Welcome to the world of nano foods

[zengrifter]

Welcome to the world of nano foods

'I'd like to drink a glass of water and know that the contents are going into my stomach - not my lungs. We are giving very toxic chemicals the ability to go where they've never gone before'

Alex Renton
Guardian Unlimited

Willy Wonka is the father of nano-food. The great chocolate- factory owner, you'll remember, invented a chewing gum that was a full three-course dinner. 'It will be the end of all kitchens and cooking,' he told the children on his tour - and produced a prototype sample of Wonka's Magic Chewing Gum. One strip of this would deliver tomato soup, roast beef with roast potatoes and blueberry pie and ice cream. In the right order. Violet Beauregarde snatched it, swiftly ate it and, at the pudding stage, turned bright purple and blew up to three times her size.

Far-fetched? The processed-food giant Kraft and a group of research laboratories are busy working towards 'programmable food'. One product they are working on is a colourless, tasteless drink that you, the consumer, will design after you've bought it. You'll decide what colour and flavour you'd like the drink to be, and what nutrients it will have in it, once you get home. You'll zap the product with a correctly-tuned microwave transmitter - presumably Kraft will sell you that, too.

...more - http://observer.guardian.co.uk/foodm...1266%2C00.html

[zengrifter]

After GM Food – here comes Nano Food!
UK food regulators challenged to remove Nanotech foods from the shelves

ETC Group
News Release
Wednesday November 24, 2004
www.etcgroup.org

Publication of new report: “Down on the Farm: The Impact of Nano-Scale Technologies on Food and Agriculture”

As the government committee who first let GM Food into Britain prepares to meet again, The ETC Group (an international research and advocacy organisation) has called for an urgent public debate about the use of Nanotechnology in food and agriculture – recommending that unassessed nano-foods and pesticides be removed from the market. In a new sixty page report, "Down on the Farm" (available online), ETC Group offers the first comprehensive look at how nano-scale technologies will transform farming, food and agriculture. At today's public meeting of the Advisory Committee on Novel Foods and Processes (ACNFP) questions have been tabled calling for the withdrawal, assessment and labelling of nanotech foods in line with recommendations by the Royal Society and others. ETC will also be writing to the European Commission as well as Food, Agriculture and Environment Ministers worldwide asking them to take precautionary action.

Nanotechnology refers to the manipulation of matter at the scale of atoms and molecules, where size is measured in billionths of metres and quantum physics determines how a substance behaves. According to Hope Shand, ETC Group’s Research Director, “Over the next two decades, technologies converging at the nano-scale will have a greater impact on farmers and food than farm mechanisation or the Green Revolution. Most consumers and farmers are still unaware and have never been asked whether they want these changes to the food chain”

ETC’s new report ‘Down on the Farm’ dishes out some big surprises: A handful of food and nutrition products containing invisible and un-labeled nano-scale additives are already on supermarket shelves. In addition, a number of pesticides containing nano-scale materials have been released in the environment and are commercially available. Nanomaterials exhibit different properties than the same materials at larger scales – and scientists are now finding out that some nano-scale materials are more reactive and mobile if they enter the body. Only a handful of toxicological studies exist. Because of these concerns, ETC Group believes that the use of new, nano-scale materials must be guided by the Precautionary Principle. “By allowing nanotech food and agricultural products to come to market in the absence of public debate and regulatory oversight, governments and industry may be igniting a new and more intense debate – this time over ‘atomically-modified’ food and farming,” adds Jim Thomas, ETC Group Programme Manager based in Oxford, UK.

...more - http://biotech.indymedia.org/or/2004/11/3627.shtml

[21forme]

If Dustin Hoffman were making The Graduate today, his line would have been "nanotech" instead of "plastics." The implications of nanotech are amazing (some of which are already on the market.)