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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?"
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.
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
But it's nanofood. NANO! "Nano" means better, just like "digital".
+0 Meh
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 That means I don't have to buy food where sugar has been replaced by corn syrup (because it's just as good!), oils have been replaced with whatever is cheapest (because it's just as good), cows have been fed corn -- or worse --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
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.
Freedom isn't free; its price is the well-being of others.
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.
They can magic the salt into a different shape that means more of the consumed salt hits the tongue, resulting in less salt used to achieve the same sensation of saltiness.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
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.
Which is ironic given that something like 30% of all sugar consumed globally is from beets. Doesn't taste like poo.
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.
If it's the fat you're after, oil is much cheaper and more pure. Mayonnaise is just about being delicious.
Making potato chips less unhealthy is equivalent to making them healthier. No one's saying "healthy", just "healthier".
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."
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.
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.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
The thing about digital food is, you either love it or you hate it.
+0 Meh
Why would anyone want low-fat mayonnaise? Fat is what mayonnaise is about
It always manages to surprise me when people say "The point of X is Y bad thing." If something tastes like mayo but doesn't make you fat, that's a good thing to many people. I mean, I'm assuming you don't have weight issues, but surely you can grasp the concept that other people do.
There's nothing you can do to make potato chips healthier; there's nothing healthy in potato chips to enhance.
What kind of reasoning is that? Reduce the amount of sodium, fat, cholesterol required to make them taste good and bam, it's healthier.
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 doesn't harm you... what else could be wrong with what you eat? The fact that it's not natural doesn't make it bad. Shit additives the manufacturers are using these days makes it bad. If we can improve those additives, I don't see what's wrong with eating plastic. Again: So fking what if it's not natural?
Yes, it's sarcasm. Deal with it!
Don't forget, 70% of American's think that nanotechnology is inherently morally reprehensible. And the numbers are even higher if you sample highly religious people. So either the general public has absolutely no idea what the word nanotechnology means or (and this is a scarier thought in my opinion) a significant majority of American's are against a technology are against any technology that promises to significantly enhance the human body.
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".
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
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.
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I doth agree with thine alternate strategie! And I doth hold in the same regard, these so-called "birth-control" devices! Why, marital intercourse needn't be made less-procreative! Rather, one simply must be less lustful!
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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.
Huh, I don't know what kind of beers you've tried (you claim to have tried a lot, but I am suspect) but I really disagree on the theory that beer actually tastes like crap and we just drink it to get a *high.* Now, I will make this clear, this is personal preference/opinion, so I don't have any scientific evidence to back anything up but here's been my experience.
The first time I tasted a beer I drank a Budweiser at a friends house. Honestly, I didn't see the appeal to the drink (and most people can understand why I am sure). I mean, the flavors were smooth enough that I wouldn't describe it as stingy or anything like that, but it just tasted like liquefied bread and my response was something in terms of, "WTF is all the fuss about?"
However, a couple years later, one of my friends came back from Belgium and brought home some darker beers. I hadn't been drinking a lot at this point (actually, I only drank once since the Budweiser), so there was no acquired taste thing going on here. When I drank that beer, for the first time, I almost cried it tasted so good. There was a tart sweetness to it that was very difficult to find in any other food. The smoky flavor that is heavy in a lot of American dark beers was very mellow. The bitter nip to it (and it wasn't much more than a nip) stimulated a slight tingle on the tongue. Most noticeable of all, was how smooth it was going down the throat. I want to emphasize that last point. A good beer does not sting going down, it warms the throat just like a good whiskey does. It leaves you sitting there, feeling more complete for having drank it.
The thing that I appreciate about a good beer (yes I am an elitist) the most is the incredible variety of flavor experiences that can be found in a single drink. Very few consumables have the ability to stimulate so many different receptors as beer. This, in my opinion, is what makes it taste incredible. It doesn't just taste sweet, or salty, or whatever, it tastes complex, and I like that. More importantly, I think that's what makes a taste truly unique and worth appreciating. I'm not a wino, but for what it's worth, my wine drinking friends say the same thing about wine.
Now, you compare the taste of beer to the taste of a milkshake and say that a milkshake is what can be called, universally, good. I would agree that a milkshake is pleasing for the sweet receptors. However, it leaves all your other receptors lacking. To make a music analogy, I consider milkshakes to be the equivalent of fun, energetic modern pop music like Katy Perry. It's fun to listen to. It fills you with a good hype for a short time. It's very nice, but somewhat lacking in terms of depth and power. Now a good beer, on the other hand, is like a magnificent symphony or orchestra piece. It fills your very spirit with so many sounds tied together in such wonderful ways that it makes you think. You can listen to a good symphony, and your mind's eye will develop an entire cinematic to go along with the music, rife with character, feeling, plot, color and on and on. Now, is the powerful symphony better, or the fun pop music? Well that's a judgment more than anything, but I don't think either sounds better. I think they both sound great in their own ways.
Similarly, is the super sweet, awesome classic milkshake or the complex fulfilling beer better tasting? Well, neither. They both taste magnificent in their own ways. So you can reiterate your point all you want that beer tastes like shit, but I really think you have missed out on some world class beers or something. Beer provides one of the most complex, amazing symphonies of flavor that I've ever had the delight of partaking in.
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While I agree that the objects in the grocery chain stores don't taste anything like the stuff that comes out of our garden, I'd have to say that you can still get really great beef. However, it costs a lot more.
Now the chicken today tastes horrible compared to real chicken. Even the smell of the antibiotic and hormone-infused chickens cooking is repulsive to me. When I'm at our summer home in the Ozarks, I can buy fresh chickens that grew up uncaged and eating stuff that chickens like to eat and the taste is wonderful by comparison. The guy who raises those chickens likes to say that his chickens that peck their own food from corn and other meal are the best in the country. I suggested that he change his slogan to "nothing tastes as good as a pecker" but he was not amused. Well, he was sort of amused, but he's one of those guys who doesn't really show anything on his face. When he finds something absolutely side-splitting hilarious, he'll maybe twitch one corner of his mouth a millimeter or so. Raises great chickens, though, and plays mean mandolin.
You are welcome on my lawn.
"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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