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Biotech Science Technology

The Rise of Nanofoods 369

separsons writes "Researchers are altering foods at the nanoscale level, changing their tiny molecular structures to enhance certain properties. (New Scientist has a more detailed look.) For example, one group of scientists found a way to hide water within individual droplets of oil, making low-fat mayonnaise taste like the real thing. The process can make spices spicier, potato chips healthier, and make diet food taste just like full-calorie snacks. Nanotech can even help combat global malnutrition. But the process is certainly controversial, and food manufacturers are being tight-lipped about exactly what nanofoods they're working on. So can nanotech create a healthier world, or is it just frightening Franken-food?"
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The Rise of Nanofoods

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  • ...but can it make beets taste like something other than shit?

    • by raddan ( 519638 ) * on Friday May 28, 2010 @12:16PM (#32378156)
      Which is ironic given that something like 30% [wikipedia.org] of all sugar consumed globally is from beets. Doesn't taste like poo.
    • by Mindcontrolled ( 1388007 ) on Friday May 28, 2010 @12:27PM (#32378300)
      Man... I read "beer" instead of "beets"... I was so ready to go into a full-scale nuclear flame-war there!

      To come back on topic, you make beets taste actually good, but for that you need a damn good chef. Could be used as a test of his competence.
      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        Mix.A.Golden.Apple.In.

          and if you really feel like haute cuisine hard boil an egg and sprinkle it on the mix.
        and go easy on the vinegar and use a good quality oil. and don't forget a little bit of oignon.

        Anything else ?

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          Good oil and good vinegar salvages almost everything. Dash of balsamico, perhaps, and this sounds like a plan. :)
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by geekoid ( 135745 )

        I like beets.

        • by dubbreak ( 623656 ) on Friday May 28, 2010 @01:16PM (#32378924)
          Seconded. BUT (big but), freshness is key.

          Beets straight off the in-law's farm, when cooked properly melt in your mouth and taste like they're buttered (when nothing has been added). Just season with a little salt and maybe drizzle a little balsamic vinegar (if that's to your taste). Even people who "hate" beets will rave about them.

          Old beets taste like boiled stumps and are equivalently difficult to eat.

          Same thing goes for a lot of veggies though. Fresh is best. I just had some fresh asparagus (just picked), and it was the best I had ever tasted. Delicate flavor, extremely tender. I can't wait for corn season. The early season corn cooks up to perfection in less than 2 minutes, is sweet, flavorful and not the least bit starchy (unlike corn from the grocery store which even if it has been hydro-cooled has often become extremely starchy). If corn is grown locally you should try purchasing it straight off the farm if possible (here most have stands that sell corn picked that day). My experience with local stores (even the ones that pretend to be more of a "farmer's market") is that they take too much time to get the produce on the shelves. They may have received it fresh picked earlier that day, but it won't be on the shelves for a day or two.
      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        I hate to be the kid in The Emporer's New Clothes, but beer *does* taste like shit. Or, more accurately, really sting-y, bitter piss that hurts going down, and could NEVER hold a candle, in terms of taste, to a milkshake.

        People. Drink. Beer. To. Get. High.

        The taste? A cover to make it socially acceptable. "Ah, yeah, man, this beer is made by this ultra-special microbrew, man, it's got that really subtle, *refined* taste, that's why it's okay to take a psychoactive substance that would otherwise get

        • by Mindcontrolled ( 1388007 ) on Friday May 28, 2010 @01:15PM (#32378902)
          How about you accept that tastes are different? Sweet crap like sodas and milkshakes trigger my gag reflex. Bitterness is an acquired taste, that much is sure, and I have damn well acquired it. Just because you don't like beer, which I completely accept, doesn't mean that there isn't a whole universe of different, interesting tastes in various kinds of beer. From "subtle, refined" to "what the fuck just hit my taste buds? it hurts, but in a most pleasant way".
          • I'm going to sound like as ass, but I sometimes wonder if a lot of people never get a tastes nowadays because they eat a very small variety of foods is the US. Sugar drinks, fast food, pizza. Beer is an aquired taste, but you will see a lot more people actually drink it than say, coffee without sugar.

