What Are We Eating?

Two contrasting stories about who’s watching what we eat:

On the 10th, The NY Times published an article about how companies are working on creating nanotech food additives, the first of which we’re already eating, even though the FDA is still only "trying to get a handle on what’s out there.”

Suffice to say that the article paints a threatening picture – but what was really interesting was the FDA’s attitude:

"F.D.A. officials said last week that treating every newnanotechnology product that consumers swallow as a food additive might compromise the agency’s mandate to foster innovation and might not be within its authority."

8 days later, an article appeared in SFGate, about SysCo, the largest food services distributor in the US, setting up a fairly convincing "humane, sustainable pork" farm that is actually neither humane nor
sustainable – almost indistinguishable, in fact, from a normal industrial pig farms. The marketing was convincing enough, however, that several restaurants actually listed it on their menus as being ethically raised meat.

SysCo’s operation was eventually investigated by Bonnie Powell, and published in SFGate.

New York Times:  Engineering Food at Level of Molecules

San Francisco Chronicle:  A menu’s pastoral descriptions may not be what they seem.

Contributed by Tse Wei Lim