Nanotechnology (nanoparticles) in our foods RIGHT NOW

If it isn't bad enough that over 80% of our foods we eat contain genetically modified ingredients, now we are having nano particles added to our foods and its already been happening.
It is on our fruit, in our salad dressings, sauces, diet beverages, and boxed cake, muffin and pancakes mixes. Its in beer bottles and toddler nutrition drinks.

www.scientificamerican.com...

Another government scientist says nanoparticles can be found today in produce sections in some large grocery chains and vegetable wholesalers. This scientist, a researcher with the USDA's Agricultural Research Service, was part of a group that examined Central and South American farms and packers that ship fruits and vegetables into the U.S. and Canada. According to the USDA researcher -- who asked that his name not be used because he's not authorized to speak for the agency -- apples, pears, peppers, cucumbers and other fruit and vegetables are being coated with a thin, wax-like nanocoating to extend shelf-life. The edible nanomaterial skin will also protect the color and flavor of the fruit longer.
"We found no indication that the nanocoating, which is manufactured in Asia, has ever been tested for health effects," said the researcher.

Scores of scientific groups and consumer activists and even several international food manufactures told the committee investigators that engineered particles were already being sold in salad dressings; sauces; diet beverages; and boxed cake, muffin and pancakes mixes, to which they're added to ensure easy pouring.
Other researchers responding to the committee's request for information talked about hundreds more items that could be in stores by year's end.
For example, a team in Munich has used nano-nonstick coatings to end the worldwide frustration of having to endlessly shake an upturned mustard or ketchup bottle to get at the last bit clinging to the bottom. Another person told the investigators that Nestlé and Unilever have about completed developing a nano-emulsion-based ice cream that has a lower fat content but retains its texture and flavor.

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The problem is that there is little to no testing done on these products. The FDA does not require the nano particles to be proved safe but does require some testing that the goods are not harmful.
"there is a most definite requirement that manufacturers ensure that the products be safe" but says that compliance is essentially voluntary, with the FDA taking action only after an unsafe product is reported."

www.aolnews.com...

Here is a study that found nanoparticles cause DNA damage

www.aolnews.com...

and from another article

The report builds on several studies in recent years that have shown that some nanoparticles may cause harm. A 2005 study in Environmental Science & Technology showed that zinc oxide nanoparticles were toxic to human lung cells in lab tests even at low concentrations. Other studies have shown that tiny silver particles (15 nanometers) killed liver and brain cells from rats. "They are more chemically reactive and more bioactive," Illuminato says, because of their size, which allows them to easily penetrate organs and cells. "Products should be at least labeled so consumers can choose whether they want to be part of this experiment."

www.scientificamerican.com...

It makes me angry when our food in tampered with, our earth provides us with everything we need to live, man has f'd everything up.

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What a great thread. S&F. This is something that needs to be tested and stopped!

My friend has a farm and i get my tomatoes from him, which are exellent by the way.

I want to start and buying everything from small family farms.

Wow, this is alarming. We trust huge companies to do their due dillagence on food safety? Scary thought.
People need to start taking their power back from a corrupt government that caters to corporations.

Seriously

Here is a list of companies that are using this technology in our foods already.
lamarguerite.wordpress.com...
Some very big names on there.....

Additives have been added to foods for decades. Vitamins and minerals. They are just now being called "nano-particles". Before that, it was just chemicals in microscopic sizes.

Foods quick to lose moisture through their skins have been coated for decades. It's one reason to wash everything really well before eating. The things used, waxes, varnishes, and even oils, are considered safe to consume. Cukes and peppers will sometimes enter a produce department greasy and apples crusty with varnish. Oranges, bananas, potatoes and grapes are fumigated for bugs and fungus. Many foods are gassed to speed or slow the ripening process. Without these measures, we probably would consider bananas a luxury and only have potatoes and apples at picking time. Citrus is both gassed for color (otherwise many oranges woud be green when ripe) and varnished to slow aging.

The term "nano" is so overly used and misunderstood that is has become vilified. It simply means very, very small, .on the order of being 1 billionth. And that is all. I personally would rather chance that something that very small would be more easily washed off my food than any grease, oil, varnish or wax coating applied much heavier. It's nothing new, it's a repackaging of something people didn't know or think about before.

