Engineering Food at the Molecular Level 297
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. "
real food lover here (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm all for engineering but when it comes to what I eat I'm very oldfashioned. No reconstituted, GM, reprocessed anything.
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everything else improves. why cant we improve on food.
Why exactly is food contrary to everything else, natural is the least efficient.
Re:real food lover here (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm all for progress, but food is delicate, mistakes have often serious and sometimes fatal effects. It doesn't take a lot of imagination to see that in todays environment a short term financial gain for a corporation will outweigh a long term health risk. Until that trend reverses I'm all for caution.
Re:real food lover here (Score:4, Insightful)
In what sense is food 'delicate'? Certainly an industrial product can be toxic, but food is not an exceptional case. In fact, we should expect our bodies to be more tolerant of food and water pollution than of other vectors. After all, you've got a million years of evolution behind you, ensuring that your gullet can tolerate the half-rotted carcass you found lying on the jungle floor.
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?
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Some of the most poisonous compounds in the world are natural defensive chemicals that bugs and critters make. Botulinium toxin comes to mind. In any case, the body cannot tell the difference between a manmade versus a bacteriamade compound. Both can be toxic, both can ca
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Care for some organic spinach?
I would, do you know where I can get some?
I ate up the spinach I had on had during the big scare, with out concern. Now, one still can not find spinach in the stores near where I live.
Oh, buy the way, it turned out it wasn't organic spinach that had the problem, it was a major labels non-organic variety.
Now we seem to have a lettuce scare going. Dang, can a demigod get some greens.
Re:real food lover here (Score:5, Informative)
Evolution has not equipped man to deal with genetic modification, chemicals, or preservatives.
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"Evolution has not equipped man to deal with genetic modification"
Ummm, YES IT HAS!!
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and if you mean it hasn't equipped us to deal with these artificial ingredients, then you really mean
"evolution has not YET equipped man to deal with..."
because if this stuff is added, it will happen, if given a long enough chance
no, not necessarily (Score:2)
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Evolution has not equipped man to deal with genetic modification, chemicals, or preservatives.
If you believe that genetically modified food, preservatives, and "chemicals" are harmfull, you shouldn't eat really any food produced today. All food produced on a farm has been genetically modified by humans, and has been since agriculture began. Salt has been used as a preservative for thousands of years. No one seems to be terribly concerened about it causing cancer though (though it does contribute to high
Re:real food lover here (Score:4, Insightful)
Food poses a larger threat because we expect interact with it so closely. There are plenty of toxic chemicals around the house, but for the most part we don't expect to place them directly into our bodies.
But none of those million years were we exposed to some of the chemicals/proteins/etc that are being geneticly engineered into foods. Although I think the outrage of some against bioengineered food is unjustified, there are definately risks that need to be thoroughly evaluated.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture#Ancient_
Re:real food lover here (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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[charlton heston]
Molecularly Engineered food is PEOPLLLLLLLLLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
*stretch arms* ARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!! */strech arms*
*slump over* ARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!! */slump over*
[/charlton heston]
or, if you prefer
[william shatner] Molec... ular Engineered food... *eyebrows* is PEOPLE! */eyebrows*
*clench fist* *close up* *eyebrows* KAAHHHHHHHHHNNNNNNNN!!!!!!! */clench fist* */close up* */eyebrows*
[/william shatner]
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Except these 'improvements' only improve shelf-life and manufacturing costs, not quality. In fact this 'advanced' food is often of far lower quality than food made naturally, both in terms of taste and nutrition.
Efficient doesn't taste good.
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That would be your assumption --perhaps based on the example of the frying oil-- but there is no reason this type of technology can't be used to improve quality, nutrition, flavor, etc.... And given that "health foods" tend to sell for a premium price, you'll probably see attempts to offer improvements in those products using nanotechnology in some form.
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Not everything else improves. Music CD technology came out and eventually killed dynamic range. Digital cable came out and we lost the ability to flip quickly through channels. Wide screen TV's came out and now everyone watches their favorite shows with all the actors' faces all stretched.
In medicine, you can say we've made progress, but now we have doctors over-recommending surgery for basic conditions. And psychiatrists prescribing Paxil and SSRI's
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Er, no, try again. On a GOOD turntable you might get 45dB of dynamic range and about 30-45dB of channel separation, on a GOOD vinyl pressing, with a GOOD receiver or preamp.
With CD you get approximately 90dB of both. What you DON'T get with CD is an infinite number of intermediary volume levels, and frequency response has a hard lower limit of 20hz and a hard upper limit of 22,050hz, whereas vinyl can extend to wel
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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-i n-my-food/20060808141909990001 [aol.com]
The fresh, farm-raised salmon that shoppers buy also get their orang
Toothpaste too. (Score:3, Interesting)
Also toothpaste and some tattoos. [wikipedia.org] Am I supposed to be spooked by this?
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Let's take tomatoes for an example.
The fiber (basically cardboard) portion has been selected for to make a tomato that grows fast, is pest resistant, doesn't spoil, doesn't bruise, and basically has about 20% of the "good" stuff compared to a tomato that does spoil and bruise.
