Kale, cauliflower, cabbage, broccoli, Brussels sprouts are all the same species
vox.com
vox.com
You can make them at home, but it requires a lot of work and luck, since brassicas cross-breed if they are near each other at all.
We call them: Grönkål, Blomkål, Vitkål, Broccoli, Brysselkål
lehtikaali, kukkakaali, kaali, parsakaali, ruusukaalikasveille
We then looked up and saw that they're all part of the mustard family.
So if you're ever curious if a plant is part of the mustard family just let me taste it and I'll let you know... and then throw up on you.
I believe we should be focusing on other types of food that are related like pickles and cucumbers.
Safety not gauranteed: The solanine heavy Lenape Potato, sure solanine is in all potatoes, but when did a non-green one make you sick? The "killer zucchini" from New Zealand with dangerous amounts of curcubitan caused by a aphid outbreak in the organic fields.
Mono-cultures can happen: The Irish potato famine could have been reduced in severity if there were more variety among Ireland's food crops or their potato cultivars in 1845. While nowhere near as devasting to humanity, the destruction of the Gros Michel banana cultivar and the impending threat of the newest banana-phage on the current Cavendish cultivar aren't exactly a good faith offering on future mono-cultures, GMO or not, being avoided.
On one end, you talk about food safety, and how altering the DNA of a plant means it might not be safe anymore. But in that case, the best thing we could do is to make sure we are always making plants with the exact same genetics: All clones. That's the only way you can tell what you are eating. There are more genetic changes in a naturally bred, not inbred crop than there are in a GMO event vs the untraited plant.
Then you seem to dislike monocultures: If you want the plants to be safe from some phage, nothing better than high genetic diversity in plants, which leads to us really having no idea of how safe what we are eating is.
We either want to treat them as drugs, and make monocultures the way of the world, or we look for genetic diversity, in which case having some BT toxins embedded in your corn plant won't be that bad. Just ask agribusiness to make sure there's at least 8 different germplasms per bag or something like that.
It is interesting that we can accidentally select for poisonous compounds. It turns out that plants can make themselves resistant to many pests; by filling themselves full of poison. These kind of issues are well known. See Conjuring An Evolution To Serve You http://lesswrong.com/lw/l8/conjuring_an_evolution_to_serve_y...
The odds of mutation breeding producing a new gene (or more likely, changing an existing related gene to correct form) is incredibly small, and the result would be very expensive. Each generation would need to be sequenced, and the ones whose DNA is closer to the target re-bred. You want the mutation rates to be low enough that the rest of the plant isn't killed, so that's what, a mutation somewhere in the target gene every 1,000 generations? Assuming a short sequence of 100 base pairs, and perfect mutation gives 100,000 generations. Assuming a life cycle of 10 days means this will take over 2,500 years.
I deliberately low-balled these numbers.
So yes, "by chance" it's possible, in about the same way that a universe of monkeys could type out Hamlet.
Houshalter proposed that mutation breeding was one way to do so. My back-of-the-envelope estimation was to show that it wasn't.
What gene-swapped-based breeding technique can put a fish DNA sequence into a plant? I only know of genetic engineering techniques for that process.
How do these observations lead to a breeding technique where a plant ends up with fish DNA?
You'll notice the the events listed are either in related species, or from ecologically very tightly coupled species (eg, host and gut bacteria), and seem to imply time scales and population counts which are much higher than would be economically feasible for breeding.
I will admit that the definition of "species" is subject to debate. The general definition to which I subscribe requires that two individuals are able to mate, produce offspring, and that can then mate and produce offspring of its own. A major shortcoming with this definition, however, is that it does not address Ring Species. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species
Google is your friend.
FWIW, an awful lot of seed growing involves preventing unwanted crosses, but unless you were saving seeds from your garden you might overlook this.
As for overlooking - you're right, I did and should have thought of that before commenting. After a few attempts at saving seeds it became obvious to me that buying them each season was preferable.
I noticed that your understanding of 'species' doesn't consider obligate parthenogenesis. There are, for example, some 50 species of lizard that only reproduce parthenogenetically. Under your definition, these are not a species because there is no mating. I submit that that is a much more critical shortcoming than a ring species.
Perhaps your objection is more based on a lack of knowledge than anything else?
Quoting now from Stephen J. Gould (1992):
> I do not say that these criteria are free from exceptions; nature is nothing if not a domain of exceptions, where an example against any clean generality can always be found. Some distinct populations of plants, for example, can and frequently do interbreed with others that ought to be separate species by all other standards. (This is why the classification of certain groups--the rhododendrons, for example--is such a mess.) But the criteria work in the vast majority of cases, including humans.