Originally posted by concerned190
If it isn't bad enough that over 80% of our foods we eat contain genetically modified ingredients, now we are having nano particles added to our foods and its already been happening.
It is on our fruit, in our salad dressings, sauces, diet beverages, and boxed cake, muffin and pancakes mixes. Its in beer bottles and toddler nutrition drinks.

All of our food is genetically modified. We eat domesticated animals raised on farms or in factories. Every domesticated species is the product of selective breeding, which is genetic engineering. The plants we eat also come from farms, and are also the product of selective breeding. Unless you're getting your food from the wild, it is without a doubt the product of genetic engineering. Selective breeding in plants and animals has been practiced for thousands of years and is totally ubiquitous. When species are bred in such a way that their genetic makeup is directed intentionally to have attributes that are more favorable to human beings, that is unarguably genetic engineering, even though it doesn't involve scientists in a lab.

All of our food also contains nano particles. Every protein is a complex molecule that is functional by itself and which exists at the nano scale. All life is based on nano scale particles; it constitutes the entirety of biochemistry. Just like some nano particles produced in the cells of certain organisms are dangerous in certain quantities, the nano particles from labs can also be dangerous. They can also be good for you.

"Nano" and "genetically modified" are not terms that should be scary to anyone. It's par for the course; everything that is biologically active operates on the nano scale, and all food produced on farms is genetically modified. There's nothing especially evil going on here. I'm sure in some cases there are bad nano technologies, and bad genetic modifications, but that's true of literally every kind of thing. I think that this thread is a case of being afraid of something that people do not understand very well. Farms feed the world using genetically modified (by selective breeding) sources of food; this is undoubtedly doing more good than harm. Every process in your body ultimately happens at the nano scale, and is based on interactions between nano scale particles; clearly not everything nano is wicked.

But because they are so small, they can move around in your body from organ to organ and possibly cross the blood brain barrier.

Thanks to their size, researchers have found, they can enter the body by almost every pathway. They can be inhaled, ingested, absorbed through skin and eyes. They can invade the brain through the olfactory nerves in the nose.
After penetrating the body, nanoparticles can enter cells, move from organ to organ and even cross the protective blood-brain barrier. They can also get into the bloodstream, bone marrow, nerves, ovaries, muscles and lymph nodes.

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reply to post by OnceReturned



Selective breeding is quite different from a genetically engineered plant or animal made in a lab imo.

Originally posted by concerned190
reply to post by OnceReturned

 

Selective breeding is quite different from a genetically engineered plant or animal made in a lab imo.

edit on 10/9/2010 by concerned190 because: spelling

What about it is different in an important way? Clearly the methodology is very different, but it seems like both processes are directed towards very similar outcomes. Are the methodological differences important?

Originally posted by OnceReturned

Originally posted by concerned190
reply to post by OnceReturned

 

Selective breeding is quite different from a genetically engineered plant or animal made in a lab imo.

edit on 10/9/2010 by concerned190 because: spelling

What about it is different in an important way? Clearly the methodology is very different, but it seems like both processes are directed towards very similar outcomes. Are the methodological differences important?

When you want to take a dump, the object of the exercise is to empty your bowels of said dump material.

You sit on the crapper and strain and push and squeeze one out, that's one way to do it.

Another way would be to take a razor sharp knife, slit open you stomach, slice open your bowels and let said dump material ooze into the crapper.

Both very different methodologies, and both methods result in the dump material in the crapper, so very similar outcomes in terms of dump material.

Although one method had the potential to leave you very dead or very ill indeed, whereas the other probably won't.

reply to post by spikey


Right. I'm not sure that that's a very useful analogy. My argument is not that methodological differences never matter. I'm talking about the topic of the thread. Could you make similar statements that address the issue in question?

Haha...drink Miller Beer? I don't, but for those of ya that do....there is a type of nylon coating added to the bottle to extend the beers shelf life...just think, may be a good thing (sarcasm) if it leeched into the drinkers system, might improve their "shelf life" too.

Nano particles, GMO, chemicals of any kind are not fit for human consumption. Be careful as well even with organics. KNOW your farmer, if at all possible...if you can grow it yourself, even better.

When culling the human race it's safer for the PTB to do it on the QT. Human Beings "scream" louder than any than any other animal.


