The Nano

Could not get to sleep last night and was listening to a BBC World Service Program about food nanotechnology. The original broadcast is reviewed here and you can find a link to the program too.

More links and articles on this blog.

It comes down to fucking with your food on an atomic level, this can also happen in real life in a natural way (smoked salmon). Some products are already poisoning the Americans (and Australians (Don't buy Tip Top Bread)) and a lot of research is being done by the big food corporations.

One of the goals is to nuke the atoms in a hamburger in such a way so you can go to McDonald and eat 10 of them and none of the cancer causing particles stay in your body.

I think a simpler solution is possible: DON'T EAT AT MCDONALDS.

Of coarse the nanotechnology enhanced products are not labelled as such and when these products are more widely available it would be hard to avoid cancer. One could take the following approach: 'Don't buy food that needs a label' as my good friend Nicole once said. But this nanotechnology is also (going to be) applied to seeds so it will be hard to tell if the fresh food you buy has not been modified by either gene or nano-technology.

While doing some research and thinking about it I realized that big corporations are doing a lot of research (and we can pride ourselves that a lot of its done in Wageningen) at a high cost so we in the west can stuff ourselves without any (yet known) risk while it is still impossible to feed large parts of the world.

This only confirms my believe that large corporations are irresponsible psychopaths. Which also explains the current credit crunch (I just had to throw that in).

To prove that I am not a complete pessimist: while still listening to the BBC World Service the news announced that the Danish company Novo Nordisk will start providing insulin for free (with training for doctors and healthcare workers) to 10.000 children in the 3rd world.

The cost? They will be spending initially 20 to 25 Million US$. Not that they are making a huge sacrifice, profits for 2007 were 1,643 million US$