Heinz tomatoes

I was sitting on an outdoor terrasse recently, waiting for my veggie burger, when I noticed the ketchup bottle on the table said "Tomatoes grown from Heinz seeds."

Intrigued, I looked this up.

It turns out that Heinz tomato products are grown from seeds that are rigorously tested and hybridized, but not genetically modified. So that's good.

(Hybridization happens when a human moves pollen from the flower of one plant to a different plant in an attempt to increase certain strong characteristics and diminish others. It's a trial and error process which is rigorously monitored and studied, but which does not include splicing and dicing genes.)

Of course, the ketchup also contains high fructose corn syrup (doesn't everything) which is most likely gmo.

But it's fun that a big company is reminding us that the stuff we eat comes from the earth.

Willy Blackmore wrote about the Heinz tomato on takepart. You can read his piece here.