The Evolution of Frankenfoods?

By John Feffer, AlterNet. Posted July 18, 2005.

Avoid "dead water," the website advises, or else risk cardiovascular disease. According to Nanotechnology Limited, dead water is distilled or purified water that lacks minerals the body needs. The Chinese company claims that its product "nano water," currently available in Hong Kong supermarkets, is not only pure but has enhanced properties that fight inflammation, cancer and even aging itself. Thanks to a "nanometer high-energy water activator," this superwater has smaller molecule clusters that enable more direct absorption by the body.

Whether these claims are true or not -- scientists that I directed to the website pronounced it "hilarious" and "completely bogus" while company officials declined comment -- "nano water" is piggybacking on one of the most heralded scientific advances of our generation. Perhaps you've heard of the pants from Nano-Tex that repels spills or the Wilson Double Core tennis balls that have an extra nano-bounce. These are not exactly the stuff of scientific revolutions. But with advances promised in everything from cancer research to cheap energy, this technology of the tiny has a big future.

Nothing brings home the reality of a new consumer product like eating it. Nanofoods, currently a several billion dollar industry, is expected to grow to $20 billion by 2010. Most of this money is in packaging, but the food component may not stay under wraps for long. Nano-rice, nano-cheese, and hundreds of other products are in the research phase. Nano-agriculture, which relies on advances in microfine fertilizers and pesticides as well as microsensors for precision farming, is also just around the corner. Instead of waiting on the sidelines for the start-ups to work out the kinks, the big boys -- Kraft, Nestle, Campbell -- are investing large sums, putting their money where our mouths are going to be. Are nanofoods the best thing since sliced bread or simply round two in the "frankenfood" debate?

Defining Nanotech

Maybe you read Michael Crichton's Prey, or caught the reference in Spiderman 2, or even played the video game Nanobreakers. Nanotechnology has permeated pop culture. Of course, so has Michael Jackson, and he too remains a mystery.

Definitional confusion is endemic to new technologies, and nanotech is plagued by more than its share of misunderstanding. On the one hand, "nano" refers to any process that takes place at the nano-scale, which is 1-100 nanometers. A nanometer is one-billionth of a meter or one-thousandth the diameter of a human hair. A great deal of chemistry takes place at this level. Even ordinary combustion produces nanoparticles, whether from diesel engines or just plain campfires.

Strictly speaking, though, nanotechnology refers to scientific manipulations at the nano-scale. In the last twenty years, scientists have learned how to manufacture so many different synthetic nano-materials that they now have what amounts to a Lilliputian Lego set. These materials go by often fanciful names such as buckyballs (60 carbon atoms shaped like a mini-soccer ball), dendrimers (molecules that branch like trees), and quantum dots (semiconductor nano-crystals). The variety of these new materials is so wide that it can be difficult to generalize about their properties, just as it would be foolish to generalize about apples and oranges simply because they are both fruit.

Nanotech is often in the eye of the beholder. "If industry is selling nanotechnology to investors or potential customers, it says that the technology is new and unique," explains Kathy Jo Wetter of the watchdog ETC Group. "If industry is emphasizing nanotechnology's safety to smooth away concerns, it talks about the technology going all the way back to ancient Greece and about its use in medieval stained glass."

Sound familiar? In the debate over genetically modified organisms (GMO), the biotech industry claimed that their products were novel enough to warrant a patent but not so new and different to require a label or a special set of regulations. It might be more difficult for the nanotech industry to rely on similar arguments of "substantial equivalence." After all, what makes nanotech so potentially revolutionary is that materials often have very different properties at the nano-scale.

Definitional uncertainty is not the only problem to plague nanotechnology. To raise money, backers have hyped the new science's potential benefits. To lobby for regulations, the skeptics have played up the potential risks. These two worlds are just beginning to collide. The fallout will influence tomorrow's menu and determine whether both fast food and slow food are to be replaced, ultimately, by small food.

John Feffer is working on a book about the global politics of food.

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