Category: Nutrition

Some people are just born ingrates. Sherry Tanumihardjo, who has “worked on provitamin A biofortification efforts since 2004 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison” is unhappy with the welcome Scidev.net gave to biofortified crops in its article Biofortified crops ready for developing world debut. Not warm enough, she seems to be saying in her letter at Scidev.net In defence of biofortification. Was it being attacked? I didn’t think so.

To be perfectly frank, I can’t be bothered to take Dr Tanumihardjo’s complaints all that seriously, not least because although her “lab strongly advocates the promotion of vegetables and fruits to enhance overall health and general well-being,” she doesn’t actually mention that except under the blanket of “other approaches”. Methinks she doth protest too much.

On the other hand, the world does not yet seem to be beating a path to biofortification’s door, judging by the comments at a blog post designed specifically to enable interested parties to “share your thoughts” on a Proposed Framework For Action that emerged from the recent First Global Conference on Biofortification. Two comments in over a week? Maybe everyone who was at the conference is perfectly happy with the draft Framework? Or maybe they are sharing their thoughts privately. On the other hand, I looked at the draft and, despite being assured by one participant that everyone was talking about dietary diversity, honest, and not just techno-fixes, I could find no evidence of that in the Framework for Action. So why aren’t I sharing my thoughts? Perhaps because I’ve seen no evidence that they’ll be given any notice.