            Over the years I have quired a taste for onions, mayonnaise (not a lot of it though), miso soup, pickled food, and various hard to eat Japanese foods. After all that pain to enjoy these things, I have a horr

        • by drsquare ( 530038 ) on Friday May 28, 2010 @02:02PM (#32379734)

          It's called an 'acquired taste'. It's what happens when we get older and grow out of baby food: your tastes change to appreciate stronger and more sophisticated flavours. Some people never grow up and spend their adult lives eating children's foods such as milkshake.

    • Ever had fresh beets, instead of the canned gooey crap they normally sell?
  • Media Twist (Score:2, Troll)

    by dward90 ( 1813520 )
    As innovative and helpful as new developments could possily be, food alteration is already a "political" issue. Even though politics should have no active role to play in the reception of innovations that will probably improve lives, people will disagree with each other about based purely on political dogma.

    Our best hope for allowing innovation like this without a knee-jerk, partisan backlash is for the mainstream media to ignore it completely: to let those who are actually vested in the technology and
    • Re:Media Twist (Score:5, Insightful)

      by amplt1337 ( 707922 ) on Friday May 28, 2010 @12:12PM (#32378112) Journal

      That's a fine principle, except that all consumers of food have a vested interest in changes to diet. You can eat organic all you want, if wind-bourne pollen from modified crops is fertilizing the neighboring organic fields, you'll wind up eating something whose health effects are not all that certain. And yes, in many cases anti-GMO folks are concerned when there isn't reason to be; but this is our food supply we're talking about, and a precautionary principle is in full effect.

      Besides, self-regulating industries are prone to misrepresenting health effects when they have financial interests at stake. CF Vioxx... It's all well and good to say "let the market sort it out," but market solutions are ex post facto -- you don't know to punish a bad market actor until they've already dumped a billion barrels of oil in your gulf (and that's assuming that you, as a lowly, non-media-empowered consumer, can even break through the asymmetries of information in the first place). Regulations can be over-cautious and even misguided, and they can certainly fail; but they are much more effective than free-market actions in preventing the disaster before it happens repeatedly.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by lymond01 ( 314120 )

        Besides, self-regulating industries are prone to doing whatever the hell they want when they have financial interests at stake.

        Just for clarification.

        P.S. How do you do a strike on Slashdot? s,slash-s didn't work, neither did strike...

        • by Knara ( 9377 )
          I don't think the comment system supports strikethrough. I think that, as a result, slashdot is the only forum that still perpetuates the ^H^H^H^H meme.
        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Knuckles ( 8964 )

          P.S. How do you do a strike on Slashdot? s,slash-s didn't work, neither did strike...

          You are doing it wrong: You need to convince others to join you in not posting for a given time (usually until your demands are met) and it helps if you can put some pressure on any traitors in your company and/or threaten violence to traitorous outsiders.

      • "Besides, self-regulating industries are prone to misrepresenting health effects when they have financial interests at stake."

        (Looks at sat pics of Deepwater Horizon oil spill...)

        Really? Who'd a thunk it?

    • Re:Media Twist (Score:5, Insightful)

      by joebok ( 457904 ) on Friday May 28, 2010 @12:14PM (#32378128) Homepage Journal

      I would agree with you if I thought that the food industry would also play by those rules - use neutral, 3rd party science to determine what was safe, effective, etc. But we know that doesn't happen.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by raddan ( 519638 ) *
      The question of using new technology to develop food is hardly a political one. Sure, the discussion has become politicized, with all manner of uninformed people weighing in, but that doesn't mean the discussion is unimportant.

      There have been problems with new foods, like transgenic crops. Trust Us, We're Experts [prwatch.org] details a case where potato crops utilizing a moth gene caused anaphylaxis (resulting in death) in a not-insignificant number of people who ate them. The scientist at Monsanto who was respons
  • This is just the next line of food additives that attempt to make food into something that it's not. Nothing new here really. We've had diet food before, we'll have more of it in the future. The taste might actually improve too. Some might be a welcome addition (the alteration to milk has made skim milk taste creamier, which is nice) or there might be missteps (think olestra). Why don't we focus on improving our diets so that they actually include healthy foods? There's a lot of food out there that's
    • by Purity Of Essence ( 1007601 ) on Friday May 28, 2010 @12:07PM (#32378042)

      This is just the next line of food additives that attempt to make food into something that it's not. Nothing new here really.

      But it's nanofood. NANO! "Nano" means better, just like "digital".

