In the late 1980s, I had a friend who was a PhD student at UC Davis experimenting in genetically modified strawberries. I remember telling him it sounded like science fiction. He said he was doing it to help farmers.
Now, every time I bite into an unusually large, glowing strawberry, I wonder if my friend created it.
When it comes to modern food production, the question of what is real or not real is a tricky one. More to the point, if a product is altered, does that mean it's always bad for you?
According to a group of protesters on Saturday at Main Beach in Laguna, the answer is emphatically yes. As part of a global March Against Monsanto, they were protesting the large American company for manufacturing genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
With signs, slogans and chants, they carried their messages to a honking public.
But are all the pithy one-liners true? If you believed everything you saw Saturday, Monsanto's "seeds of destruction" are killing our children, causing ecological disaster and probably contributing to global warming.