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Chipotle is trumpeting its renunciation of ingredients derived from genetically modified organisms, or GMOs. The company says that using GMOs — mainly corn in its tortillas and soybean oil for cooking — "doesn't align" with its vision of "food with integrity." According to Chipotle spokesman Chris Arnold, it represents "our commitment to serving our customers the very best ingredients we can find."

Here at The Salt, though, we've been hearing from people who think Chipotle's stance shows little integrity at all. Rather, it shows a double helping of marketing hype, they say. Greg Jaffe, the expert on GMOs at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, calls it "hypocritical" and based on "smoke and mirrors." The Washington Post, meanwhile, accused the company of joining a "global propaganda campaign."

Why? Here are five reasons.

1. Soda

Way, way down at the bottom of the page that announces Chipotle's new policy, far below the headline that says "Food With Integrity; G-M-Over It," you'll find this sentence: "Many of the beverages sold in our restaurants contain genetically modified ingredients, including those containing corn syrup, which is almost always made from GMO corn."

Well. It appears that Chipotle is making a massive exception to its GMO-free policy when it comes to selling sugary drinks.

2. The "superweed" double standard

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A sunflower greenhouse in Fargo, N.D., where Brent Hulke is breeding plants that produce oil that's dramatically lower in saturated fat. Dan Charles/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Dan Charles/NPR

A sunflower greenhouse in Fargo, N.D., where Brent Hulke is breeding plants that produce oil that's dramatically lower in saturated fat.

Dan Charles/NPR

As an example of the ways that GMOs can damage the environment, Chipotle points to the problems caused by herbicide-tolerant GMO crops and how they encourage farmers to use a single herbicide, usually glyphosate, or Roundup. This, in turn, has led to the emergence of herbicide-resistant weeds, which Chipotle calls "superweeds."

Chipotle's answer to this, per its new non-GMO policy, is to switch from soybean oil to sunflower oil.

The problem is, many sunflower varieties, while not genetically modified, also are herbicide-tolerant. They were bred to tolerate a class of herbicides called ALS inhibitors. And since farmers starting relying on them, many weeds have evolved resistance to those herbicides. In fact, many more weeds have become resistant to ALS inhibitors than to glyphosate.

Why should Chipotle bemoan the emergence of weeds that are resistant to glyphosate, yet not to other weedkillers?

3. Salt

The Salt

Farmers Face Tough Choice On Ways To Fight New Strains Of Weeds

The top reason to back away from GMOs, according to Chipotle's web site, is uncertainty about the long-term safety of growing and consuming this food. Yet the company apparently has no problem with salt, a substance that poses risks that are far more clearly documented, Jaffe points out. A recent survey by the New York Times showed that the typical meal consumed at Chipotle contains close to a full day's recommended allowance of sodium, along with 1,070 calories.

For CSPI's Jaffe, the company's highly publicized move away from GMOs serves merely to distract consumers from "the real problem with Chipotle food, which is that it's just not healthy."

4. Science

Chipotle can't quite make up its mind what to say about the safety of GMOs. In an email, Chipotle spokesman Arnold told The Salt that "we didn't say we were doing this because we think GMO foods are not healthy." Yet the company's website casts doubt: "While some studies have shown GMOs to be safe, most of this research was funded by companies that sell GMO seeds and did not evaluate long-term effects. More independent studies are needed," it says.

The fact is, scientific studies have shown ill effects from eating lots of things on the Chipotle menu, if you eat them to excess. At the top of the list, of course, are sugar in those sodas, the refined carbohydrates in the white rice and flour tortillas, and salt. There's no such evidence about GMOs.

5. Meat

Chipotle says it wasn't too difficult or expensive to remove GMO ingredients from its burritos. It simply had to find new suppliers for corn flour and cooking oil.

It would be much harder, and presumably more expensive, to use only meat from pigs, chickens that consumed a non-GMO diet. Because the amount of corn or soybeans required to feed Chipotle's animals is vastly larger than what's needed for its tortillas or cooking oil. Find a new supply of animal feed would raise costs, so Chipotle isn't doing it.

Chipotle

Rapeseed, an oilseed known in North America as canola, has a mild reputation as a cooking oil. Maybe that's because the version that most consumers know is a pale, neutral-flavored oil used for frying and baking.

But in the U.K., a more colorful and flavorful version has made its way onto store shelves: cold-pressed rapeseed that goes for 5-7 per 500 milliliters (about $9 to 12 for 17 fluid ounces)

This vibrant, mustard-colored oil goes by names like Farrington's Mellow Yellow, Sussex Gold and Summer Harvest. Some products are touted as "extra virgin," and there's a Cotswold Gold rapeseed infused with white truffle. You'll find them at London's Fortnum and Mason food hall. Even chefs like Jamie Oliver and Nigella Lawson have embraced the "national" oil, which is grown, processed and marketed by British farmers.

Third-generation farmer Algy Garrod uses it on his popcorn, to give it "a nice, creamy flavor," he explains while driving me through his bright yellow fields in Norfolk, in the east of England. In late April, they're in full bloom.