So... improvement is great- the question is what did they "improve"?
If they measured the nutrition provided by a natural tomato and scored these other tomatoes and provided a rating, then the growers would improve nutrition. Curr
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Organic != good. GM != bad.
Even the food that you eat now "right from the field" have been engineered by man.
The corn, rice, wheat, grapes, lettuce, and just about every other crop you eat is very different from the wild versions.
So let's not just write of an entire technology that could help millions of people. Let's try to see that it is used responsibly.
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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/ecolimyth s.cfm) he is still spreading the rumour because people tend to believe him.
With the recent spinach probl
How old fashioned are you? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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We've been using selective breeding techniques ever since we started agriculture.
True, but there are some more recent changes. First, selective breeding has moved towards market attributes, like the ability to survive shipping and appear ideal, instead of taste ideal. Second, genetic tampering, additives, nano-scale materials, and the like have a lot less testing behind them to prove their safety.
Is the corn, wheat, tomatoes, etc the same as it was 2000 years ago, or even 200 years ago?
Nope, but neit
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Being educated not only implies that you are for progress, it also implies that you recognize when to be cautious and what you can do to assess the risks that others are exposing you to.
Un
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Did you read the research yourself? If you would I think you would have chosen other words.
True, the dosage is easier with calibrated medicine, where herbs are very varying in content, but don't forget that quite some of todays effective medicine are based on herbal ancestors.
Also keep in mind that the effectiveness of medicines is some
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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 gr
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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
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the problem i usually see with water becoming contaminated is either
a. a screw up at the treatment plant (not enough clorine or something)
or
b. some extraordinarily stupid civic planner decided to put the sewage treatment plant upstream of the water treatment plant.
Ya right (Score:2)
Oh, and M&M's are designed to melt at just above room temp. That way they "Melt in your mouth, not in your hands." There is no need for nano-tech to fix them.
Melt in your mouth...not in the bag (Score:2)
IIRC (and no, I didnt RTFM so this might have been mentioned there), the high-temp M&Ms have been around since the first gulf war (the one H. W. Bush presided over), and were designed specifically so that they could be sent to the troops there without melting. At least, Im pretty sure I remember some new article or TV special report that menti
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Re:Ya right (Score:5, Funny)
For those that haven't seen this before;
Anyone know who the author is?Re: (Score:2)
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well, common thinking would hold that the cough syrup would work faster, as you wouldn't have to wait for it to disolve in the stomach acid, unlike with the tablet. though the differance would be a
Sunny Ohs! (Score:4, Funny)
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You always have to wonder though (Score:2, Insightful)
Artificial preservatives and flavourings were the bees knees apprently when they hit the shelves first until it turned out many were carcinogens or just really not what you body wanted to be accumulating. Now look at the consumer demand for organically grown and prepared food.
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Don't worry, be happy.
Yum... molecular bacon. (Score:2)
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Anyone else nervous ? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'll take my potato chips without undisclosed materials, thank you very much.
Re:Anyone else nervous ? (Score:5, Funny)
Warnings like Olestra? (Score:2, Insightful)
Ahem... Wait a minute here... (Score:3, Insightful)
Even though some nano-materials could be highly dangerous [hazards.org] to human health [nanotec.org.uk]? In other words, we may end up with highly dangerous cancer-causing products used in kitchens? To fry greasy stuff that we know are bad for our health anyway? Talk about a double whammy: if your heart attack does not kill you, cancer from nano-particles will. And do you want fries with that?
Then again, this is business as usual in the USA [commondreams.org], so I guess it will probably be used soon.
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Just about everything you buy in the supermarket either includes or has been in contact with materials that are highly dangerous to human health. This would just be an insignificant new entry on a list that is already impressively long.
Furthermore, we have historically never discovered that things were dangerous until they had already been used for extended periods of time. Based on this, we can conclude that there is a high probabili
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The dangers of nano-particles in the bloodstream are not that they cause cancer, its that the particles could get p
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If reactionaries like yourself are going to try to ban these kinds of products because they COULD be dangerous, can I have you thrown in jail because you COULD be a terrorist? I don't know if you are a terrorist, but you could very well be, Better to let fear and paranoia rule the day, then make a rational decision about the risks of product
It depends (Score:2)
E.g., if it then disolves in water instead of staying a particle, the whole thing about it originally being a nano-particle doesn't mean jack squat by the time it's dissolved mollecules in your bloodstream. You could eat something containing, say, sugar nano-particles and it wouldn't do any more harm than the same quantity of sugar in any other form.
E.g., there are a ton of things already that do involve parti
Call me old fashion... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Wouldn't it be better to grow food instead of engineer food?
What do you think evolution has been doing all these years?
There's nothing more natural than genetic engineering.
Hey, I think I have their new slogan. :)
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Define natural ?
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As to what needs to happen in the coming decades:
Increase in computing power 1000 fold (or more) for cellular stimulation runs of human cells representative of all the phenotypes.
Cheaper and automated recombintive techniques, so you can create variations fast and chea
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Umm... why?
