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Behold, a Blue Strawberry?

According to some convincing sources, a blue strawberry does exist! Yay or nay? On the one hand it looks awesome, that atomic blue color is quite a novelty and is extremely attractive. But at the same time, would you feel safe eating it? 

After all, it is a Willy Wonka-esque creation. This blue was purely unintentional as scientists wanted to figure out a way to protect strawberries from frost and found that a gene in “Artic Flounder Fish” produced antifreeze properties to protect itself from freezing waters. The result of genetically modifying this gene created a shockingly blue fruit that can withstand very cold temperatures and won’t turn into mush in your freezers.

Cynthia Blu Jawdeh uses a few different references to support the existence of the Blue Strawberry. On the other hand, there have been several other ‘Photoshop enthusiasts’ who have called out some of the inconsistencies in the featured image, and some of the choppiness around the border.

What are your thoughts? Would you eat one if it existed? Is the possibility of a Blue Strawberry that outstanding that you’d be hard-pressed to believe it exists?

Speak on it in the comments!

[via strawberrryblue.com]

By Lucia Phan

Lucia Phan has a Bachelors Degree from the University of California, Berkeley in Food & City Culture and Environmental Economics. She is the founder of Banana Slug Edibles, where she bakes specialty cakes and cupcakes for patients in Orange County & Los Angeles. In her free time she likes to collect recipes and will forever be searching for the best chocolate chip cookie recipe known to man.

51 replies on “Behold, a Blue Strawberry?”

Yeah, and the smoky shadow coming off the bottom of the thing.  Also the outline of the fruit is too sharp when it should be artfully out of focus like the rest of the background.  Too bad, though.  It’s pretty cute looking.  🙂

Almost all the food we eat anymore has been genetically modified in some form or another, for better processing, longevity and quality, I worry more about processed foods, we just give mother nature a helping hand, but food processing plants are run by min. Wage workers who could care less what goes in that can or bag,

well Amber you do already, with out even knowing it. Do you really think that Carrots were orange back in the day, doubt we have GM the vegie over the years, so when you think of a carrot you think orange. It’s the same with lettuce, a wild lettuce has fur on the outside so that bugs have trouble eating them, but we have GM the lettuce so that it doesn’t have fur.

Sir, as a farmer, let me please explain the difference between genetically modifying a plant vs. selective breeding. 

No, not all carrots are/were orange. I have a 300 yr old variety of carrot, and trust me – it’s naturally orange. The orange carrots you see in the store today are not genetically modify, they are a particular variety that has been favored by consumers, thus grown by farmers. The same goes for lettuce, not genetically modified. I also grow lettuce with and without fur – none of it genetically modified. 

Genetic modification involves the insertion or deletion of genes. In the process of cisgenesis, genes are artificially transferred between organisms that could be conventionally bred. In the process of transgenesis, genes from a different species are inserted, which is a form of horizontal gene transfer. 

but he is technically correct. Although personally food and pets I consider gene modifying simply a sped up process of selective breeding. Instead of hoping the mutations and phenotypes can be made dominant, you select the genes. Both require care yes, but its alot less sloppy and quicker to modify.

Finally! Somebody who knows the difference and what they are talking about. Too bad you’ll never convince these morons that its not all a conspiracy.

Josh you are so ignorant on the subject of GMO’s it’s dangerous for all of us. You seem to have confused (1) farmers ‘modifying’ particular varieties through selection, with (2) labs ‘modifying’ varieties through splicing crossed traits from other species that would not occur in Nature, including defensive traits such as ‘Round Up’ ready corn. Shame on you.

Actually Josh is right, selective breeding and GMOs are the same even though they have different processes, so don’t be calling anyone ignorant. Also most GMOs aren’t dangerous, there is no substantial evidence that they are all dangerous for us.

Lol selective breeding and genetically modifying does not have anything in common. Try breeding a fish with a carrot. Goodluck. Try breeding a carrot with a different variety of carrot. Pollen will be accepted and the carrot will create seed, because naturally they are the same species. For example, an african american and a caucasion couple have a baby, its still human, and may have traits from both parents, where in plants selective breeding you see what plants has the best traits and you breed those together away from other pollen sources (of the same species of plant, because if you tried to selectively breed a potatoe and a carrot, well,,, again goodluck). Then the seeds produced will HOPEFULLY turn out similar as imagined. GMO is taking genes from completely different species of not only plants, but bacteria, and now fish. The genes usually make the plant produce some kind of chemical to either make it pest resistant or in this case produce antifreeze, which even though it may contain small amounts, I doubt it would b any good for ya. Nice decorate plant tho.. for sure

Thats why we have all these weird citrus mixes right ? Like the tangalo? Or How about these freaky plum necterine or plum peach mixes. I dare you to buy one plant the pit and see what you get. You get a plum. How about donkeys and horses?? Huh jackass??