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Cold-pressed British rapeseed oil with asparagus. Anne Bramley hide caption

itoggle caption Anne Bramley

Cold-pressed British rapeseed oil with asparagus.

Anne Bramley

After harvest, all that rapeseed will be transformed into a golden, nutty oil a few miles away at Crush Foods, the family business started by Brendan Playford and his father about five years ago. They bottled their first cold-pressed oil at the kitchen table. Now, with Playford's university friend, Stephen Newham, Crush is run from the environmentally-minded Salle Park Estate.

But long before rapeseed became a cooking oil, it was an industrial oil used as a lubricant in Victorian steam engines and World War II ships. Back in those days, it wasn't even edible because it contained such high levels of erucic acid, which is toxic, and glucosinalates. Rapeseed, after all, is a brassica – a genus of plants that includes Brussels sprouts, mustard and broccoli – and it had a particularly high quantity of glucosinalates, which impart a flavor often described as "cabbagey," according to Paul Williams, a plant pathologist at the University of Wisconsin.

In the 1970s, Canadian scientists brought these levels of erucic acid and glucosinalates almost to zero through plant breeding. And they were so proud of their creation, which also had the lowest level of saturated fat (7 percent) of any vegetable oil, they gave it a new name: canola, a contraction of Canada and ola, meaning oil.

The Salt

Simple Tricks Can Tame The Taste Of Broccoli And Its Cousins

This type of "double low" rapeseed is what we eat on both sides of the Atlantic, explains University of East Anglia's crop geneticist Rachel Wells.

The Salt

Top Five Myths Of Genetically Modified Seeds, Busted

But there are three key differences. The Europeans never adopted the name canola. And once genetically modified, herbicide resistant canola seeds were developed in 1995, North American farmers started planting mostly those, while European farmers stuck to the non-GMO rapeseed. (Today, 80-90 percent of the canola sold in the U.S. is GMO, while GMO rapeseed is banned across the European Union.)

Another key distinction of the artisanal — and more flavorful — rapeseed now available in the U.K. is how it's processed.

According to Playford of Crush in Norfolk, most rapeseed oil maintains its consistency by being processed and filtered in an intensive way that erases the muddled flavors resulting from seeds sourced from a range of different farmers. This is also true for the pale oil that dominates the American canola market.

But Crush and many other companies springing up around the U.K. and in other parts of Europe are cold pressing the seeds, just as with a high-quality olive oil. "When you cold press all you're doing is squeezing the oil out of the seeds very slowly at a temperature of no more than 40 degrees Celsius [104 Fahrenheit]," says Playford. "That keeps all the vitamin E, all of the flavor, every constituent compound that is in the oil completely intact."

And whether farmers are planting GMO or non-GMO rapeseed, most choose the "double low" varities that produce the greatest yield. But those aren't necessarily the ones that will create the best-tasting oils.

Crush's Playford and Newham think like single-malt whisky distillers and pay a premium to farmer Algy Garrod to get a rapeseed variety with a unique and appealing taste. Varieties "can range from tasting like fish to tasting like grass to tasting like cabbage," Playford tells The Salt.

"It's taken a lot a lot of time and research to find a seed variety that tastes like ours does," adds Newham. "We pride ourselves on the fact that it's a single variety." That allows Crush to keep a more consistent taste than if they would have to rely on a blend. And it keeps home cooks happy as well as the chefs who have to turn out hundreds of plates all tasting the same.

Many feel it keeps the British farm economy happy as well. In an era of local food love, rapeseed is celebrated as the new "British olive oil."

With the U.K. general election just days away, the National Farmers Union has created the "Great British Food Gets My Vote" campaign to encourage a commitment to domestic products. British culinary rapeseed oils provide a domestic alternative to imported olive oils from Italy, Greece and Spain.

The high-end rapeseed oils "are very important to farmers," says Guy Gagan from the NFU. "It's a local product, more or less in every town in England. It's a way for farmers to add value to their crops, so it's important to buy them rather than importing from outside the U.K."

Anne Bramley is the author of Eat Feed Autumn Winter and the host of the Eat Feed podcast. Twitter: @annebramley

rapeseed

canola

cooking oil

United Kingdom

The protest over a free speech award to Charlie Hebdo continues to grow.

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Earlier this week, six authors withdrew from the PEN American Center's annual gala in response to the organization's decision to give the French satirical magazine its Freedom of Expression Courage Award.

Former PEN American president Francine Prose was one of the original six. She tells NPR she's now been joined by more than 90 other writers — such as Junot Daz, Lorrie Moore and Rick Moody — who've signed on to an open letter critical of the decision.

"It is clear and inarguable that the murder of a dozen people in the Charlie Hebdo offices is sickening and tragic," the letter reads. "What is neither clear nor inarguable is the decision to confer an award for courageous freedom of expression on Charlie Hebdo, or what criteria, exactly, were used to make that decision."

It continues:

"Power and prestige are elements that must be recognized in considering almost any form of discourse, including satire. The inequities between the person holding the pen and the subject fixed on paper by that pen cannot, and must not, be ignored.

