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Decaffeinated, Real Coffee
reeb writes "ABC News Australia reports that Brazilian scientists have discovered a naturally occurring but rare coffee plant, native to Ethiopia, that is 'almost free of caffeine.' Decaf without the genetic engineering?"
Cross breeding may take a while, though, so maybe by the time I'm not allowed to have caffeine anymore (vis-a-vis old age restrictions on my cardiac function) I'll have that option.
Granted, I'm not 18 anymore, but I'm not 40 yet either.
Unitarian Church: Freethinkers Congregate!
This is appalling news. We must write our congress people to tell them we want a war against the lack of drugs. This heretical coffee plant must be wiped out. Coffee should have caffeine!
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
From www.kraftfoods.com/maxwellhouse/mh_decaff.html
The Maxwell House® Family of naturally decaffeinated coffees offers the full-flavored taste of regular coffee, without the caffeine. Maxwell House® decaffeinates its coffees using pure water and natural effervescence. The effervescence gently draws the caffeine out of the beans, preserving their delicate coffee flavor.
I don't touch decaf, but who would genetically engineer decaf beans?
This is important because the headline/blurb is misleading.
Decaffeination is done through a process called 'supercritical fluid extraction' with carbon dioxide as a solvent. Turns out, with enough pressure and temperature, a substance can go 'supercritical', where it has the simultaneous properties of a gas, liquid, and solid. By fine tuning the temperature and pressure, it can act as a very selective solvent, only leeching out the caffeine and leaving in all the other delicious coffee flavors. The caffeine is then recovered and sold in pills or other products.
Not that you should drink decaf. Caffeine is the primary reason to drink coffee.
What is the problem with "genetic engineering"? We've been doing it for ages with breeding, as has "nature."
..it never had any caffeine to start with.
;)
it's cafeine free.. with the same taste apparently.
why would you drink coffee just for the taste is beyond me though when you could be drinking it with caffeine
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
I don't think I'm alone in preferring big cups of very strong coffee (made with an espresso machine), but I'm not always interested in the huge shot of caffine that a large, dense cup of espresso gives me. I get jittery, post unwise things online, and generally have to pace for a while before the peak buzz wears off and I can get real work done. So if this stuff could be bred with some of the really tasty beans to produce a delicious coffee that has, say 20% of the caffine, that's the stuff I'd be buying. (As long as FairTrade growers grew it.)
There's plenty of point to decaffeinated coffee.
I mean, once you get the caffeine out of the beans, you can grind the beans up and throw them in garbage bags marked "decaf", and people will buy them.
But more importantly, after processing a few tonnes of beans this way, you have a farking huge mountain of pure caffeine.
Which you can grind up and sprinkle in your coffee, or add to your Jolt, or Bawls, or just mainline the shit.
Unfortunately there will be flavor loss in caffeine free or decaffeinated coffee. it is inevitable as one of the major flavor compounds is the caffeine itself. caffeine has a strong acid (sour) flavor and is quite distinctive as a coffee component. just bite on a caffeine pill some time and compare it to a cup of standard starbucks black roast. i personally prefer a slightly sour (perhaps acrid) coffee with a slight fruity nose. of course decaffeination will not affect the flavor of the average low grade truck stop/diner coffee as that is already very nasty.
There are some serious implications to directly manipulating genes as opposed to just going through the natural breeding process. Previously, people just grew and harvested stuff until it had the best of the properties that they wanted, now we are starting to get genes from other places and just kind of force the plant to make it. Until now, it wasn't possible to cross a fish or a spider and a plant that grows corn. This is the danger with trying GMO's as opposed to just planting the seeds of the tallest corn stalk and eating the rest of the corn until all the corn grew tall.
Argument by analogy is not persuasive. And car analogies are the most annoying. Besides the analogy, the only other point you seem to make is that there is a "normal" mode of genetic change. If I am misunderstanding you, let me know.
But, you haven't done two things, which would have bolstered your argument:
1) You didn't define what and why a certain mode of genetic change is normal. Is it because it's done by nature and not by man? (what's the difference?) Is it because the genetic changes are imprecise? (what about precise changes to DNA that a natural virus causes?)
2) You didn't explain exactly why a natural change in DNA is good, but an artificial one is bad. Your example of "plague" is a red herring. The issue at hand is not about harmful products of genetic change, it's about the mode of the genetic change itself. We've already seen that both natural and artificial genetic changes can arrive at dangerous conclusions, so the argument that artificial genetic changes should be avoided because of that is irrelevant.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
It is on the shoulders of this research that groups like Monsato stand. I may disagree with their politics and economics, but I can find little fault in their science. It's nothing revolutionary.
Saying things like "Oops! Plague!" is simply inflammatory and only serves to reveal (and attempt to instill) a visceral fear of the subject. The invocation of the feared demon, Suv the Unimaginable, further demonstrates a need for a visceral reaction ("SUV's and GM are joining forces to destroy Gaia! Come to her aid!"). If you are going to oppose GM, at least use logical arguments and not absurd analogies that try to tie GM with something you may consider the Epitome of Evil.
And by the way, there no rules about interbreeding except the laws of genetics and physics. You can read that as, if it's possible for two species to swap genes, they will. Genes can even flow accross species (Google for lateral or horizontal transfer). Furthermore, there have been thousands of times that a wholly new gene was introduced into an animal, done by nature. Subtract the number of genes in the human genome from the number in a bacillus. That's a tiny fraction of the number of brand new genes that have been introduced. Or do you think that the thing that popped out of the primordial ooze had billions of genes in it, that were divided up amongst its progeny?
There is a reason for everything. Sometimes that reason just sucks.
Whatever though, the reason why fish do not breed with strawberries is because fishberries would taste absolutely disgusting. I thought I better let you know that.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
...under "Products Least Likely To Be Sold By Think Geek...
You claim that the foreseeing is not done past next week/year/whatever. What is the basis of this claim? I have seen computer model studies investigating the impact of introduced genes and species spreading over dozens of generations. You claim simply that it is not done. I have seen it done, and I have read the reports that came out of those studies. Have you done the same?
Have you read the studies done over the past decade on the effects of GM crops? In case you haven't, here's the rundown: The primary impact is on biodiversity inside the farmland itself (and not always a reduction, it depends on the crop type). The studies independently concluded that the same effect would result from an advance in conventional herbicide technology. Basically, the species that have begun to thrive secondary to agriculture no longer get the benefit of that agriculture, while other species do get a benefit. But even that is only is some cases. Corn and wheat crops have no significant effect on supplementary populations. The overall impact is about the same as introducing agriculture into an area.
Carefully controlled and contained research? Like the stuff we've been doing in labs and experimental farms for the past 20 years? Read the research, not the propaganda. Go to PubMed, not the Drudge report.
You still have not proposed one mechanism. Not one scenario. Not even one gene. Show that you speak about GM technology from anything other than ignorance. People tend to fear what they do not understand. It's not that hard to understand, either. Go read about it. And read the real science. Start with Mendel and work up from there. Read the case studies that have been done, but no one seems to notice.
History is littered with failed biological experiments that were going to work "just fine".
I note a distinct lack of examples. Don't just shoot me an experiment that gave an unexpected result, give me one that had a detrimental result of the scale you speak of here.
Good set of links from a research journal on the subject of GM. It has links to some of the studies I mentioned.
There is a reason for everything. Sometimes that reason just sucks.