When people think about what they get from bread they immediately jump to say "carbs!" But a group of college undergrads aim to change this by adding nutrition to the plain white bread.

A group of college undergraduates from the Johns Hopkins University has developed yeast - an ingredient which helps bread rise - that has been tweaked to contain vitamins, called VitaYeast.

The students created the yeast by adding to its cells certain DNA sequences that triggered a series of biochemical reactions. These reactions produced beta carotene, that when eaten, turns into vitamin A.

Using a recipe for baked bread they found online, the only thing that they changed in the recipe is substituting the conventional yeast with their vitamin A-yeast. Steffi Liu, one of the students who worked on VitaYeast, said that they wanted to stimulate the process that a regular person might go through when baking bread.

The result, Liu said, was a loaf of bread that looked and smelled like a normal loaf of bread. However, the bread has still not been tasted because it contains genetically engineered ingredients that must still undergo safety testing.

The undergrads noted that in recent years, there have been some genetically engineered foods that have been rejected by people just because of how it looks, smells, or tastes. But they explained that their VitaYeast is only a tiny component, only 1% of the bread recipe, which gets killed in the bread.

Arjun Khakhar, junior biomedical engineering major, pointed out that that major problem in developing countries right now is not that people are hungry and starving, but rather, what type of food they need to survive. Khakhar added that vital nutrients like vitamins are just missing from their diets because they can't afford fruits and vegetables.

As part of their project, one of their team members will be surveying the Baltimore area and ask residents whether or not they would eat genetically modified food to see if it is something that the public will accept.