"To the section of the French population that is already marginalized, embattled, and victimized, a population that is shaped by the legacy of France's various colonial enterprises, and that contains a large percentage of devout Muslims, Charlie Hebdo's cartoons of the Prophet must be seen as being intended to cause further humiliation and suffering."

Current PEN American President Andrew Solomon told NPR on Monday that Charlie Hebdo deserves the award. "There have been very few places where people have consistently and constantly been willing to say the things that are offensive and to defend them as part of free speech," he said.

And some authors are speaking up in support of PEN American. Simon Schama took to Twitter this morning to defend the award:

The anti-Charlie Hebdo PEN protesters blame the victims, make satire defer to religion; gag freedom and contextualise away murder.

— Simon Schama (@simon_schama) April 30, 2015

Salman Rushdie, famously the subject of a fatwa after publishing The Satanic Verses, also came to PEN's defense in a letter to the organization. "This issue has nothing to do with an oppressed and disadvantaged minority," he wrote. "It has everything to do with the battle against fanatical Islam, which is highly organised, well funded, and which seeks to terrify us all, Muslims as well as non Muslims, into a cowed silence."

The gala is set to be held May 5. Charlie Hebdo editor Grard Biard is expected to accept the award, along with the magazine's film critic Jean-Baptiste Thoret.

free speech

Charlie Hebdo

Sitting in a stadium that seats 10,000, I look down at the ring and something I never thought I'd see in Asia: a bullfight.

But instead of pitting matador versus beast, two bulls face off in the South Korean version. And befitting a Buddhist country, the battle ends not in death, but in surrender. In some cases, one of the combatants simply turns and wanders off.

"In Korean bullfighting there is no mortal end in sight for these beasts of burden," my interpreter says.

The small town of Cheongdo, in the country's south, hosts the annual Bullfighting Festival every spring at the stadium.

"In Spain, it is a game between a human and a bull, with the bull being killed in the end," says the town's Mayor Lee Seung-yool. "But in Korea, we feel proud of the fact that we don't kill the bull and that they don't ever die in a fight. We simply let them express their emotions to each other and when one loses its strength, it turns away and shows its back. That is when the bull says he is done. The fight is brought to an end."

The judges, wearing green blazers, white gloves and cowboy hats, enter the 10,000-seat stadium and take their places before the bullfighting begins. Marius Stankiewicz for NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Marius Stankiewicz for NPR

After a tractor rakes the dirt, the judges in green blazers, white gloves, and cowboy hats enter the bovine battleground, bow to the audience and take their places.

Then the competitors come trundling out of the tunnel: The General, a hulking brown bull with a red bulls-eye painted on its body, and his opponent, Dragon, identified by a blue bulls-eye and led by a handler in a puncture-proof vest.

After snorting, moaning and the scraping the dirt with their forefeet, two of South Korea's fiercest bulls clash — racking horns and head butting. But there's not a lot of gore, and certainly not death.

Spectators place bets and watch the fight on screens. The maximum bet is 100,000 South Korean won, or about $95. Marius Stankiewicz for NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Marius Stankiewicz for NPR

"It is a thousand-year-old tradition passed down from our ancestors," says Lee Kang-min, an avid fan who has attended every year but one since the stadium was built in 2002. The only exception was last year, when the festival was cancelled due to the ferry disaster that killed more than 300, many of them high school students.

"Bulls would naturally fight each other when farmers would take them out to the pastures," he says. "The fighting then became a part of our culture so it was transformed into a competition for everyone to enjoy."

When young bulls are about a year old, around the time they're fitted with nose rings, they are also assessed to see if they have what it takes to fight. Head size, horn shape and strength of the hind legs are all factors.

Outside the stadium where the Cheongdo Bullfighting Festival takes place every spring in the southern part of South Korea. Marius Stankiewicz for NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Marius Stankiewicz for NPR

The bulls selected are then put through intense training to beef up their size and strength: they haul tires with a rope tied to the neck, they run in the pastures, and rack their horns against tree trunks.

Unlike other places, betting on these bullfights isn't just permitted, it's encouraged. The maximum bet is capped at 100,000 won, or about $95.

"I enjoy coming here with my family not only to admire the bulls and their strength but to wager a little bit of money," says Park Ji-hun, another spectator. "Hitting the jackpot isn't on many people's minds; it is just for fun."

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What he said rang true. When I attended, there were neither frenzied winners nor losers hanging their heads in dismay.

I did not see the "intensest degree of emotion in the spectator," something Ernest Hemingway once said that results from seeing "good bullfighters" fighting "good bulls."

But perhaps that was understandable in a country known as "The Land of Morning Calm."

At the end of the day, I place a 10,000 won bet on Wild Beast. He barely locks horns with his opponent when the rival bull breaks off and runs away.

It is the shortest fight of the day, lasting less than 10 seconds. But it earns me a win and a bit of Zen, happily achieved without the sight of a matador, a red cape, or lances dangling from the bloody nape of a bull.

South Korea