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Dumnezeu ( 1673634 )

      This is just the next line of food additives that attempt to make food into something that it's not.

      Proof, pls. kthxbai.

      Nothing new here really. We've had diet food before, we'll have more of it in the future.

      Really? Nothing new?

      The taste might actually improve too.

      So improvements in taste is nothing new?

      Why don't we focus on improving our diets so that they actually include healthy foods? There's a lot of food out there that's healthy for us that doesn't taste like cardboard.

      That food is also quite expensive. It either costs a lot of time, a lot of processing or a lot of space. Also, TFA implies that this nanofood-thingy might have the potency to make cheap (crap) food healthier! Why change your diet to a different kind of food when you could have the same kind, but a bit different, so that it doesn't harm you as much? As long as you like the taste, your body gets the right amount of energy and it d

    • Why don't we focus on improving our diets so that they actually include healthy foods?

      We've all had that option all along, yet diet related heart disease and obesity still exist, indirectly driving up everyone's health insurance costs even if you do eat healthy. Technical advances that improve the quality of food doesn't distract from your ability to eat natural healthy foods either (unless you happen to be a food researcher and are too busy researching to eat right I guess).

      There are some people who are never going to give up the taco bell, and they're never going to lose weight as a conse

      • by jedidiah ( 1196 )

        I have not given up Taco Bell.

        I am also not a Hutt.

        I also don't overindulge at Taco Bell nor indulge in Taco Bell itself too frequently.

        It's not the food, it's the eater. Give them a "healthier version of Taco Bell" and they will just abuse that too.

  • by SOdhner ( 1619761 ) on Friday May 28, 2010 @12:01PM (#32377964) Homepage Journal
    Ugh. Let's not scare-monger, please. If there are any specific risks or complaints about specific new products, that's fine - but there's nothing inherantly wrong or dangerous about this and lumping braod categories of things in together as "Frankenfoods" is irresponsible. We have always modified our food, this is just a more recent method than some.
    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by rotide ( 1015173 )
      It wouldn't be a kdawson article without alluding to a surreptitious motive, a conspiracy, or just being pure paranoia. Or a baby video they found cute...
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by amplt1337 ( 707922 )

      New doesn't necessarily equal dangerous, but it also doesn't necessarily equal benign, either.

      I just want to know what I'm buying, and that plenty of somebody elses have done guinea pig duty first.

    • the only frankenfood i know is franken berry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Mills_monster-themed_breakfast_cereals).
      Pretty good stuff, if yer into sugar food that is.

      Everything else is still just carbs, fats, proteins and fiber.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Locklin ( 1074657 )
      In the past, food additives have been developed primarily to lower cost often at the expense of quality. The only problem I have with these new technologies is that they could be used to make a firm red, yet rotten tomatoes. I love the technology, but don't trust the people wielding it.
  • I'm sure nothing bad will come of this. Nosirree.

  • It can suck and be cool at the same time. Everyone in the world may end up well fed and the SS may use the same tech for assassinations.

    • Relatedly: Monsanto [wikipedia.org]makes both Agent Orange [wikipedia.org] and the Vitamin-A enriched rice (needs citation) that allows a huge segment of the world's poorest people to feed their children.
  • the taste? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by girlintraining ( 1395911 ) on Friday May 28, 2010 @12:05PM (#32378032)

    What pisses me off isn't that new technologies are being incorporated, but the lack of labelling and identification.

    * Olestra, remember that one? Eat a bag of chips, get "anal leakage".
    * Or when McDonald's was ordered to strip transfats out of its foods, and the fries suddenly became a sea of suck.
    * And then there was Foi Gras, which several jurisdictions outlawed because PETA said so.

    Guys, it would be way cheaper to spend the money on education than by re-engineering our food into suckitude or to enforce some political ideology on all of us. There are some days when I just want a fucking cheeseburger, with fat oozing out of the sides, a thick slice of cheese, and smothered in a heart attack. Other days, I'll happily eat trail mix or a salad. It's my choice, not yours.

    • I sometimes thing a lot of people miss out on the different tastes is life. I wouldn't want my fatty hamburger every day, but it is one taste to experience. I don't want everything to be sweet either. You haven't experienced coffee if you're doing your best to hide the bitter taste with sweeteners and flavors. And no, I don't want cheese on absolutely _everything_. Sometimes I like to experience the taste of the spinach that is under that there cheese as it's really delicious when it's fresh.

