Quote:
“It’s obviously the greatest source of fiber in the world,” Cotton Incorporated researcher Robert Nichols says in the video, “but there are products we can make for human consumption from cottonseed. We need to think more of cotton as a food plant.”
Keerti Rathore, plant biotechnologist, and his team at Texas A&M University, have developed a new variety of cotton that has no gossypol in the seed.
“Every year, the world produces about 44 million metric tons of cottonseed, which is equivalent to 10 million tons of protein,” he says. “People like the taste of cottonseed; many would much rather eat cottonseed than soybeans.”
Now, what about the B12 levels in cotton?
Quote:
3. Ordinary commercial cotton contained 1500 μμ g. B12 per g.; cotton from cotton bolls, 700 μμ g. and absorbent or non-absorbent, 10 μμ g. or less
1500 picogram/g equals 0,15 mcg/100g. I haven't seen studies on B12 levels in cotton seeds, and don't plan to eat a lot of cotton derived anyting, but it's interesting with all this information popping up about small B12 amounts (and we need really small amounts of B12) in plants, water, soil etc.
Quote:
1. Vitamin B12 activity for a number of natural products was determined by the growth of Euglena gracilis var. bacillaris. 2. Variability of Euglena and the presence of inhibitory substances in extracts of natural materials influenced the results of assays. 3. Ordinary commercial cotton contained 1500 μμ g. B12 per g.; cotton from cotton bolls, 700 μμ g. and absorbent or non-absorbent, 10 μμ g. or less. Yellow bone marrow contained 0.002 μ g. per g.; shrimps per g. fresh weight, from 0.0055 to 0.009 μ g.; oysters from 0.2 to 0.460 μ g.; clams, from 0.14 to 0.18 μ g.; earthworms, from 0.08 to 0.180 μ g.; marine algae from less than 0.0001 to 0.1 μ g. per g. dry weight. Oyster juice contained per ml. 0.01 μ g. and clam juice 0.0014 to 0.010 μ g. On a dry weight basis earthworm casts contained about 2 per cent as much B12 as the earthworm. The B12 activity of an extract made from fresh clams was increased two or more times by heating with 0.1N HCl. 4. Blue-green algae grown under sterile conditions in a medium free of B12 contained up to 0.64 μ g. per g. dry weight. Blue-green algae have the ability to synthesize substances with vitamin B12 activity and are considered to be one of the primary sources of this vitamin for water animals.
Don't start to eat your T-shirts quite yet. :) AFAIK, cotton (at least the seeds) needs to go through a refinement process before they can be used for eating. Lots of food contains elements (eg. nutrients) that may be toxic in large amounts, but which are beneficial in small amounts, and I don't know how much one would have to eat of something derived from cotton seeds before the effect was negative. 