Monday, June 27, 2011

Test Tube Burgers- the book Tomatoland..The Future of Culinary Arts?

Today I was given the following article to read by non-culinarian colleague of mine, he asked me if this was going to be the future of Culinary Arts. Let us pray that it is not.

Please read this article: Coming soon, the test-tube burger: Lab-grown meat 'needed to feed the world'  this article describes how scientist are taking stems cells from animals and turning them into minced tissue to form a hamburger. Their hope is to be able to feed the world. My first response was to see if this article was legitimate or a joke. The source of the article is from actual research going on at Oxford University in England and University of Life Sciences in Norway. 


Reading this article coincides with me finishing the book TOMATOLAND-How Modern Day Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit by Barry Estabrook.  In both the Test Tube Burger article and the TOMATOLAND book, man has chosen to genetically alter and or modify natural food products to create a non natural product to be mass produced to consumers, not matter the nutrient content or the taste. 

In the case of tomatoes, scientist and farmers in Florida have created a product that is regulated by the Florida government and laws as to the specific size, color (green), shape, skin texture etc of the tomatoes they produce and then sale.  The tomatoes are not grown for flavor or taste, they are picked green and then gassed with ethylene to slowly turn them red.  Additionally the tomatoes we buy in the supermarket 365 days a year are soaked in chemical fertilizers and pesticides.  These tomatoes are in many instances picked by modern day slaves, victims of human trafficking.




Consumers in parts of the world where food is readily available and reasonably priced should focus on foods that taste good, not only food that look good.  Foods that are full of their god given natural vitamins and minerals, not foods that have over time have lost as much as half of their original nutrients and foods that are not drowning in chemical fertilizers and pesticides.

In parts of the world where food is not in abundance and in areas of the world where people are starving, it is my opinion we should be finding natural ways to give these people nutritious food, in ways that are environmentally sound, engaged in fair trade practices and that are sustainable for the indigenous peoples. Not by creating food in a laboratory from stem cells, or by genetically modifying foods.

Until I blog again: Eat Well, Live Life, Be Safe...

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