Surprising Sources for New Foods
by Bill Wagner

     America has, for a long time, literally been a fertile field for the
development of new food.
     The American Indians first cultivated and then gave to the world
two of its most basic food crops, corn and potatoes. Other crops first
grown by Native Americans include manioc, which became a staple in
parts of Africa, as well as the American sweet potato, peanuts,
squashes, tomatoes, pumpkins, and others.
     Early American food pioneers include George Washington
Carver and Luther Burbank, who both worked in the late 19th and
early 20th centuries. Carver came up with scores of new uses for the
peanut and the sweet potato. Burbank developed all sorts of flowers,
vegetables, grains, grasses, and fruits, including the grapefruit.
     Today's food pioneers may not be as well known, but they
exist. The new foods they've set on our tables include edible
cottonseed, canola oil, scores of soybean products--and the revival of
the almost extinct American chestnut. The Food and Drug
Administration has a responsibility to see that these "new" foods are as
safe as those already on the market.

Cottonseed
     Credit for increased use of cottonseed products should go to
Woodrow Rogers, a West Texas farmer, according to both the Texas
Food and Fiber Commission and Texas Monthly magazine. The 78-
year-old Rogers started his search for a commercially viable edible
cottonseed 30 years ago.
     He maintains that cottonseed oil has been a human food for
more than 100 years, ever since scientists figured out how to remove
gossypol, a toxic hormone it contains.
     "Texas A & M had already bred out the gossypol long before I
started," Rogers says. "But you have to keep in mind that cottonseed is
a byproduct. The main value of cotton is for the fiber. The Texas A &
M strain wasn't commercially attractive. The plant was spindly, it was
hard to grow, and the quality of the cotton fiber was poor."
     Despite the bleak prognosis, Rogers was hopeful: "The new
Texas A & M strain was there for anyone to run with." He did,
starting with the first plants kept in a greenhouse on his Waco farm to
avoid cross-pollination from nearby conventional cotton. After
succeeding in growing the new cotton plants in the greenhouse, Rogers
tackled growing them outdoors. Workers lying on a platform pulled by
a slow-moving tractor plucked out plants that had the black dot of the
gossypol gland.
     "Every time we found a strain we liked, it took another seven
years to make it commercially acceptable," he says. "Strains on the
market containing the gossypol gland are all insect-, disease-, weather-
resistant, and quick maturing. Ours had to perform as well as they did
to compete."
     It took Rogers three more years to patent the new seed, LG 86.
FDA didn't require special tests, but the modified cottonseed product
had to meet existing requirements adopted some years earlier,
according to Robert L. Martin, supervisory consumer safety officer in
FDA's division of petition control. Martin explains that the regulation
governing modified cottonseed products intended for human 
consumption requires that the kernels be heated to 250 degrees for five
minutes, and be identified as additives on the label with the words
"glandless cottonseed."
     According to Betty Alford, Ph.D., Department of Nutrition and
Food Sciences, Texas Women's University, "Edible cottonseed is being
called 'the new staff of life.' It contains more than four times the
protein of wheat. But, more importantly, it contains all nine of the
essential amino acids the human diet requires."
     Cultivation of cotton goes back to the dawn of civilization along
the Nile in Egypt. Canola, another significant new food, has only been
around a few decades.

Canola
     Andy Thostenson, founder of Spectrum Crop Development
Corp., Ritzville, Wash., a canola expert, explains the plant that canola
comes from (which looks like a mustard plant) has been grown for
centuries in Central Europe under its original name of rapeseed.
     Long recognized as the premier marine steam engine lubricant,
rapeseed was first grown in Canada during World War II when
European supplies were cut off. But the war's end and the replacement
of steam engines with diesels eliminated the need for rapeseed oil as a
lubricant.
     In addition, although it was used as a food in Canada and
Europe, research on the long-term use of rapeseed oil as a human food
was disturbing. In 1970, European researchers linked the erucic acid
present in rapeseed oil with heart disease. The Canadian government
announced it would quite likely end all rapeseed production unless these
health concerns were addressed. By this time, two Canadian scientists
were working to lower the erucic acid level.
     The interest of Baldur Steffanson, Ph.D., University of
Manitoba, and Keith Downey of the Agriculture Canada Research
Station in Saskatoon was more than academic. Canadian farmers knew
how to grow rapeseed, the crop thrived there, and it could wean the
prairie provinces from their historic and often financially disastrous
reliance on the boom or bust world wheat market.
     The two scientists worked independently, but in consultation
with one another. With thousands of rapeseed varieties to analyze,
Downey and Steffanson saved considerable time by borrowing a novel
and highly effective tool from another discipline: gas chromatography.
     The petroleum industry's gas chromatography equipment was
adapted to analyze the fatty acid composition of vegetable oils, which
permitted 30 to 40 samples to be tested daily. "Using the old distillation
method, it would have taken several lifetimes to locate the right genetic
material," Steffanson said.
     Steffanson and Downey announced in 1974 the development of
the new rapeseed oil, in which the erucic acid had been replaced by
oleic acid, a type of monounsaturated fatty acid. Then came a new
name. According to Thostenson, canola is a contraction of "Canadian
oil."
     "It came onto the U.S. market at just the right time," says
Thostenson, "just when everyone was concerned about saturated fats,
and canola oil was the lowest."
     During its first few years in the U.S. market, canola wasn't
called canola---and it wasn't called rapeseed oil, either. It was called
low erucic acid rapeseed oil (LEAR) and affirmed as generally 
recognized as safe (GRAS) by FDA in 1985. FDA also stated that the
name "canola" could be used, but not without the words "low erucic
acid rapeseed oil" or the abbreviation, "LEAR."
     The Canola Council of Canada didn't like the term LEAR,
preferring canola as more descriptive and better known. It petitioned
FDA for permission to use canola all by itself.
     FDA agreed in 1988 that canola alone could appear on the label
for canola. Procter & Gamble became one of the primary marketers of
canola in this country.
     On the question of canola oil's claiming the lowest percentage of
saturated fat of the vegetable oils, FDA oil expert, David Firestone,
Ph.D., senior research chemist, division of pesticides and industrial
chemicals, says: "I wouldn't say canola has the lowest amount of
saturated fat of any vegetable oil, but it's certainly true of the edible
oils available on the market."
      Monounsaturated fats and polyunsaturated fats are not
associated with the increased risk of heart disease to the same extent as
saturated fat, present in animal products and some plant sources such as
coconut oil, palm kernel oil, palm oil, and cocoa butter. Other products
with high amounts of monounsaturates include olive oil and high-
monounsaturated forms of sunflower seed and safflower oils.