~holly

reply to post by OnceReturned


I believe i have addressed your question in a very OT way, although admittedly, in a slightly tongue in cheek manner. However it was designed to highlight the potential for deadly or negative effects on the human body of one extreme methodology over another, more natural one.

And it is a very good analogy, when we are discussing potentially poisoning our food supply, versus leaving it in a more or less natural state and being left to wonder at what monstrous effects altering our foods at the genetic level, may be having on our bodies and on those of unborn generations to come. This also goes for the unknown and potentially devastating effects on the Earths natural biosphere too.

The end result of which for each scenario, genetically modified foods using gene manipulations together with the introduction of foreign flora or fauna DNA into totally unrelated species and genus, or allowing nature and established and natural farming techniques to carry on as it has done very successfully for thousands of years, could be equally as disturbing as the end results of my 'bowel' analogy.

On top of that, we now have manufactured nanoparticulates being added to our genetically engineered frankenfoods, that have not been tested for safety and probably won't be, unless mass injury and or death ensues. By which time, most of the population may well have been negatively affected.

The analogy holds. Distasteful as it is.

Manufactured in ASIA?

Gee thats comforting to know.
96% of the items we have are manufactured there and you can't tell me China has not been building trojan horses with these items piggy backing military technology into the US.

reply to post by concerned190


Heres a thought, stop buying it.

Buy local, organic food.

Plant your own garden?

These are all ways we can fight the GMO and nanotech food industries from having their way.

Supermarkets stop buying food that people wont eat.

So stop eating it.

I wrote this thread a long time ago about Nano Tech in our Food and concentrated on an article I read about the top ten reasons. Some of them are frightening for the conspiracy minded.

However, you don't have to have conspiracy thinking to see this is just a bad idea.

reply to post by Whisper67


Sorry, I did a quick search and found nothing here, probablly should have rephrased it a few ways.

Originally posted by spikey
reply to post by OnceReturned

 

I believe i have addressed your question in a very OT way, although admittedly, in a slightly tongue in cheek manner. However it was designed to highlight the potential for deadly or negative effects on the human body of one extreme methodology over another, more natural one.

Do you believe that human beings operate apart from nature? If that's the case, then why would natural things be good for us?

It's clear to me that human beings don't operate apart from nature. How could we? You talk about genetic engineering as unnatural and then you say, "natural farming techniques." Really? How could one be natural and not the other? They're both technologies.

What I mean is that nothing humans do can be unnatural. We don't have super-natural abilities. We are creatures of the earth. Cities are natural features of the ecosystem. As much as ant hills and bee hives, the products of human beings are the products of nature. Genetic engineering and nanotechnology arose from nature, like it or not. If you think otherwise; at what point do you believe that something outside of nature stepped in and separated us from everything else on earth and in the universe? Every organism affects its environment; every single one. There's nothing unatural at work here, because nothing unatural exists at all.

You can make the case that genetic engineering and nanotechnology in food is being applied recklessly, but I think you would need to talk about specific cases and cite evidence in order to have that conversation. The general notion that technology might be dangerous and that with great power comes great responsibility is no reason to halt the scientific enterprise entirely. You can talk about how dangerous it all might be, but at the same time the scientists who are working on it are talking about how wonderful and beneficial it might be. We don't have a good reason to be skeptical of technology just because it is new; so far science and technology have been a tremendous boon to humanity and done way more good than harm. I agree that some degree of caution is appropriate, but I know that fear of the unknown - just becase it is unknown - is not.

Genetic modification and chemical fertilizers allow much greater yield on crops. Todays farmer is able to produce many times the yield per acre as at the turn of the 1900s. It is very selfish to want to do away with these things. While food prices would skyrocket and people worldwide would starve due to lack of food, you could perhaps afford to eat and not worry about "contamination" in your food. Hope you can sleep at night with the death of millions on your hand simply because you dont want these things in your food.

Originally posted by nightbringr

Hope you can sleep at night with the death of millions on your hand simply because you dont want these things in your food.

A bit overly dramatic don't you think? I take it you also don't believe in a persons right to choose what they put in to their bodies? How about people who live in cities who cannot get any locally grown produce? Does them living in a city mean that they should have no option but to purchase GM (or other undesirably altered produce) from their local supermarket?

On a side note, I sent the information in the thread to a friend and his response was:

"But what if the DNA changes give me super powers"

I sh*t you not! lol

Rev