FERN’s Friday Feed: What happened to the Honeycrisp?
Welcome to FERN’s Friday Feed (#FFF), where we share the stories from this week that made us stop and think.
How Honeycrisp apples went from marvel to mediocre
Serious Eats
“The Honeycrisp apple redefined what an apple could be. It was different from any other apple most American shoppers had encountered before, especially for consumers who frequented conventional grocery stores rather than farmers markets, where tastier heirloom varieties could be found even during the heyday of the Red Delicious. Unlike many other apple varieties, the Honeycrisp apple, journalists Deena Shanker and Lydia Mulvany noted in Bloomberg in 2008, ‘wasn’t bred to grow, store, or ship well,’ Instead, ‘It was bred for taste: crisp, with balanced sweetness and acidity.’” So what went wrong? “The answer,” writes Genevieve Yam, “is both simpler and more complex than you might think, and it’s impossible to answer that question without looking at how the Honeycrisp apple came about—and how it shot to stardom so quickly.”
How we created ultra-processed food from industrial waste
The Guardian (video)
“In the UK and US, more than half the average diet consists of ultra-processed foods. For some people, especially those who are younger, poorer or from disadvantaged areas, a diet comprising as much as 80% UPFs is typical, and this has been linked to a myriad of harmful effects to health. Neelam Tailor traces the surprising journey of ultra-processed foods from their origins in industrial waste to today’s complex ingredient lists and the regulatory loopholes that paved the way.”
Recreating an ancient Roman dinner of death
Atlas Obscura
“It’s the year 89. A group of Roman senators has arrived at a banquet hosted by Emperor Domitian. Instead of a warm, convivial scene of free-flowing wine and comfortable couches, they find a totally black room, from the walls to the dishes. At each of their seats stands a personalized tombstone. Boys, naked and painted black, enter ‘like phantoms’ and dance about the room. And the food? Not only is it black as well, but the menu consists of foods typically offered to the dead. According to the third-century historian Dio Cassius, who provides the sole account of the dinner in his Roman History, the effect was pure terror. As they tucked into their meal, their host talked ‘only upon topics relating to death and slaughter’ … But it’s almost too perfect,” writes Sam O’Brien. “While everyone seems to agree that it’s a great story, few believe it actually went down as Dio Cassius describes. That’s why I embarked on a mission to investigate the dastardly dinner, its host, its historical context, and its possible menu.”
As oceans warm, a race to breed heat-resistant coral
Yale Environment 360
“The Coralassist Lab is one of several coral restoration projects worldwide that are looking for ways to help corals acclimatize to increasingly common heat waves through assisted evolution — the practice of using human interventions to amp up natural processes. Some scientists are helping corals evolve more quickly by lab-breeding the symbiotic organisms that live inside them to be heat resistant,” writes Sofia Quaglia. “Others are gardening coral reefs in the wild so heat-resistant species can find each other and mate more easily. The field has been growing over the past 10 years. But big questions remain about whether scientists can identify the various genes linked with heat resistance, whether it’s logistically possible to scale up these assisted evolution efforts, and whether they will make a difference, considering the pace of global warming.”
Their fertilizer poisons farmland. Now, they want protection from lawsuits.
The New York Times
“For decades, a little-known company now owned by a Goldman Sachs fund has been making millions of dollars from the unlikely dregs of American life: sewage sludge. The company, Synagro, sells farmers treated sludge from factories and homes to use as fertilizer. But that fertilizer,” writes Hiroko Tabuchi, “also known as biosolids, can contain harmful “forever chemicals” known as PFAS linked to serious health problems including cancer and birth defects. Farmers are starting to find the chemicals contaminating their land, water, crops and livestock. Just this year, two common types of PFAS were declared hazardous substances by the Environmental Protection Agency under the Superfund law.”