The cotton industry has come up with a new reason to grow the very water hungry cotton plant: they’ve managed to remove the toxin from cottonseeds to make them edible. And this is progress?
Hands up if you’ve ever felt like a nice yummy bowl of cottonseed, splashed with milk, honey and Vitamins A, B, C, D, E and added folate? If scientists get their way, cottonseeds could feed the world’s hungry, although not likely in the same way as a bowl of cereal.
I’m all for science and I support good scientists, and good scientific work. But while this does sound like a momentous achievement and is being feted around the world as though it is, something about the whole idea of removing a toxin from cottonseeds so we can eat them sends a shiver up my spine.
Call me crazy, but using all those cottonseeds from the cotton that is collected as a food source is just one of those ideas that sounded good at the time, but isn’t.
Not only does cottonseed not register in my brain as food, I actually like eating real food, like fruits and vegetables, meats and the edible grains we know and love.
Cotton itself is a very water hungry plant, and in the modern era, anything that unduly wastes water is going to be looked at closely. But I’m guessing there’s another reason why cottonseeds are being touted as a food source, and that’s to give the cotton industry another reason to keep on growing it.
Why? Well, history teaches us about the benefits of hemp in regards to fibre good enough for clothing, ropes and more – the ancient and not-so-ancient worlds depended on it for many things. Even their seeds have been touted as a protein source, although nothing has happened there.
There are even engineered varieties that significant reduce or even remove the psychoactive component THC which would, in theory, stop it from being used as a drug, so its use could focus around the material benefits the plant matter provides to human beings as it did in the past.
And as far as I’m aware, while hemp needs water to grow, it pretty much grows anywhere and very rapidly at that, and doesn’t need as much water as cotton to grow.
But cotton is the plant and fibre that modern humans use to create materials for clothes, along with polyester, and while this remains the case, the cotton and polyester industries will continue campaigning against the use of hemp material, and will engage scientists to do things like engineer toxic cottonseeds to be edible.
I’m sorry, but this is not progress. This is a whitewash and a distraction, much like developing a hydrogen engine where the energy used in creating the hydrogen fuel is more than the energy you get back from it.
Just as hemp could be used to cheaply supply the world’s material fibre needs, electric motors powered by fast-charging rechargeable batteries could be powering the world’s cars and trucks.
Instead of focusing on cottonseeds as food, let’s focus on better farming practices, better use of water, better management of the environment and a better harnessing of natural and renewable energy sources so everyone on the planet can life a better life, not just a lucky few.
Cottonseeds as food is just a flash-in-the-pan hot new trend. It is not the answer.
To read more on how cottonseeds are being proposed as a food source, an article from Sci-Tech Today and another from Science News Online give you their perspectives.
