Gene-edited Foods: Yes or No?

Gene-edited foods could soon be hitting supermarket shelves in the UK as the government announced plans to allow gene-edited foods to be sold unlabeled in British supermarkets, promoting an outcry from some consumers who claim they "should be given a choice".

GE foods are produced using the gene-editing tool CRISPR, which edits the existing DNA of a plant or animal. Unlike genetically modified food, gene-edited food contains no "foreign" DNA from other species. Scientists use a specialized protein to make tiny changes to the organism's DNA that could occur naturally or through selective breeding.

Environment Secretary George Eustice insisted that GE products would not need to be advertised as such because they are "fundamentally natural". However, Scotland and Wales both vowed to reject the move, and Britain's biggest supermarkets have so far refused to confirm if they will stock the foods.

Now let's take a closer look at some of the GE foods that could be on shelves in the UK as early as next year.

Vitamin D-boosted tomatoes

Tomatoes have been genetically engineered to produce more vitamin D. Researchers claim that the "super" fruits could help reduce the risk of developing diseases such as cancer, Parkinson's disease and dementia (痴呆).

Mushrooms that don't go brown

A variety of white button mushroom has been genetically edited so that it doesn't go brown when sliced. The researchers used CRISPR to remove a small piece of one gene that causes mushroom browning. Thus it can stay on supermarket shelves for longer, reducing food waste.

Bread that reduces cancer risk from burnt toast

Acrylamide (丙烯酰胺), a substance that can cause cancer, is created when bread is baked or toasted. Researchers have edited the genome (基因组) of wheat to reduce its production of the cancer-causing chemical.

Chickens resistant to bird flu

Researchers have used gene-editing techniques to grow chicken cells that are unable to replicate the bird flu virus in a lab. They edited a section of chicken DNA to make it resistant to the virus.

If you've noticed you're getting less while your bill almost stays the same, it's not just you."Shrinkflation"—reducing a product's size or quantity while keeping its price stable is showing up in shops around the world.

As the global economy struggles with inflation (通货膨胀), rising material costs and higher human cost, consumers are bearing the increasing production prices. "Consumers are more likely to notice how their purchases are affecting their wallets than the amount of product lost' when sizes decrease," says Mark Stiving, the chief pricing educator at Impact Pricing. As a result, companies use shrinkflation to make consumers "less painful"

Yet even as shrinkflation comes with inflation, the problem doesn't end after inflation does. Once the new sizes are on the shelf, they are likely to stay that way. "Shoppers don't have a choice. They have to adapt themselves to the changes," adds Stiving. There are rare exceptions, but companies generally take the opportunity to get more profits.

For many companies, shrinkflation seems to be unavoidable. In food industry, for example, where customers are highly sensitive to price, lifting prices might make customers jump ship to another brand. But facing the continuous inflation, the companies have to do something to maintain their profits. Introducing small reduction in the size of their goods should enable them to improve profits while keeping their prices competitive.

But once customers notice the change, they might feel fooled, leading to a loss of trust and confidence.

Some grocers are using stickers to remind shoppers of shrinkflation, but still, it's a tough hit to the bottom line一especially because the price of products generally doesn't fall as inflation does. Consumers may need to examine both price and size sensibly as they shop, and make sure they don't fall into the trap of that supersize on the shelf.

Critics of higher education often complain that universities offer too many worthless degrees with little value in the workplace. Since top universities tend to produce higher-earning graduates than less selective institutions do, you might expect them to teach more practical courses. Yet data from Britain's department for education show the opposite. Undergraduate students at leading universities are more likely to study purely academic fields such as philosophy and classics, whereas those at less choosy ones tend to pick career-related topics such as business or nursing.

What could explain this seeming contradiction? One reason is that employers treat a degree from a top university as an indicator of intelligence. This means that students at top institutions can study bookish subjects and still get by financially. The average Cambridge graduate in a creative-arts subject - tho university's least profitable group of courses, including fields such as music - earns around £25, 000 ($32, 400) at age 26. Economics students from less well-known universities, such as Hull, make a similar amount.

Yet even though Oxbridge students can pretend to read "Ulysses" for years and still expect a decent salary, they end up paying a large opportunity cost by pursuing the arts. That is because employers reserve the highest starting wages for students who both attended a leading university and also studied a marketable subject. Cambridge creative-arts graduates earn £11, 000 more at age 26 than do those from Wrexham Glyndwr University, whose arts graduates are the lowest-earning in Britain. In contrast, Cambridge economics graduates make £44, 000 more than those from the University of Salford, where the economics course is the country's least profitable.

Many gifted arts students would struggle to deal with numbers. But for those who can manage both, the cost of sticking with the arts, in terms of future wages, is steep. Cambridge creative-arts students have A-level scores close to those of economics students at Warwick, but earn about half as much. That is equal to giving up an annual income worth £50, 000.