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IF YOU THINK GM IS SCARY
[January 20, 2007]

IF YOU THINK GM IS SCARY


(Daily Mail Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) WILLY WONKA, the great fictional chocolate factory owner, was the pioneer of 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. Unable to contain her excitement, the spoilt brat Violet Beauregarde gobbled up the experimental gum and promptly turned into a giant blueberry.

Farfetched? Not any more. The processed-food industry and a group of research laboratories are busy working towards food just as fantastical as Wonka's three-course gum, with consequences that some scientists believe could be almost as alarming.


One product that the food giant Kraft is planning 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, once you get home. You'll zap the product with a correctly-tuned microwave transmitter - presumably Kraft will sell you that, too.

This will then activate nanocapsules - each one about 2,000 times smaller than the width of a hair - containing the necessary chemicals for your particular choice of drink: green-hued, blackcurrant-flavoured with a touch of caffeine and omega-3 oil, say.

Those particular particles will then dissolve to create the required drink, while all the other possible ingredients will pass unused through your body, still in their nanocapsules.

Sounds unappetising? That scarcely matters. You may not want it, but the food industry does.

Every major food corporation is now investing in nanotechnology and governments in Europe have pumped GBP1.7 billion into its research over the past eight years. By 2010, the nanotech food business, according to analysts, will be worth GBP10 billion annually.

So what actually is it? Nanotechnology is the science of the tiny - the precision engineering of substances at molecular and atomic level.

The scale is amazingly small. A nanometre is a billionth of a metre: the width of a human hair is 80,000 nanometres and this industry is manufacturing complex nanomaterials 30nm wide or less.

The industry exploits the fact that physics and chemistry change at nanoscale, and common substances behave very differently - thus many of the metals and chemicals that industry works with take on startling new properties.

'It's like having a brand new tool box,' says one scientist. The uses these tools can be put to are amazing but, like any partially explored technology, are potentially dangerous.

Nanotech is all around you already: in clothing, electronics, manufacturing and increasingly in health and cosmetics.

For example, if you buy a clear sunscreen that promises to block ultraviolet light, it is using nanoparticles of metals such as zinc or titanium.

As yet, there are officially no foods on sale in Europe that contain nanomaterials, though they do exist in the States. But regulation is very light and foods, along with health products, are high on an excited industry's target list because that's where the big money is.

NANOPACKAGING with the ability to kill off unwanted contaminants will be the first application you'll see - but the science behind it isn't very different from that in the 'antibacterial' food containers on sale now.

It is with nano-engineered food ingredients that things get mind-boggling.

Precisely-engineered nanoscale filters will allow you to remove all bacteria from milk or water without boiling, or take the red out of red wine.

Using such nanofilters, lactose could be extracted from milk and replaced with another sugar - making all milk suitable for the lactose-intolerant.

This could mean less use of chemicals and heat treatments in food processing.

Nanotech will also revolutionise cooking. In the kitchen, chefs will one day be able to pin down tastes, textures and colours and deliver them to order. They will be able to design dishes at molecular level and build the food that you receive on your plate just as a composer chooses the notes an orchestra plays.

Some truly Willy Wonka nanoproducts are already on their way. An American company claims to have created 'the Holy Grail of chewing-gum design' - chewing gum with real chocolate in it. Hazelnut cappuccino flavour is next.

Parents are a big market for nano. No more bribing your kids to eat fruit and oily fish: vitamin C-enriched cooking oil and omega-3 fish-oil-carrying fruit juices are already available.

Nanocoatings will also extend the lifespan of food. Mars has a U.S. patent for nanoscale films that have been tested on M&Ms, Twix and Skittles.

THE coatings, made from oxides of silicon or titanium, are undetectable, could kill bacteria and would increase the shelf life of many manufactured foods, even after they are opened.

But scientists are aiming even higher.

In the longer term, atomic-level encapsulation techniques will become much more sophisticated.

Food processors will offer engineered food catering to your specific tastes. If your chicken is going to sit in the fridge for a while, just activate the nanopreservatives held dormant in its flesh. Fancy a fillet with a tarragon-and-butter taste? Trigger a different nanocapsule.

Franz Kampers, a scientist at the Wageningen University in the Netherlands, says: 'The Holy Grail of the food industry is to create something like this from plant protein' - he shows a picture of a glistening roast turkey with all the trimmings - 'that would be really something.' But while the food industry is hooked on nanotech's promises, it is also very nervous. For if British consumers are sceptical about GM foods, then they are certainly not ready for nanofood.

Among some scientists in the field there is a real sense that nanotechnology, in food at least, is a revolution that may die in its cradle - rejected by a public that has lost its trust in science and its patience with industry's profitdriven tampering with what we eat.

Dr David Bennett, a biochemist working on a European Commission project on the ethics of 'nano-biotechnology', feels that public rejection of nanotechnology is 'almost certain'.

