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Engineering Food at the Molecular Level
Krishna Dagli writes to mention a New York Times article about the possibility of manipulating food at a molecular level. Though some of the initial suggestions are a little pointless (lower-fat ice cream, harder-to-melt M&Ms), weighter goals could eventually be achieved here as well. From the article: "Given the uncertainty about the risks of consuming new nano products, many analysts expect near-term investment to focus on novel food processing and packaging technology. That is the niche targeted by Sunny Oh, whose start-up company, OilFresh, based in Sunnyvale, Calif., is marketing a novel device to keep frying oil fresh. OilFresh grinds zeolite, a mineral, into tiny beads averaging 20 nanometers across and coats them with an undisclosed material. Packed into a shelf inside the fryer, the beads interfere with chemical processes that break down the oil or form hydrocarbon clusters, Mr. Oh says. As a result, restaurants can use oil longer and transfer heat to food at lower temperatures, although they still need traditional filters to remove food waste from the oil. Mr. Oh said OilFresh will move beyond restaurants into food processing by the end of the month, when it delivers a 1,000-ton version of the device to a 'midsized potato chip company' that he said did not want to be identified. "
Evolution has not equipped man to deal with genetic modification, chemicals, or preservatives.
Even in nature, larger fruits and vegetables(of the same variety) generally less taste as their surgar production is spread out of the larger area. A good example I have is with tomatos. When water and sun are plentiful, they grow HUGE, but have virtually no taste. Now when you have just enough water to GROW the tomatos(not big, just grow), you will get tomatos that are about 75-50% of the size of thier "brothers" but all that sugar is stored in a much more compact area... and mmmm mmm good.
This was what we referred to as Stressing a plant. Once fruit has set and is approaching a good size, reduce the water to just enough to keep leaves from wilting. In the afternoon sun they may droop a bit, but don't worry. This stressing causes, as you say, a concentration of sugars, but is in effect reducing the amount of water stored in the fruit. I practiced this with my roma tomatoes and they were legendary goodness!
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
"I'd bet that 99.99% of food-related fatalities over the past 30 years have been due to natural pathogens (or choking). Care for some organic spinach?"
h s.cfm) he is still spreading the rumour because people tend to believe him.
? caseid=archive&newsid=2605) were very quick to spread the rumor that it was about organic spinach, which afaik is also a construction of them.
Ok what will be bet on?
Anyway a bet is pointless as it is not tested for GE.
About the organic spinach: I'ld like you to be aware that this myth was deliberately spread by people who think they have something to fear from organic food.
Earlier, Dennis Avery from the Hudson Institute carefully wrote misleading stories on E.coli and organic food, which was based on deliberately mispresented research.
Even though it has been debunked (http://www.organicconsumers.org/Organic/ecolimyt
With the recent spinach problem biotechnology apolegetes (AgBio http://www.agbioworld.org/newsletter_wm/index.php
I tried to politely suggest to them to also spread the news that it wasn't organic after all, which they simply ignored.
Think independently.
Yea but for example-- efficiently farm raised salmon basically have none of the nutritional value that we eat salmon for in the first place.
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a lth&res=9802E7DA1F38F93AA35755C0A964948260
a tures/natural
Efficiency involves a lot of simplification and cutting out less important things like good omega 3 fatty oils and the real red color that comes from eating thousands of shellfish and replacing them with red dye.
From here: http://money.aol.com/bw/general/canvas3/_a/whats-
The fresh, farm-raised salmon that shoppers buy also get their orange-red hue from eating the chemicals astaxanthin and canthaxanthin. Wild salmon are pink because they eat shrimp-like creatures called krill. But to achieve the same pink color, farmed salmon need chemicals, which are mixed with their feed. In the past couple of years, the European Union significantly reduced the level of such dyes that can be fed to salmon because of concerns that the dyes, at high levels, can affect people's eyesight.
Two years ago, in the U.S., Seattle law firm Smith & Lowney filed two class actions against grocers Kroger and Safeway in Washington and California, contending that they should disclose that their salmon are dyed pink. Both lawsuits got thrown out of court. However, Knoll Lowney, a partner at the law firm, says that the lawsuits raised enough public awareness that many grocers voluntarily use "color added" labels to their salmon.
interesting side note from the same article:
Betty Crocker icing gets its bright white color not from natural cream and egg whites but from *titanium dioxide*, a mineral that is also used in house paints.
Also of note: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=he
Miss Silbergeld, who was formerly a researcher with the National Institute of Neurological Diseases, discovered that Red No. 3 (which is being used in place of Red No, 2, a known carcinogen, and Red No. 40, a suspected carcinogen) interferes with certain forms of metabolism.
Miss Silbergeld said that just a small proportion of children may react adversely to the dye. ''However,'' she added, ''the reaction is genetically linked and appears to confirm the neurotoxicity of Red No. 3.'' On 'Natural' Cheese
And of course: http://www.epicurious.com/cooking/healthy/self/fe
If it looks natural but isn't, don't eat it: Like some good-looking guys before you get to know...
and the point of what I'm saying is also in the same article:
If it's edible but has no nutrients, it's entertainment.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
K, I have to de-bullshit this claim.
We went over this in class last week or so, my prof does extensive work in the food processing industry and did work on fryers.
Frying is done with oil. (fatty acids and long chain hydrocarbons)
Fryers go to hot temperatures.
The food they fry has water.
The food is organic. (hydrocarbons + esters + protiens + more fatty acids)
So! We end up with:
1. Thermal degredation! Can't stop this! It's a function of N*cycles of heating!
2. Water hydates the oils! Guess what, cannot stop this either! H2O+fatty acids = hydrogination at high temps.
3. Burning pieces of food enter the oil, plus anything oil soluble will enter the oil! The burning food discolours the oil (going from golden colours to brackish brown), it's just carbon though. The other solutes are the difficult problem, whatever was in your frying food is now in the oil!
4. Oxidation nothing anyone can do will stop this, because oxygen usually has free access to the surface of fryers, and therefore oil. Industry can replace O2 with N2 or another noble gas, but it costs money.
Overall the best these "nanoparticles" could be, (ps don't even listen words like nanoparticle or nanoanything in an obvious press release) is a small sphere, coated in a semipermeable membrane. There is going to be no pressure gradient, no electrical gradient, no difference of velocity/momentum, leaving only a chemical gradient, propelled by thermal energy, which means the efficiency of this additive/process is highly limited. In an industrial setting where pressure can be supplied it would work much better.
Now for the second half of my post.
HOW DOES something which is ISOLATED from the rest of the system affect it? These spheres do not directly affect the bonding of fatty acids as they ARE PACKED INTO an AREA and placed into the oil, unless they contain an enzyme, or some solvent...(zeolite can be altered to an enzyme/acid or just a simple ion exchange column).
I say isolated because these particles cannot be free floating in the oil, because it would then attach to the food, which would not be allowed. (and again if the particles are so small (50 nanometers, a membrane of smaller porosity would be needed to hold the beads back, further decreasing the efficiency of the filtration)
PS this new method is subject to all the same degredations as was mentioned by the original oil.
I wonder how much oil it saves in term of mass flux, or how much healthier it makes the oil in terms of foreign particles, and how often the process is required to be replaced.
Interesting... but the press release is pure garbage.