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The Rise of Nanofoods
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?"
...but can it make beets taste like something other than shit?
Living With a Nerd
Confusion of nanotech and nanofoods, but with no real examples of "nanofoods" beyond the upgrades to processing/mixing and the chemistry experiments that have always existed in cooking.
By some of these definitions, all foods beyond whole, uncooked foods are nanofoods and frankenfood.
Make low-fat mayonnaise taste like the real thing?
Why would anyone want low-fat mayonnaise? Fat is what mayonnaise is about. It's about as pure a food as you can get that doesn't come from a nipple.
There's nothing you can do to make potato chips healthier; there's nothing healthy in potato chips to enhance.
New toys are fun, but these guys should find a different justification. How about more nutritious cattle feed?
I'm a Programmer. That's one level above Software Engineer and one level below Engineer.
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 its consequences have the final say about what innovations can bring to the table, in agriculture or any field.
My other sig is clever.
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 healthy for us that doesn't taste like cardboard.
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.
My grey goo tastes like schnozberries!
We don't know nearly enough about how the bady will react to the ingestion of nanoparticles. Things so small that they could literally rush right into the bloodstream, which could be a small deal if we are talking about vitamins, but a big deal if we are talking about chemical preservatives. The idea is great, the science has yet to prove consumption safe.
sig loading.......
I'm sure nothing bad will come of this. Nosirree.
There is a war going on for your mind.
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.
Sounds like the restaurant portions are going to get smaller again...
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.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
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.
Here is an excellent TED talk 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.
Qxe4
Yes. Both.
Eventually we'll have nifty computerized models of the human body that will reasonably accurately predict long-term effects of this kind of manipulation. In the interim, we have our rather primitive models of the human body (we think molecules of this type do X, we think this other type does Y, etc etc). And testing on e.g. animals.
Everything is kind of a crapshoot, though. High Fructose Corn Syrup is an extremely well-known sugar and it's still causing lots of controversy, for example. Even basic wood-grilled food has carcinogens in it. Any way we process food at all changes its properties--that's kinda the point (lest we all eat raw meat and get sick/die of bacterial or parasitic infections all the time).
The trick is to balance the good bits of processing with the bad. Nanofoods have huge potential for both, as does processing in general (and, in general, more processing -> more potential for both good and bad). The raw food advocates are a bit silly in that regard, as they ignore the good parts of processing and focus on the bad--we as a society need to be more balanced about it.
[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.
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.
Count me out!
I don't think anyone wants food made from this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_franken
Well, maybe this guy would: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannibal_lecter
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
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.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
I as an eater have the ultimate vested interest in what I eat.
I just want my food provider to tell me the truth about what goes inside. Then, I'll take my decisions.
I couldn't care less about the revenues of some agrobusiness complex. May they go out of business.
This all reminds me of Good Omens, where one of the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse comes out with a line of diet foods that taste as good as the real thing, but have absolutely no nutritional value - so the people waste away enjoying their favorite foods to the end.
So that's how Deanna Troi stayed so thin while eating all those double chocolate sundaes. :)
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? Available from Amazon!
Best Slashdot Co
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.
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
Could you super size that for me?
Have gnu, will travel.
Epicyte created corn in 2001 that has spermicidal properties.
Lovely.... I am sure the population control advocates will demand this be given as part of food aid to developing countries.
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?
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Is that you?
When he said "beer", he meant "budweiser", and when he said "shit", he meant "piss".
We are the Borg. Lower your proteins and surrender your nucleotides. We will add our biological and technological distinctiveness to your own. Your food-culture will mutate into random and exciting directions. Resistance is futile.
- Dan.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
They might feel good, but we'll have to wait and see if/what any long-term effects might be.
Quack, quack.
I think it is usually done like this^H^H^H^H that.
Okay, here's three quick points:
(Posted with "It's All Text". Just say no to TEXTAREAs)
http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2008/05/nanotechnolog-1.html
It's called "Japanese".
Pepsi is working on this very issue. They are changing the shape/size of salt crystals so that they are more easily absorbed by the tongue.
I can't remember the exact numbers, but almost 80% of the salt on an average potato chip will never come in contact with your tongue. You'll never taste it. It just goes straight to your digestive track to piss off your kidneys. These new smaller crystals though are more readily snagged by your tongue. Again, I'm not sure on the exact number, but IIRC, their testing was showing that they could use something like 30% (or was it 30% less?) of the volume of salt to get the same flavoring with the smaller crystals.
A potato chip might not ever be considered health food, but if you cut the sodium content back that significantly, it'd be a huge step in the right direction.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
do not give the same taste. That's marketing BS. With less fat there will be a less tasty result. The only truth is that there would be fewer calories consumed.
The question is kind of self-answering for those who know anything about nano (food or materials it doesn't matter). According to the industry itself there are two things that are important to realise when you're discussing nano-materials: 1. they are ffing small. So small in fact that they'd have no problem whatsoever getting past the blood-brain barrier (talk about a health risk). 2. the properties of nano-materials are different from those of their "normal" counterparts. Nano-iron does not behave the same way regular iron does. Not physically and not chemically. That's one of the main things as to why it's so attractive to research this stuff and why it has such a huge potential for innovation. To put this in scientific lingo "Materials manufactured or engineered at this level have unique properties and behave differently from conventional matter. This stems from two factors; their increased relative surface area and new quantum effects. Their greater surface area to volume ratio leads to increased chemical reactivity and resistance, whilst at nano scale quantum effects lead to unique optical, electrical and magnetic behaviours." If you realise the two above then you also realise two things: 1. self-regulation can't ever work. Due to the simple fact that testing for side-effects costs a lot of money with the potential to not only affect profit margins but to render them negative all together (if the side-effects are really bad and the product is cancelled). It doesn't need more explaining then this. It's leaded gasoline/cigarettes/agent orange/asbestos/CFC's (--- take your pick) all over again. 2. politics, as usual, are way behind on legislating (imo consciously so). It'll take at least another decade (if not two, three or ten) and several bad press scenarios before they really start to act upon the potential dangers this technology entails.
