. hybridization. Mono cropping is the problem and nature hybridizes itself otherwise there would be no varieties, and of course that is dangerous for us because if dis-ease attacks one it will get all.
Society desire for uniformity and sweetness seems to be the main reason agri-business is the way it is today, gmo'd and government subsidized, Destroying local production because of unfair competition.
just my 2 centas

Actually hybrid seed is weaker because one breeds for specific traits. Open pollinated seed and food is more whole with components to withstand varied conditions and thereby a stronger material.

The Botany of Desire is a book by Michael Pollan who has written several other very good food related books. He talks about Apples as one of the 4 plants in the documentary as having seeds that will not be true to their parents. This natural Hybridization has enabled the Apple to adapt to climates all over the world. Most hybridization of our foods though, have commercial growers in mind, not flavor and nutrition. While I'm not opposed to growing hybrids in my Organic Garden, I usually do not. I tend to choose open Pollenated Heirloom varieties that may take a bit more care but are well worth it at harvest time.

In England all the seeds on sale are on an EU list of accepted seeds. This means big bucks for the big seed companies and a small variety of seeds to choose from.

There are some clever people who get around this. I buy my seeds from a 'not for profit' organisation that sell a wide variety of rare and unusual seeds. They get around the problem of the seed list by making you a member of their club when you buy seeds i.e 50p from your bill goes to annual membership so they are selling to their members and not the general public.

The seeds have lovely stories with them - i.e. 'these carrots were found growing in an old rectory garden in the south of France - we've trialed them for 3 years now what do you think' etc etc. Many are bound to be hybrids but this doesn't matter. It's the diversity of seed that matters. We need to keep as many old varieties going as possible. We also need to know how to save our own seed and do so.

Check out this article, I think you can find some useful information here:

[gardening.about.com]