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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. "
I'll take my food from the field any day over from the factory, thank you very much.
I'm all for engineering but when it comes to what I eat I'm very oldfashioned. No reconstituted, GM, reprocessed anything.
MP3 Search Engine
Is it just me, or does "Sunny Oh" sound like it should be a brand name of fried snack food?
about cooking items coated "with an undisclosed material"?
I'll take my potato chips without undisclosed materials, thank you very much.
Who put this thing together? Me, that's who.
Wouldn't it be better to grow food instead of engineer food? Moore's Law doesn't have to apply to everything.
For those that haven't seen this before;
Anyone know who the author is?"The last thing I want to do is deal with a bunch of people who want something."
Major Major
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
It's not like food has been statically unchanged over the last several thousand years, or even several hundred years. We've been using selective breeding techniques ever since we started agriculture. Do you think that chicken you're eating is like the original un-domesticated version that came from the wild? Is the corn, wheat, tomatoes, etc the same as it was 2000 years ago, or even 200 years ago?
Rejecting GM, processed, or whatever food with broad strokes doesn't make any sense. We've been changing our food for a long long time, so you really shouldn't be eating anything that society (modern or non-modern) produces at all. If you want "purity before human intervention" you should go back to the hunter-gatherer society, just be carefull not to gather anything that's reproduced with human-interferred stuff.
That's not to say that you shouldn't be concerned with food additives, GM foods, etc. It's just a matter of making sure it's all safe rather than rejecting it all out of hand.
AccountKiller