'Very little risk assessment has been done, even on some products already entering the market - and it's an open question whether it will be done,' he says. 'To Greenpeace and Friends Of The Earth, it's a gift.' And, Dr Bennett added, the lack of proper assessment of nanotechnology 'scares me to death'.

What's to be afraid of, from a technology that offers so much - healthier food, fewer (and better-targeted) chemicals, less waste, 'smart' (and thus less excessive) packaging, and even the promise of a technological solution to the problem of the one billion people who don't get enough to eat?

'Matter behaves differently at nanoscales,' explains Dr Kees Eijkel from the Dutch Twente University.

'That means different risks are associated with it. We don't know what the risks are and the current regulations [on the introduction of new food processes] don't take that into account.' Aluminium, for example, is stable in the 'big world' but explosive at nanolevels. Some of the carbon nano-structures that are being used in electronics have been shown to be highly toxic if released into the environment. Some metals will kill bacteria at nanoscale - hence the interest in using them in food packaging - but what will happen if they get off the packaging and into us?

No one seems to know - and even the Royal Society has expressed worries over the lack of research into the health implications of nanoparticles being introduced to our environment.

The size question is central to these concerns. Nanoparticles that are under 100nm wide - less than the size of a virus - have unique abilities.

They can cross the body's natural barriers, entering into cells or through the liver into the bloodstream or even through the cell wall surrounding the brain.

'I'd like to drink a glass of water and know that the contents are going into my stomach and not into my lungs,' says Dr Qasim Chaudhry of the government's Central Science Laboratory, referring to the nanostructured foods or 'nutraceuticals' that some cosmetics and nutritional supplement companies are marketing with the claim that they will feed directly into cells and tissues.

Another area of concern for Dr Chaudhry and scientists working on the safety aspects of the new technology are the nanoscale pesticides proposed for use in agriculture. 'We may be giving very toxic chemicals the ability to cross cell membranes,' says Dr Chaudhry, 'to go where they've never gone before.

'Where will they end up? There's lots of concern. We have to ask - do the benefits outweigh the risks?' Asbestos is one analogy. Sixty years ago, the stable, cheap building material helped war-devastated Europe put up housing quickly, until it was discovered that asbestos micro-fibres, once free and inhaled, were potentially lethal to the lungs.

Dr Chaudhry has been leading a team of researchers reporting to the government's Food Standards Agency on nanotech and safety. He is worried that the health research is way behind the technology and that a whole range of necessary tests has not been carried out.

Reacting to some of these fears, the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has launched a notification scheme for companies introducing nanoproducts to the UK market. But the scheme is voluntary, and the list - out of respect to commercial interests will be kept secret.

It's not the sort of openness that will soothe a concerned public, all too wary of the reassurances of the food industry and science. But the FSA, which is awaiting the results of two research projects into nanotech, food and safety, says it is confident that existing regulations on 'novel' foods and food processes will cover any new products.

However, as with GM, we may be overtaken by events in the States, where food regulators have been steamrollered by a food industry eager to push the new technology.

SO FAR, the list of kitchen nanoproducts on American shelves is unimpressive.

According to the database of Washington research institute the Woodrow Wilson Center, there are only 29 products under food and beverage compared with 201 under health and fitness (I'm excited by the nanosilverised selfcleaning socks).

But significantly, the list has grown 50 per cent since March, when it was only 19 products long.

As for supplements, there's a vitamin B12 spray marketed by Nutrition-by-Nanotech. You catch a child with an open mouth and simply spray the stuff in: they'll absorb the nano-sized vitamins directly through the mucal cells.

'Tastes like candy. Would you believe it, they are asking for more!' runs the copy line.

Three other items on the Woodrow Wilson list under food stand out.

One is 'Nano-tea', from a Chinese company, that will increase tenfold the amount of selenium absorbed from green tea through capsules engineered to bypass the stomach and dissolve in your lower gut.

There's Canola Activa Oil, a cooking oil that will stop cholesterol entering the bloodstream.

And finally there's SlimShake chocolate - a powdered drink that uses nanotechnology to concentrate the taste of cocoa, and thus cut out the need for sugar.

But what of the promise that nanotechnology offers hope to the one billion undernourished on the planet? Nothing yet.

Dr Donald Bruce, a chemist who heads a group examining technology and ethics for the Church of Scotland, is doubtful. He sat on a committee ten years ago examining the moral implications of the introduction of GM.

'The public were told that genetic modification was going to feed the world. So we looked for evidence of any such application that had addressed the needs of a subsistence farmer. We couldn't find any.

The industry went for agronomic benefits, not for people benefits.' With nanotech, the food industry has once again got it back to front, he feels.

'Such innovation must be consumer-led - the consumer must be able to see what's in it for them.' And, perhaps more pertinently, what dangers it may present.

Just ask Violet Beauregarde.

A version of this article first appeared in Observer Food Monthly.

Copyright 2007 Daily Mail. Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Europe Intelligence Wire.

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