The Free Range Gourmet Free range thoughts on the finest ingredients, cuisine, and fine dining in Hawaii.
Free 

Range Gourmet

  Local Hawaii ingredients used with an international flair


        ^BNanette^K^H (Gone but not forgotten) 1946-2020


                   Email: nanette@freerangegourmet.com

Wednesday, August 20, 2014

 

Another good reason to push for GMO labeling: Fake DNA Frankenfood will be next on our plates



What could possibly go wrong with vanilla flavoring brewed by DNA-manipulated yeast? Well, like genetic engineering, synbio falls into a regulatory void that often allows products to go from lab to grocery store with little or no oversight. Evolva's vanillin and resveratrol will likely sail through the Food and Drug Administration's approval process—and end up in your food without any special labeling—because they are versions of already-existing compounds and thus have "generally recognized as safe" status.


by Larry Geller

And what could possibly go wrong with creating glowing trees to replace streetlights?

Synthetic biologists also aim to conjure up self-growing buildings, streetlight-replacing glowing trees, and medicines tailored to your body's needs. No wonder the market for synbio is expected to reach $13.4 billion by 2019.

[Mother Jones, Now Your Food Has Fake DNA in It, 8/20/2014]

“Synbio” is supposed to sound better than “Frankenfood,” unless, of course, you know that’s what it means.

Check out the article. It appears that “synbio” vanilla is here, and could be appearing in food soon.

Next up: a better-tasting version of stevia, a natural, low-calorie sweetener that the soda industry hopes can replace synthetic chemicals in diet sodas.

As the article points out, the products targeted are currently grown the old-fashioned way by farmers, mostly in the global South. If factories in the North are churning out the stuff they used to grow, what will they do for a living?

Since consumers in this country haven’t yet won the war to have GMO foods labeled, there likely won’t be labeling required for Frankenfoods, either.

Unless we get our act together real soon.





  

Follow Free Range Nan on Twitter

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License NonCommercial-ShareAlike

Email: nanette@freerangegourmet.com
Twitter: @freerangenan


Search this site


Do you want to receive an email whenever this page changes?



Powered by FeedBlitz



RSS News Feed


Receive Free Range Gourmet news via our news feed

How do you read news feeds? Click here for some information.





Market News

Official web pages and Tip Sheets for Saturday morning KCC Farmers' Market, Wednesday night Honolulu Market, Sunday morning Mililani Market, and Thursday Night Kailua Market


Resources

Slow Food

You've read about the world-wide slow food movement. Hawaii has an active Slow Food group. Learn about or join Slow Food USA at the Slow Food USA website.

Where we're Eating

Town
Olive Tree Cafe



More Links




Archive




Image: 

powered by Blogger


[Valid RSS]


 
 

   Contact the webmaster: webmaster@freerangegourmet.com