      I really w

    • I believe the really good McDonald's french fries used to be cooked in tallow (beef fat), and they were later pressured into using trans-fats because at one point some thought it was healthier.

      As far as education, maybe we can educate people that animal fat isn't bad or a heart attack on a plate. Humans have eaten animal fat for about 2 million years. We only started eating processed omega-6 vegetable oils and margarine in the last 100 years or so (guess what century heart attacks became an epidemic).

      I do q

      • by Knara ( 9377 )
        re: McDonalds, its possible. I remember hearing/reading that they used to use some sort of bacon flavoring in their seasoning salt for the fries, though, and it started a veggie whargarbl storm.
  • by mtrachtenberg ( 67780 ) on Friday May 28, 2010 @12:07PM (#32378048) Homepage

    I'm lucky enough to live in an area where real food is grown in the ground, pulled out, washed and sold. That means I don't have to buy food where sugar has been replaced by corn syrup (because it's just as good!), oils have been replaced with whatever is cheapest (because it's just as good), cows have been fed corn -- or worse -- instead of wheat (because it's just as good!).

    Every time industry tries to improve food, it seems to make things worse.

    It's one thing to try to develop high yield crops, but engineering high tech food to reduce Americans' calorie intake is insane, when you could simply put sin taxes on soda.

    • by Mindcontrolled ( 1388007 ) on Friday May 28, 2010 @12:40PM (#32378460)

      The crack, mods, the crack! It is not good for you. How is this a troll?

      Where exactly has the food industry actually improved our food in terms of quality and taste? All I can see is a constant trend to bland, overprocessed, undifferentiated, utterly boring crap. I am no zealot, you can't escape that all the time, but whenever I got time I try to prepare my own meals from food that, as the parent stated it, was "grown in the ground, pulled out, washed and sold". I don't even care if it is healthier, it is better, it has an actual taste.

      So, dear food chemists, you can take your nanotech low-fat mayonnaise and shove it. I'll keep making my own when I need some. Yep, it's full of fat, so is the cauliflower gratin I just had - lightly sauteed cauliflower baked in a mix of egg yolk, butter, creme double and roquefort, add salt, pepper, chili power, saffron and lime juice to taste. That's why I don't gorge myself on it. How about just exerting some self-control instead of lowering calorie intake by pseudo-food substitutes?

    • by orasio ( 188021 )

      ... cows have been fed corn -- or worse -- instead of wheat (because it's just as good!).

      No way.
      Cows are supposed to eat grass, off the ground.
      They do that here in Uruguay, and it's one of the reasons why we get good prices for the beef.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Angst Badger ( 8636 )

      It's altering food that's the problem. I sat down last year with a couple of nutrition texts and assembled a list of actual bodily needs and discovered that I could get everything in the form of pills. It turns out to be surprisingly cheap and easy, especially once you realize that you don't actually have to consume protein: you digest proteins into amino acids before they're absorbed in the gut, so you just need to get the necessary amino acids. I've gone as long as two months at a time without consuming a

  • excellent TED talk (Score:5, Informative)

    by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Friday May 28, 2010 @12:08PM (#32378056) Journal
    Here is an excellent TED talk [ted.com] that talks about genetically modified food and the fear it creates. He makes the point that fear of the foods is causing significantly more harm than those foods ever have. He compares it to vaccine boycotters, and how each group gets their sense of danger completely out of proportion (really, the danger of measles is much worse than the danger of the vaccine).

    In the case of these foods, there isn't even a danger that it will get out into the wild and reproduce or anything like that. If they turn out bad, we can stop making them, it's as simple as that. The risk is really quite modest.
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by raddan ( 519638 ) *
      I'm not so sure that's true. Vaccines are subject to extensive [cdc.gov] scrutiny, because the risks of something going wrong are high. The CDC protocols ensure that there is a process to eliminate problems, and to identify them early if things start to go wrong. With vaccines, the benefit far outweighs the cost.

