Weird Word

Frankenstein Monster

Monstrous Frankenfood

From an article "Frankenfood Gets Supersized,” a quote by Paul Christou, a plant biochemist at Spain’s University of Lleida:

“We’re aiming to produce transgenic plants in which you can provide as many nutrients as possible in one and the same seed,” said Christou. Christou’s team tested the technique on a variety of corn common in South Africa that’s known to produce low levels of beta carotene. Low levels of the nutrient can lead to blindness. The resulting plants had double the usual amount of folate, sixfold levels of ascorbate and 169 times more beta carotene. At that level of expression, a single serving of corn can provide a recommended daily beta carotene intake. The researchers are now experimenting with the addition of genes that enhance production of vitamin E, iron, zinc, calcium and other micronutrients, said Christou.

That’s a new word for me, Frankenfood, a word that’s meant to contain the whole debate about genetically-modified (GM) foods. It’s silly and mock-serious at the same time; it compresses in a few syllables a whole swarm of ideas, attitudes, emotions, notions of global science and hunger and malnutrition, death itself/life itself. The word even looks dark and deep and ponderous, but in a comic-book sort of way. I think it’s sort of ugly and a bit disturbing, but I also think it’s fiendishly clever, this newborn monstrosity of a word itself, little Frankenfood.