Flashy Snacking

So yesterday I paid a visit to my favorite little sandwich shop. I always order the same thing: Tuna salad on sourdough with everything, add sprouts too, please. Tasty and filling, and only about $3.50. Sometimes, I will also pick up a little something for afternoon snacking. They have whole oranges, apples and bananas, hard-boiled eggs and the like. Usually, I go for the small, colorful bowl of raw veggies.

Yesterday, they were particularly colorful.


What is wrong with this picture, you ask? Simple. The orange stuff? It ain't cheese. It's cauliflower! Pretty, isn't it?

Now, this is my very first exposure to orange cauliflower, so naturally I had to rush to the nearest computer and do some internet research. According to this four-year-old USA Today article, orange cauliflower has been commercially available since 2004, but it was actually first discovered as a natural mutation as far back as 1970. A man named Michael Dickson is credited with heading up developing a new hybrid. Here's a quote from the article:

Dickson started developing the vegetable in 1981 after researchers from the National Vegetable Research Center in England who were familiar with his work forwarded him some seeds from the mutant plant, first found in the Bradford Marsh north of Toronto in 1970.

Research is also showing that the orange cauliflower varietal may actually be more healthful, allowing the plant to store higher levels of beta-carotene. Further research could lead to a wide range of crops genetically-modified to provide more complete nutrition, potentially good news for developing nations.

Regardless of where you stand on the issue of genetic modification of food, the new cauliflower sure is purty.