Zeolite causes cancer, I can see it now... (Score:2)
Great, people will stop having clogged arteries from fat and cholesterol, but instead have arteries suddenly clogged from zeolite clusters, or problems from tiny zeolite particles parking themselves in brain tissue.
We're going to have to look for food and restaurants that advertise:
No MSG...
No Zeolite...
No OilFresh...
No Ol
How big? (Score:2)
I wonder how many potato chips will that process per day? How much "undisclosed material" will they need to make that monster?
Olean! (Score:2)
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There IS a reason to have warning labels on food packages, just like medicine, and it's hardly anyone's fault other than the "victim"'s if someone ignores the warnings and gets sick. These days though it's always of course going to be someone else's fault .
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Not quite (Score:2)
It was being blown out of something, all right, but it wasn't "proportion".
-- or --
If you think anal leakage isn't that big a deal, you probably aren't that concerned with your health to begin with.
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Are zeolite nano-particles safe? (Score:3, Interesting)
Moon dust was a big problem huge problem for Apollo astronauts as it got past seals. I've heard that it's supposed to consist at least partially of nano-particles. The question is, do ordinary substances behave a lot differently when we grind them up into nano-particles?
My guess it that the FDA rules don't mention particle size when specifying food additives, so something like this could fly under the radar until someone thinks that maybe nano food additives might be a little different.
on zeolites . . . (Score:2)
"Zeolite" [wikipedia.org] refers to a class of minerals, not a particular mineral. They are aluminosilicate molecular sieves, and they are naturally formed from volcanic ash (a.k.a. "nanorock"). If you've ever taken a chemistry class, you've probably seen these litt
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Nothing too special, but enough to make everyone freak out about "dangerous nanoparticles."
Maybe it's not, and maybe your guesses are correct. But the human body is notoriously complex. Maybe you're willing to eat some new form of a food additive that's never been tested or eaten before based on guesswork, but I'm not.
No, the question is "Do zeolites have toxic effects when ground up very finely and consumed with french fries?"
No, this zeolite thing is a minor battle. I'm referring to the big picture her
Organic Store Wars...Join the Organic Rebellion (Score:3, Funny)
I can't wait (Score:2)
How can you trust the FDA? (Score:2)
This is the same federal agency that has let the food industry poison us for decades through the use of trans-fats, which have been shown to cause obesity, cancer, and many more health problems. The only reason that they use trans-fats is that it increases the shelf life of foods, which saves the big food companies a few cents on refrigeration and storage costs.
So the food indu
FUD (Score:2)
Too dumb to read a food label? All the constituents are clearly labeled.
So the food industry would rather save a few cents per package, and doesn't care about poisoning the average american citizen. The FDA has been complicit in this, and has let them get away with it for decades, only in the last couple years have they actually required food companies to even list the amount of trans-fats included in food items. This i
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The potato chip industry... (Score:2)
if technology allows it- we need ice 9 (Score:3, Interesting)
ice 9 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice-9 [wikipedia.org] among other interesting tidbits, should become a solid WITHOUT increasing in volume, this means for suspended animation- the cells don't burst.
is there no way to stack water molecules, so they stack neatly and tightly?
Mods please? (Score:2)
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Dental x-rays just haven't fully been thought out, not when fiction like Godzilla reminds us of the dangers of giant mutated creaters. A few cavities are a small price to pay in order to not have a giant lizard destroy Tokyo, don't you think?
Uh huh. Pointless? Really? (Score:2)
So healthier and cleaner (as in the food is not adversely affected by temperature extremes) food is pointless? What color is the sky on that planet you apparently live on? What are the coordinates, so we can point our telescopes your way and study your planet? Tell us about the life there -- we want to know how it evolved.
Ooooh! Manipulating food!!! (Score:2)
And putting zeolite into oil doesnt seem to have anything to do with the title, unless you know somewhere where oil is marketed as "food".
And the article isnt clear, but what may be going on isnt chemical manipulation at all, but just simple mechanical filtering.
Otherwise okay.
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So for the oil thing (Score:2)
* and if it stops hydrocarbon reactions in oil, what is it going to do inside our bodies?
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Food with DRM (Score:2)
That'd stop people from pinching my French Fries!
Or we could go back to real food (Score:2)
Good Omens (Score:2)
The first thing I thought: (Score:2)
Think about the frying oil (Score:2)
"Weightier Goals"? What would THOSE Be Pray Tell? (Score:2)
Molecular changes to food = bad idea! (Score:2)
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I beleive other ingredients were lead, paint, hair, and human skin (probably flakes).
Seriously, we have it better these days. In fact the whole thing with laws to state a minimum level of safety for human food came about because of some woman who found a mouse in her bottle of drink.
If moleculer engineered food turns out to be cheap, then it's coming, there's not a great deal we can do about it ba
Whole Foods: organic, free-range, all-natural (Score:2)
F
Very scary (Score:3, Interesting)
And what happens when you digest some of those beads? They prevent your liver from breaking down the oil?
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If so, count me out. I got better things to do than getting on people's nerves. Well, outside of the 'net, that is.
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there's a guy working on such a thing at the University of Bristol. [dailymail.co.uk]