Frankenfoods and Edible Oddities
Chip Trivia
The Apple that Smells Like Grape
Grapple brand apples: "Take the sweet flavor of concord grapes.... Combined it with the delightful taste of a Washington Extra Fancy Fuji apple and you've got a fun, delicious new fruit treat!". According to the ingredients list a Grapple is made up of an apple and "natural and artificial flavor".
Learn Facts from a Potato Chip
With Pringles Prints, you get to read a fascinating fact before you eat them. The current edition has facts from the Guinness Book of Records.
Cheez-It Twisterz
These "baked cheese snacks" combine two flavors. In the case of the box I have in front of me, those two flavors are "Cheddar & More Cheddar." That's right, food scientists have finally broken the cheddar barrier. For centuries it was thought that cheddar and more cheddar could not be combined, and that any attempts to do so would result in a poison cloud at best and the complete destruction of all space-time at worst. But somehow, the good folks at the Sunshine bakery have figured out a way to put both cheddar and more cheddar in the same snack. I'm thinking they're probably being held in an electro-gravitational plasma field.
Wired sums it up well:
We have barely scratched the surface of the magical ways in which science has made our food less like actual food.
Written By J. Foster
I have actually tried the Grapple (only I pronounced it graaapple, short a). I like these things. The problem is the price. They are about a buck a piece here in southern california at Ralph's.
Replynow thats just weird...
ReplyThough a grapple sounds like a tasty snack!
I like hybrid fruits...tangelos are good. I like grapples too, but yeah, they're freakin' expensive. I had a professor in college that bred carrots to make them different colors and was working on a carrot/parsnip cross for something. Pretty crazy.
ReplyI had the Pringles Prints last year from the 99 cents store that my daughter bought. I was reluctant to try them. I don't know whether it was because I thought they might be old or stale or the green reminded me of mold. I can't remember one fact I read, if any. I did eat some with the green on the backside but it was not as enjoyable to me as chips usually are. Needless to say I ate a little. I also had an apple/pear and broccolli/flower, didn't care much for the fruit but liked the vegetable combo.
ReplyWow. lots of truly incredible information and links. There is no telling what science is doing to our food or what they will do next.
ReplyGreat blog. I linked to you on my blog at http://ideal-weight.blogspot.com/ keep up the wonderful job!
The funny thing is - there are some "odd" vegetables (such as purple broccoli and orange cauli) that are not some weird new GM food. They are old old seed/plant varieties that have disappeared from our commercial food lines. They tend to have higher nutrients but a shorter shelf life and less yield per hectare...
ReplyJim--good point! Purple carrots are actually an old variety (heirloom seed) that they are breeding to be easier to grow in different climates. And I also noticed that when I was in Central America, they had about 80 kinds of bananas, many of which we'd never seen before. So yeah, not every "different-looking" veggie or fruit is a GMO...I think people should try different things once in a while. Like jicama or fennel or radicchio.
ReplyThe Grapple is great! It smells so fresh! but the price is very high, the self heating latte is also very good, just how does that work anyway?? its amazing!
ReplyWell, As far as Gemetically midified goes, Do I support it? Well, yes and no.
Apperently, I may be looking foward towards new fruits and veggies that packs in more antioxidents and more nutrients in them.
But there are biotechnology that I am not support of. Two biotechnologies that are bad include pest-resistant crops and terminator-seed crops.
Pest-resistant crops can damage human health. Period. Even though you have rinsed your fruit, there are still sugnificint pesticides on the fruit. Genetically altered fruits and veggies only makes it worse, because it now contains proteins that kill of animals. Don't you want to eat an apple that contains rape? Pesticide-resistant crops not only absorb more pesticide, but contains proteins that can cause blindness, kidney failure, deafness, and more health problems.
Terminator-seed crops are in fact worse. Eating a Terminator plant will terminate you, and even sterilize humans, causing them not to get pregnant. If that is the case, we fear that humans will become extinct within the next 100 to 120 years. The USDA is pushing this for money, because they don't want farmers to save the seeds for the following year. Fokes, this will make the food supply more expensive, and even make poverty worse. Fokes, Humans AND plants and chimps, gorillas, elephants, Orangutans, and horses needs to have a future. Although I am looking foward to my new "Hybrid" car, I could still enjoy riding horses. So, these beloved animals need to be preserved. Some people may even like to go back to horses as transportation.
But Yes, there's good biotechnology. This biotechnology that makes foods more nutrient and allows consumers more choices when it comes to choosing fruits is the one I support, simply because it will make the soil more nutrient, and it's simply better on the enviornment. I do look foward to a "Multivitamin apple" where it can nurish me with these multivitamins without taking cumbersome pills. Because Acai berries packs in extensive amounts of anti-oxidents, I think that biotechnology would allow us to make foods for us "And our animals" better. My 3 cats are overweight and biotechnology would be used to make pet foods better so that they can go healthier.
So, it's not wheter or not biotechnology is used, but what TYPE of biotechnology is used. If it is used for nutrient purposes, go for it. If it is used for termination purposes or for pest resistancy, stay away from it!
Replypoo sticks. that would be interesting.
Replygrape? apple? grape? apple? hard desision, i know. the answer? grapple! heck yes! sounds like something i would try, but only once and most likely never again.
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