      There is nothing of the kind in place for food, probably because historically, the public health problems resulting from new food production have been virtually nonexistent. You can hardly compare the
    • I am a biochemist, and as such, I do not see significant danger in most gene-modified food. I am also a gourmet, and as such, I see a loss of diversity and a flood of bland, homogeneous and uninteresting industrial food substitutes. I don't fear the stuff - I despise it for aesthetic reasons.
      • Ah, that is too bad then, because genetic modifications have done wonderful things for fruit taste in the last decade or two. It used to be any fruit you got in the supermarket was bland and distasteful. Now you can actually get tomatoes that are full of flavor, for example. Strawberries are a lot better tasting than they used to be as well. To say nothing of peaches.....

        The best fruit is still only accessible from your own private tree, but supermarket fruit has definitely seen an increase in quality
        • In the case of tomatoes, I don't think the main factor was GM - people were getting fed up by watery hothouse tomato-lookalikes. I think the quality generally improved by customer demand, GM or not, over the last years. Might be the same with peaches and strawberries, but fruit are not my area of expertise, to be honest.
    • by Panaflex ( 13191 ) <`convivialdingo' `at' `yahoo.com'> on Friday May 28, 2010 @12:43PM (#32378504)

      GMO corn and soybeans are regularly found crossing into other fields, sometimes miles away... you can't stop the spread of pollen.

      I agree with the speaker on many points, but the honest truth is that humanity is rather poor at predicting long-term dangers in products. Radium, mercury, benzene, tobacco, asbestos and PCB's were all thought to be minimally safe, or containable, or easily managed.

      Food is a basic necessity for all humans, and I think we should be making better crops, more nutritional foods, and increasing the sustainability of farming and ranching. But honest labeling should be mandated to allow consumers to make informed choices. Making a bad choice is allowable.

    • by orasio ( 188021 )

      You mean that a soy producer, after growing RR soy/RR wheat year after year, applying Roundup every time, for the length of ten years, is free to stop doing that and growing some other grain?
      I was under the assumption that it's not that easy to walk away from herbicide-based crops.
      Please enlighten me, I'm all ears.

      • Why did you believe that? I was specifically referring in my statement to 'nano' foods, though. Apparently that wasn't clear.
    • They might feel good, but we'll have to wait and see if/what any long-term effects might be.
  • Depends (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Sperbels ( 1008585 ) on Friday May 28, 2010 @12:11PM (#32378094)
    [quote] So can nanotech create a healthier world, or is it just frightening Franken-food?"[/quote] That depends on what's being done. You can't paint the whole thing with the broad brush of nanotech and say it's good or bad. The process you use must be made public so that the end product (and waste products) can be evaluated by the whole community as good or bad.
  • by fuzzyfuzzyfungus ( 1223518 ) on Friday May 28, 2010 @12:15PM (#32378146) Journal
    I'm going to guess, just for giggles, the following:

    1.Any regulation of these novel techniques will be resisted on the grounds of "consumer choice"

    2. Any requirement that foodstuffs incorporating these novel techniques be identified as such in any way will be resisted as "confusing" or "alarmist".

    3. People will have no idea what they are buying; but their "decisions" will be held up as a vindication for consumer satisfaction with the new techniques.
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Lumpy ( 12016 )

      Most of the crap that comes in a cardboard box or plastic container is utter crap to begin with.

      If you want to eat "safely" then dont touch anything that in packaging. go to a meat counter where they can cut and wrap your meat, go to a market to get your veggies... Buy flour to make your own pasta and breads if you cant find a good bakery that uses decent ingredients.

  • Good grief (Score:5, Insightful)

    by IICV ( 652597 ) on Friday May 28, 2010 @12:16PM (#32378160)

    That blog post is entirely useless - all it does is take the New Scientist article, sprinkle in some extra paranoid fear-mongering, mix delicately and bake on high heat for ten minutes.

    Why even link to it? Oh right, because "separsons" is probably the same person as the "Sarah Parsons" who wrote the blog post in the first place.

  • Is it about making food better, or making food more profitable.

    Sometimes those two interests align, but many times they don't

    Profitability as the highest, if not only motive has done a lot to strengthen the distrust of genetically modified food.

  • Sure it *could* make healthier and tastier food, but where's the profit in that?

    Monsanto could have made genetically modified wheat that produced more food.
    But no, that discovery was done by a man who was more interested in solving hunger, than attaining personal profit. (Norman Borlaug, greatest human being in history.)

    Monsanto would rather introduce the whole "Defective by design" element into the food chain.

