November 27, 2008

Nanofood Delivery

A garden that a person belongs to is akin to good love making. Every detail and subtle change, the mutuality, satisfaction, intimacy and delight. I graze while I weed and putter with this and that, but when I prepare and eat the good food that comes out of this intimate garden, well thats a kind of climax to the experience. The Food Industry of course recognizes the link between sex and food, cleverly exploits and studies its brain chemistry and imprints our desires on chocolates or frozen dinners. And now research is going on in places like Wageningen BioNT to design food that delivers tastier wallops to our taste buds. I think it is another cleverly unfortunate way to put its little foot through the planetary food's door.
The Nanotech interests are studying diligently the failure of GMO's to be instantly hailed as welcome in our fields and plates and are employing social scientists to discover "which factors shape public attitudes".
"It appears from European and American reports that particular efforts are devoted to integrating the humanities and the social sciences into the interdisciplinary approach to nanotechnology. The overall objective is to gain the general public’s acceptance of nanotechnology in order not to provoke a consumer boycott, as it happened with GM crops and foods". Source
Meanwhile, while publically funded "research" goes on in Nanofood (some of it used to convince the public its safe) nanoproducts are making their way into our food system now. These products appeal to the popular concern for "health": better nutrient deliver, and packaging for food that eases our fear of microbes. I predict the next, after health and safety, which we all hold as deeply important, will be the diddling of those taste buds with super flavour, an appeal that harkens to a more complete, climatic taste. But it won't be the intimate flavour of that lost garden.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I did a one line post on this a while ago too:

http://www.patnsteph.net/weblog/?p=113

I didn't know it had to do with nanotechnology.

anne said...

I think that was referring to foods that reduce obesity, not tastiness. WAGENINGEN from the Netherlands is is a hub for life science companies That deserves a look see. One could eat enhanced flavour icecreams blissfully while never getting fat. Oh yes. shit eh?