Grains
     In the past several years, there have been a number of new food
uses in the United States for grains. Soy foods, especially tofu (curdled
soy milk), have been around for centuries in Asia, and arrived here
with the first Chinese immigrants during California's gold rush days,
according to William Shurtleff, author and owner of a soy foods
business in Lafayette, Calif. Tofu, he adds, has been produced in San
Francisco for more than 100 years.
     According to Shurtleff, the demand for tofu and other soy foods
rose with the increasing influx of Asian immigrants. As they and their
children scattered all over the country, Asian grocery stores have
sprung up to serve them.
     "When other grocers saw how big this demand was, they started
stocking soy foods themselves," Shurtleff continues. While tofu was
catching on with consumers, a new soybean product, textured vegetable
protein, was being developed.
     "It first came into its own in 1973 with a huge burst of
popularity when the price of meat skyrocketed. Soy products were used
as meat extenders," says Shurtleff.
     During this time, Shurtleff continues, tofu and other soybean
products were also gaining popularity as a result of increasing
consumer health concerns. An increasing number of Americans became
vegetarians. Soy-based substitutes for all dairy products were developed
and marketed.
     Shurtleff says there have been few regulatory problems with soy
foods because the products have been around so long in the United
States and elsewhere. He adds that no one has ever challenged soy
foods from a health standpoint for adults who are eating a balanced
diet.
     But cases of severe malnutrition have been reported in infants
fed only soy milk. (See "Feeding Baby: Nature and Nurture" in the
September 1990 FDA Consumer.) Don Plumb, consumer safety officer
in  FDA's Office of Food Labeling, points out the agency has authority
to take action if the food labeling is false or misleading. This includes,
he says, the absence of appropriate information on the label about
consequences that may result from the use of the food.
     According to Plumb, FDA adopted a three-part import alert
guidance in 1987 on the labeling of soy-based drinks:
-    Soy drinks not registered as infant formulas that imply they may
be substituted for mother's milk are to be "detained." Although such
products may be seized, reexported to the shipper, or destroyed, Plumb
says most companies notified of a labeling violation take advantage of
their option to relabel the product.
-    Soy drinks represented to be a substitute for milk other than
mother's milk are to be referred to FDA for label review before
release.
-    Soy drinks not claiming or implying to be an infant formula or
milk substitute may be released with the comment that the product is
not to be used as infant formula or as a sole source of nutrition.

Chestnuts
     Unlike soybeans, canola and cotton, chestnuts are not a major
American crop. Before 1904 they were found in all the states east of
the Mississippi River, but an airborne fungus all but obliterated the
trees by the 1950s. Using such practices as grafting cuttings from a few
remaining American chestnuts and crossing them with Japanese and
Chinese varieties, scientists such as Bill MacDonald, Ph.D., professor
of plant pathology, University of West Virginia, are breeding back
much of the American chestnut.
     "Chestnuts are coming back. With only 3 percent fat, chestnuts
are good in our diets," says Michael Kelly, owner of Chestnut Hill
Nursery in Austin, Texas. He explains that most interest in chestnuts
these days is as a gourmet food, although many supermarkets stock
them during the winter holiday season.
     Most of these chestnuts are imported from Europe, Kelly
continues, adding that chestnut flour and hogs feeding on chestnuts are
still very much part of the European tradition. "It's hard to say exactly
where chestnuts are right now in the gourmet or any other food
market," Kelly continues. "We see chestnut trees as a form of
sustainable agriculture. They can be used in reforestation. In addition to
a human food, chestnuts are also a food for wildlife."
     FDA tested chestnuts a few years ago for residues of methyl
bromide, a volatile and potentially harmful fumigant used on the trees,
according to Ronald Roy, now chief of the domestic programs branch
of FDA's division of field programs planning and evaluation. Roy
supervised the 1990 tests while on the staff of FDA's former Office of
Physical Sciences.
     He points out that chestnuts were only one of a wide variety of
fruits and nuts tested. "There were no problems with chestnuts [tested],
and we had no reason to believe there would be. A new method of
identifying methyl bromide residue, a soil and post-harvest fumigant
permitted to be used on many fruits, grains, vegetables, and nuts, had
been introduced recently. We wanted to develop a data base to see what
levels, if any, of methyl bromide were present in these foods."
     Edible cottonseed, canola, soy foods, and chestnuts all reflect a
consuming public more concerned about the health aspects of  nutrition
and better informed than ever.
     Speaking for the chestnut growers, Kelly cited environmental
benefits while listing another: "Chestnut trees are part of our folklore."
     Finally, there's the pleasure that comes from eating the new
foods. When Shurtleff says his son and many of his contemporaries
think a "regular" hot dog is made with soy food and quite likely
wouldn't like or even eat meat hot dogs, he's giving us a glimpse of
how the American diet is constantly enriched. 

Bill Wagner is a writer in Watertown, S.D.
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