  • Yeah, but can they give it the taste and consistency of Kraft Extra Heavy Mayo [kraftfoodservice.com]? Available from Amazon! [amazon.com]

  • by 2names ( 531755 ) on Friday May 28, 2010 @12:24PM (#32378270)
    It's ALL Franken-food, every damn bit of it. If you don't grow it yourself it has been modified. In some cases, you can't even rely on the purity of the food you grow yourself because the seeds or starter plants have been modified.
    • it's franken-food regardless even if you grow it yourself. you honestly think that miracle grow plant food you use as fertilizer doesn't change the taste and modify the property of the plant?

  • by PPH ( 736903 ) on Friday May 28, 2010 @12:25PM (#32378276)
    Could you super size that for me?
  • by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 28, 2010 @12:26PM (#32378284)

    Epicyte created corn in 2001 that has spermicidal properties.

    In San Diego, a small, privately-owned bio tech company, Epicyte, held a press conference in September 2001. Epicyte reported that they had successfully created the ultimate GMO crop-- contraceptive corn. To do it they had taken antibodies from women with a rare condition known as immune infertility, isolated the genes that regulated the manufacture of those infertility antibodies, and, using genetic engineering techniques, had inserted the genes into ordinary corn plants.

    “We have a hothouse filled with corn plants that make anti-sperm antibodies,” boasted Epicyte President, Mitch Hein.

    Lovely.... I am sure the population control advocates will demand this be given as part of food aid to developing countries.

    • by couchslug ( 175151 ) on Friday May 28, 2010 @01:00PM (#32378706)

      "Lovely.... I am sure the population control advocates will demand this be given as part of food aid to developing countries."

      Good. In our PC culture it's unfashionable to point out how ballistically fucked up the behavior and choices made by people in those countries lead to famine, war, pestilence and death. One way to fix some of that is to reduce population pressure that drives them into areas that cannot sustain them.
      Giving them food ordinarily serves to sustain their crappy decision model (which is why I oppose all foreign food aid). It doesn't FORCE them to change.
      Give them all the contraceptive corn they'll eat (not having to spew out a brat every time you get fucked had been tremendously LIBERATING to Western women!) and if they don't like it, then they can choose to abstain.

    • Based on the reproductive responsibility I've seen in the US, we might want to start getting this into the domestic food supply first.

  • diet food? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Lumpy ( 12016 ) on Friday May 28, 2010 @12:26PM (#32378288) Homepage

    Diet food already tastes like the real thing. All my veggies taste real.

    All my whole grain foods all taste real...

    Oh wait, simulated chemical created chocolate cake and high fructose corn syrup laden junk? Is that what they are trying to make taste better?

    How about simply not eating that trash?

  • Okay, here's three quick points:

    1. The main health problem among Americans is lack of exercise. Everyone essentially knows this, but we keep slinking away from the point and looking for magic diet foods. The odds are good you don't have a beer gut or a McDonald's gut, what you have is a gasoline gut.
    2. While diet is important, it's far more complicated than most of us are willing to admit. Is a low-fat diet important? But then, how do you explain the French? Is a low-calorie diet important? But then how do you explain the Japanese? The suckers will no doubt snap up novelty low-calorie diet products, but there are reasons the official recommendations haven't budged much over the years: eat a varied diet, and try to cover all the bases.
    3. High tech modified foods: it's worth watching out for problems, it may even be worth beefing up government watchdog agencies (though I suspect what we really need is just to get the existing ones to do their jobs, which means not appointing people who won't do their jobs, which means not electing Republicans, or the equivalent). But overall, I think the paranoia about food experimentation is going to turn out be misplaced (e.g. there's a not so implausible scenario where GM foods enable a wide-spread return to organic gardening, and save the planet).

    (Posted with "It's All Text". Just say no to TEXTAREAs)

  • by Geoffrey.landis ( 926948 ) on Friday May 28, 2010 @03:12PM (#32381118) Homepage

    "altering foods at the nanoscale level, changing their tiny molecular structures to enhance certain properties"

    Seems there's a word for altering materials at the nanoscale, and changing their molecular structures.

    Let me think... molecular properties... hmmm... yes, I've got it! We call it "chemistry".

    Scientists propose doing chemistry on food! Stop the presses! --What? Food chemistry has been an applied science since the 1700s? It's not news?

    Oh,

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