Who was so stupid, he forgot to deceive himself, before any other?
Well, that's one way to combat the obesity pandemic...
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.
Even the foods you call 'pure' are frankenfoods that have been modified by selective breeding over the course of centuries. Even wide berries have likely been 'infected' with pollen from GE foods, so you really don't have anything 'pure' left.
In 1999, Dr. Arpad Pusztai, the world’s top GMO safety researcher at the prestigious Rowett Institute in Scotland was working on a UK government grant to design long-term testing protocols intended to become part of the official European GM food safety assessment process. When Pusztai fed supposedly harmless GMOs to rats, they developed potentially pre-cancerous cell growth, smaller brains, livers and testicles, partially atrophied livers, and showed signs of a damaged immune system. Moreover, the results clearly indicated that the cause of the problem was due to the unpredictable side effects arising from the process of genetic engineering itself. In other words, his study suggested that the GM foods already on the market, which were created from the same process, might also create such effects. When Dr Pusztai expressed his concern he was fired from his job of 35 years and silenced with threats of a lawsuit. His 20-member research team was disbanded, all testing protocols were abandoned, and the pro-GM establishment embarked on an extensive disinformation campaign to discredit the study’s results to protect the reputation of GM foods already in the marketplace.
... not healthier. Like all those fake food stuff that already exists: Fake cheese, fake prawns etc.
If nanofood is thoughtfully tested and isn't harmful in any way, then i'm all for it, rock on! However, if it turns out to just be another way to make cheap crap that you probably shouldn't eat, then i'm against it. The proof is in the testing (pudding). My guess is that ittl be the first scenario- though it will probably be opposed regardless due to lack of knowledge. Some people have become so opposed to any sort of food science that they wont even do research before coming out and saying they're opposed to something new. Really, there isnt any excuse for not being informed these days. It takes 30 seconds to look virtually any black and white fact up on google- so if you don't have your facts, either they haven't been determined yet, or you just don't really care.... or, you're a homeless smelly hippy who hasn't heard of the internet.
On Trader Joe's house brands... No genetically modified products. No artificial flavors,colors, or preservatives. No MSG or Trans fat. No single ingredient products from China.
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.
Even if they did all of that science is still not perfect. Biological systems are fantastically complex and not fully understood. Even if the science shows no adverse effects in the short term and with massive doses the long term effects of consumption cannot always be known nor can all possible interactions be tested for in the lab. Hence there is always a risk with any completely new foodstuff. However if they managed to produce low fat foods which taste the same as the originals and thereby greatly reduce the chance of heart disease etc. the risk equation becomes a lot more balanced.
Still my usual attitude with this type of thing is let those who are keen about it field test is first and if they don't drop dead in a year or two my interest will start to grow.
But it's nanofood. NANO! "Nano" means better, just like "digital".
In that case atto-physics should be a billion times better than nano-physics...but try telling that to a funding agency as a particle physicist working at atto-metre scales and you won't get very far...
"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,
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
What about just replacing food altogether with nano tech that supplies you with the proteins nutrients and vitamins that you need, and also base it on what you need not what you feed into your mouth...that way you would not get fat because anything not needed would be useless to the body and be eliminated naturally.
The more I hear about this kind of stuff, I shake my head and ask "why?" ... This stuff is getting so out of hand. I mean, come on. It's food. Grow it naturally and it will take care of you, like it does every other species on the planet. We don't have to work-around this low-fat, tastes-just-as-good-as stuff. Eat more fruit and veg. Grow your own or buy from a LOCAL (and no, I don't mean the Safeway down the street) if you're scared of where you're getting it from. You can't go wrong with food that's grown organically - we've been surviving on it for a looooooooong time before we started screwing with it. And guess what? Since we STARTED screwing with it, we got more unhealthy. Wonder why...
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
I loved the taste of beer from the first time I tried it as a kid- even after my mom told me over and over that I'd hate it as beer was an acquired taste. And the first time I tried dark beer I liked that even more. And then I got my first shot of ultra-hoppy microbrew... wow.
Would I drink something that tasted just like a microbrew without the alcohol? In a heartbeat.
People simply have different tastes. I can't stand whiskey, and I'd seriously rather eat dirt than eat a Cheeto (what the hell are they made of anyway?!?)
bears...beets...battlestar galactica.
Since we have no real hope of population control and our ignorant world continues to reproduce like a slap happy pack of jack rabbits then we had better get used to the idea of eating weird food, synthetics etc. less we get to the point where we are forced to eat each other. Almost all of our serious problems have over population at the roots. Want less pollution then lower the population. Want less crime then lower the population. Want wildlife? Lower the human population. Want less wars? You can guess the answer. Want less disease? Lower the population.
Damned near anything made with the leftover bits of various farm animals could be regarded as "FrankenFood" without tinkering with anything's DNA, and people have been eating that shit by the tonne for YEARS!!! Why worry now, just because they're trying to make the garbage you call food HEALTHIER? :)
How about digital food? DigiFoods, if you will. You know, like finger sandwiches. :)
Thanks, AC. It's posts like these that help me keep my sanity.
Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.