We all know vegetables are good for you but Mike Yawney reports on a new way that veggies could help ward off disease
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The dreaded flu shot, if you want one you have to be prepared to roll up your sleeve. Well what if you could skip that needle all together?
You may soon be able to by looking no further than your grocery store. Dr. Guy Cardineau is working on a way to grow vaccines in vegetables.
"My primary plant of interest is tomatoes, so we can produce vaccine in tomato fruit, harvest the fruit and then we freeze dry it to make a powder."
Once it's in powder form it's then made into pills. "Instead of getting a needle you just swallow it".
Most people we talked to on the street like the idea. "I hate needles. I hate them and they're scary," says one Calgarian, "Pills are much easier to take or juice definitely I think it's a great idea."
So, will we see the day when we can go into your local grocery store and pick up a chicken pox vaccine here in the produce section? Cardnieau says don't count on it any time soon.
"Pharmaceuticals have to be dosed" says Cardineau. "In order to make a vaccine you have to know what the dosage is you're given then you have to go back and get boosted. You don't want to be ingesting this material over and over again."
Besides the convenience factor, vegetables are cheap to produce, even in third world countries where delivery of vaccines is a major issue. Trials have already been done on animals in the states, but nothing on humans yet.