Since then we've learned a lot more about bacteria, which employ horizontal gene transfer. This completely breaks the traditional model.
Our own human cells can also pull off some odd tricks. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeLa#New_species_proposal for one proposal for why HeLa cells should be considered its own species. (Note also the mention of special rules for an independent unicellular asexually reproducing species.)
One word: "dogs".
(Are you skeptical that chihuahuas and huskies are the same species? Some dog breeds are incapable of mating successfully without artificial insemination, or reproducing effectively -- think of a great dane foetus gestating in a female chihuahua -- but within a small single-digit number of generations they can produce hybridised "mutts" that are interfertile. Similarly, the brassicae are pretty much the same thing.)
But what I'll mention to you is: Have you not noticed how similar the taste is between some of these mentioned items?
An example of where this is useful is around Neanderthals. "Did they have language?", "Did they have burial with ceremony?" are questions where it's fine to have belief on the current evidence because there's not enough data to know the answer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goitrogen makes the same claims, but has a long list of indicted veggies, with notably missing/broken sources.
raw mushrooms and raw spinach are certainly popular...
What's the impact of having kale juice once a day for a year? What if we simply consume extra iodine? Send links to papers if you have any primary references.
Different animals have different metabolisms.
Edit: Sorry, I liked to the wrong article! Again, I'm not saying you shouldn't eat kale - just that it's not justified or even scientifically correct to eat it raw! Here's the article I wanted to link to: http://commonhealth.wbur.org/2014/01/the-dark-side-of-kale-a...
But when you see an article that demonizes a food, think about whether or not there are citations and follow those citations. Ask yourself whether they apply to human beings eating a diverse diet with adequete [sic] calories. Or whether they involve very high concentrations no human being eats, isolated chemicals, or preparations that no normal human would put on their plate.
EDIT: Now that you've added an article, I recommend you read the first as preparation for reading the second with an appropriately critical mind.
http://commonhealth.wbur.org/2014/01/thyroid-doc-kale-proble...
The endocrinologist answering questions says Basically the goitrogens are challenges to the thyroid. But in the absence of iodine deficiency, substantial or prolonged ingestion of dietary goitrogens and lastly the absence of an underlying thyroid disorder, the risk in this country of having problems in this area are very, very low, almost minuscule. Again, that’s because the vast majority of people have adequate iodine levels to counteract the effect of goitrogens.
So modest consumption doesn't seem like it is going to bother healthy people any.
So tired of hearing this nonsense from people who read a few blog posts instead of asking their doctor.
I've discussed this with my physician, they said it was nothing to worry about if you're healthy.
Healthy meaning "doesn't have kidney disease." Not very subjective.
Not sure why you're suggesting thats a flawed system, the vast majority of people don't have kidney disease. Are you suggesting we should subject people with no risk factors or symptoms to expensive tests for every disease, no matter how uncommon?
The suggestion is that raw kale, spinach etc. would reliably cause iodine deficiency, which just isn't the case. If someone is eating a diet w/ adequate iodine, some raw veggies are not going cause any problems.
So I'll be looking into the details of this.
Centuries-old practice had people leeching the vile humors out of their bodies when they got sick, too. The ancients got a lot of stuff wrong, and what they got right was largely by accident. I'll trust scientific rigor along with the confidence intervals and error bars over received wisdom every time.
Also, here's a link to a Pubmed article on chicken soup:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0002768/
Nothing about breaking down the cell walls of vegetables to release the nutrients, so I don't know if that's true.
And here's another Pubmed article about soup, highlighting the danger of food fads (because people don't want to wait for nutritional science to prove something and instead rely on the "test of the ages"):
You also mis-characterize my position on PubMed. It is a search engine with which I am familiar, not the summation of all scientific medicine. If I can't find something in PubMed, my thoughts on a matter remain "dunno", which is orthogonal to "believe/disbelieve" or "accept/reject". I included links to PubMed articles on soup as a humorous rejoinder to your rhetorical question. That was probably unnecessary, and I apologize.
Maybe people just think you're a jackass.
I eat mushrooms raw, quite a lot. You seem to think that this is a bad idea, but.. I wouldn't know why (and would certainly have a hard time believing that this is Not Good). It might help to present a bit of a disclaimer/"this is.where I'm coming from" statement in your post, before you start?
False morels have higher concentrations of it: