Here are some of the ways scientists are using CRISPR to create healthier, more appealing, and more resilient foods — putting us closer to a future in which every person not only has access to the healthy foods they need, but actually wants to eat those foods, too.

Boosted tomatoes

In September 2021, Japanese startup Sanatech Seed began selling the first CRISPR’d food to reach the consumer market: a variety of tomatoes containing high amounts of gamma aminobutyric acid (GABA).

GABA is a compound produced naturally in our brains. Research has linked it to reduced feelings of stress and anxiety, and some scientists suspect that increasing GABA levels may be able to treat high blood pressure, insomnia, and other health problems, too.

Tastier greens

Mustard greens are a low-calorie, nutrient-dense leafy vegetable, but they have a distinctly bitter flavor caused by a reaction between two components — and that flavor can discourage some grocery shoppers from putting the healthy veggie in their carts.

“People want healthy salads, but they keep buying romaine because they’re used to the flavor,” Tom Adams, CEO of food-tech startup PairWise, told Singularity Hub.

Using CRISPR, Pairwise edited out one of the two bitterness-causing components, creating mustard greens with a milder taste. The FDA has already approved the greens, and shoppers in California and the Pacific Northwest should start to see them in the produce section in 2023.

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Prettier potatoes

When you slice or peel a potato, enzymes called “polyphenol oxidases” (PPOs) cause the starches in the tuber to react with the air and turn the potato’s flesh brown — this can affect its nutritional value, as well as make the potato look less appealing.

In 2020, researchers at the Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria Balcarce in Argentina revealed that they’d used CRISPR to silence a gene that instructs cells to produce PPOs, resulting in potatoes with reduced browning.

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