because citrus hybrids share the same species (not genus) and the pollen is interchangeable. The same is true for stone fruits – peaches, nectarines, plums, almonds and cherries – and equines. I hope I’m being pedantic and you were being sarcastic…

antifreeze is a catch all term for polyethilene glycol (the stuff you don’t want to drink and is in the radiator of your car), and some intresting proteins that actually hunt for ice and dismantle it (the kind eskimos eat when they fish a sleeper shark, and we get when we eat flavrsavr tomatoes or other GMOs)

the difference is basically that a selective breeding program is done by a guy wearing jeans and square cotton shirt for a couple decades while the GMO is done by a guy in a lab coat in years (and yes, FDA or other similar must aprove the plant for it to be sold openly, look at glowing plant stuff)
if you go “organic” (I really HATE calling naturally grown food organic because BPA, Antrhax and Dioxine ARE organic products) and need to keep a pesky worm out of your field you could use Bacillus Thuringensis, a bug that kills worms, or you could use a strain of BT’s poison injected to your plant.
some farmers speed up the trait appearence expose plants to mutagens, and then select the ones that a, survive and b have a trait of intrest.

Absolute garbage.  No such product.  I’m a researcher in strawberry. There are no strawberry GMO plants in production.  There is no blue strawberry.  

Transgenic technology (GM) could be used to help nematode problems and many other issues. It is difficult to get permission to even field test such things, let alone commercialize them. 

This story was made to whip the anti-GMO folks into a frenzy. There are no GM strawberries produced anywhere for human consumption.

You’ve all been fooled by this article.  Kevin Folta

Google my name and “strawberry”, figure it out. Rather than write a snarky comment it might be good to attempt a little research. Oh wait, if you are against biotech, then you don’t do that, you just look for ‘gotchas’.

There is no blue strawberry, never was. As a guy that knows strawberry genes and genetics I can tell you this is a hoax— and you fell for it!

sadly, this article and the salesman in my case… well sometimes you earn money, others you earn experience. found this articles too late.
anyway, how hard would it be to produce a color altered strawberry? (I know there are red and white/yellow varieties), but how hard would it be to make a plant produce chromatophores with another color, they have made some tobacco plants that have luciferin and glow when sprayed with luciferase, glow in the dark axolotls and pigs and I don’t know what did Peter Parker and a goat do to get spider silk proteins on it’s milk.

To see the major Photoshop errors, look in the top right edge of the berry. You can see a couple of bright red artifacts that Color Replace didn’t quite catch, and the blue mask spread over most of the seeds as well.

The color is fun, but a strawberry that might taste like fish?   The story sounds like a sci-fi cartoon and that might be exactly how true the whole thing is.

GM in and of itself is not evil. I’m not intrested in eating hairy lettuce and color in fruit and vegetables can indicate nutritional virtues and be part of the whole. Selective breeding of ANYthing modifies genes toward a desired outcome . You can use an axe to help someone chop firewood or you can use it to kill.

very true some tree farms have used GM to create trees that grow straighter and taller with less branches toward the lower part of the trees for lumber and paper so it doesnt always mean its bad

The strawberry wouldn’t taste like fish so you don’t have to worry about that because they are only taking the gene which is a small part of the DNA, so there will be no fish-like qualities except for the cold resistance, but as for the color I’m not sure that it will be like that unless there is a gene that codes for a blue color connected to the gene the codes for cold resistance.

The strawberry has a red aura on my hd flatscreen sadly. i’m great at photoshop and i think this picture was shopped, but i do wantto believe its out there and i would gleefully eat it.

my guess is the selected “Red” —> transformed —> “Blue” easy trick. thats why it couldn’t perfectly get the edges, too fine.

fuck yeah i would eat it at one time people thought that a tomato was a deadly fruit to eat it would mean you die now tomatoes are in every house so just because its diff it is bad i think not

yes, finnaly. It exists. on my world (which is kind of the future) this was my favorite food. Yes! make it available to the consumer, people who bitch about genetically modified food *well on the one hand check for allergens* but on the other if done subtle isn’t all that different from breeding controls, just check out the wild bannana vs the one you have in the supermarket. We made them the way they are.

I, for one, welcome our new genetically modified superfoods.

Not only could gmos like these provide much needed solutions to problems like malnutrition and hunger, but theyre so common now, no matter how much you try to avoid them it’s pretty much inevitable that you’re doomed to eat them regularly.

Ever eaten corn? 90% of US corn is genetically modified.

And unless scientists were to add in some bizarre poison gene or something, GMOs are safe. Think about a human, with an unfortunate pattern of DNA that caused an unwanted mutation, such as an extra digit. They’re still 100% human. Not crazy, disgusting, radioactive mutants.

These natural mutations are the same way. It’s not like adding chemicals to the food (which could be dangerous). The different genes are, as far as we know, no more dangerous than the genes in your body that make you different from the next person.

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