Cover Story
The secret life of food
by Bruce Ansley
Broccoli will never be the same again.
Here’s where it starts. Each week, in your supermarket with the trolley. At the door, heaps of apples, stacks of vegetables. Fresh, they say. Natural. Further on into the depths, cereals, canned foods. Good for you. The healthy choice. Those words are poised to take on new meaning. Apples can already be stored almost year-round. But vegetables at first, and later fruit, are to be given new life – a much longer one. And scientists say they’ll be good as gold.
Fresh? Yes, says plant scientist Julian Heyes. Good for you? Of course. Heyes is research leader for an ambitious new project that aims to produce the greens of the future. For three years his Crop and Food Research team has been working with Australian scientists and the horti-culture industry here and in Australia on the Vital Vegetables project. They aim to develop veges (and fruit) that can stay longer on the shelves while keeping their nutritional value. “We want to deliver fresh vegetables which are good for you and remain good for you,” says Heyes. The project aims at both supermarkets locally and overseas markets.
To make veges last longer, Heyes and his team are looking at conventional technology, such as the controlled atmosphere in which apples are stored, using plastics that slow transpiration rates so that the vegetables don’t deteriorate so quickly.
More controversially, they’re working on the molecular biology of plants, seeking to understand the processes of death and dying at the cellular level and trying to control it. “For example,” he says, “we’re looking at whether you can turn off sensitivity to the hormones and slow the rate of yellowing of broccoli, so it stays looking fresh for longer.”
Apples can be already be kept fresh nearly year-round with controlled-atmosphere technology, Heyes points out. But new technology could extend the life of asparagus and broccoli by up to a month. Asparagus, for example, could be shipped, rather than air-freighted, to Japan and still arrive fresh.
Broccoli will be the first of the new long-life vegetables to appear in supermarkets here. Heyes expects to see them about a year from now, although buyers will be eased into the future: at first, the industry will use plants selected for longer lives rather than the new technologies. Nor, Heyes insists, will these be genetically modified veges. “[GM vegetables] are not for commercial release, only for understanding the principles. But longer-term, we’d be comfortable with it. Consumers are apprehensive, but globally it is finding its place in the market. We won’t lead the market, but we’ll be ready when the market is ready.”
Will the public accept that aged vegetables are “fresh”? “We’ve had long discussions with people who talk about heritage varieties and how in the olden days things were better for you, etc,” says Heyes. “A lot of that is myth. If we can ensure a product looks fresh and has the same nutritional value we’ll happily stick a badge on it and say it’s a Vital Vegetable. But not if it’s elderly and tired. All we’re doing is making sure they’re fresh and good for you until they reach the marketplace.”
If the veges work out (they’ll cost more, of course), fruit may follow. Australia is looking at both, says Heyes; although New Zealand is concentrating on vegetables, fruit could be next.
“We think this could be the way of the future,” says Heyes. “A way of delivering differentiated vegetables to a global market and trying to raise the price above the humdrum where it is at the moment. It’s the big new push.”
The way of the future? Go past the fruit and vegetables, down the aisles. Another huge change is about to hit the shelves in the rest of the store. It’s called nutrigenomic food and, according to Tony Nowell, it’s the next giant leap forward,
“It’s leading-edge and if we embrace it, do it well, it will give the New Zealand food industry the opportunity to leap ahead,” says Nowell, who is both managing director of Griffin’s Foods and co-chair of the government’s Food and Beverage Taskforce.
Nutrigenomics is a child of the millennium – research started in 2000 – that, if it takes off, will radically change the way food is grown, processed and eaten. It will lead to diets tailored to a person’s genetic make-up, especially for baby-boomers trying to fend off the infirmities of ageing. A personalised breakfast cereal, for example, might reduce the chance of colon cancer.
Nutrigenomics is able to match the chemical composition of food with an individual’s genetic makeup. Companies are already in the market: for example, One Person Genetics, a Canadian firm, will work out your DNA from a saliva swab.
An international conference in Auckland this year heard that New Zealand is a world leader in nutrigenomics research. Food for thought – and for many other things, too.
A paper by University of Auckland academic Lynette Fergusson and Californian Jim Kaput includes cancer, cardiovascular disease, obesity, diabetes, depression and arthritis among the diseases whose victims could be helped by nutrigenomics. Researchers say that New Zealand’s advantage is its access to distinctive raw ingredients such as novel fruit varieties, protected cultivars, dairy and deer products and seafood.
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