Big Dairy Is Putting Microscopic Pieces of Metal in Your Food

[NobleSavage]

According to the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies (PEN)—a joint venture of Virginia Tech and the Wilson Center—there are more than 1,600 nanotechnology-based consumer products on the market today. If SmartSilver Anti-Odor Nanotechnology Underwear sounds like a rather intimate application for this novel technology, consider that the PEN database lists 96 food items currently on US grocery shelves that contain unlabeled nano ingredients. Examples include Silk Original Soy Milk, Rice Dream Rice Drink, Hershey's Bliss Dark Chocolate, and Kraft's iconic American Cheese Singles, all of which now contain nano-size titanium dioxide*. As recently as 2008, only eight US food products were known to contain nanoparticles, according to a recent analysis from Friends of the Earth—a more than tenfold increase in just six years.

http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2014/05/nanotech-food-safety-fda-nano-material

 

[skepticalbip]

OMG!

Say it ain't so. "They" are really putting molecules in our food?


I have really come to hate panic mongering articles like this.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Just from the title, i expected this to be more of a 'Dihydrogen Monoxide' claim. Maybe Calcium was classified as a metal or something. Microscopic amounts of metal are worse than microscopic amounts of rat feces?

Wait? Ten fold?
Eight to ninety-six is not even a four-fold increase.

Jeez, if you're going to be an alarmist, be an accurate alarmist.

 

[Malintent]

Just from the title, i expected this to be more of a 'Dihydrogen Monoxide' claim. Maybe Calcium was classified as a metal or something. Microscopic amounts of metal are worse than microscopic amounts of rat feces?

Wait? Ten fold?
Eight to ninety-six is not even a four-fold increase.

Jeez, if you're going to be an alarmist, be an accurate alarmist.

96 / 8 = 12. Twelve-fold.

I guess if you were "folding" paper, 8 sheets would "fold" into 16 sheets, which would fold into 32, and then 64. So 8 sheets can be folded 3 times to make 64 sheets, and 4 folds would make 128. <shrug>

Here's a favorite ditty I like....

Imagine you can fold a piece of newspaper as many times as you like without ripping or distorting it. Fold it in half 100 times. How tall would that stack of paper (folded 100 times) be in your estimation? (a foot? a meter? a mile? a light year?) Then do the math. How far off were you?

Show

If the paper was 1/400th of an inch thick to begin with, then the final folded stack would be about 8 BILLION LIGHT YEARS tall

 

[Keith&Co.]

I thought that's what fold meant. From folding over to double the thickness.
Why the hell would 'multiply by' mean fold?
God, language is stupid.

 

[Malintent]

I thought that's what fold meant. From folding over to double the thickness.
Why the hell would 'multiply by' mean fold?
God, language is stupid.

You are right, English has some odd idioms. in this context "fold" means "times". it was 10 times greater = it was greater by 10 fold.

Why do we PARK in a DRIVEway, but we DRIVE on a PARKway????

 

[Keith&Co.]

I thought that's what fold meant. From folding over to double the thickness.
Why the hell would 'multiply by' mean fold?
God, language is stupid.

You are right, English has some odd idioms. in this context "fold" means "times". it was 10 times greater = it was greater by 10 fold.

I wonder if it used to mean doubled, but lazy people with poor math skills watered it down.
Like 'i couldn't care less' is becoming 'i could care less.'
Or 'dammit, you idiot, pay attention next time!!' is becoming 'Recalculating.'

 

[NobleSavage]

Don't you think we should a least test the dangers of nanoparticles?

"The penetration of silver nanoparticles is dangerous to consumers because they have the ability to relocate in the human body after digestion," Lin said. "Therefore, smaller nanoparticles may be more harmful to consumers than larger counterparts."

When ingested, nanoparticles pass into the blood and lymph system, circulate through the body and reach potentially sensitive sites such as the spleen, brain, liver and heart.

http://phys.org/news/2013-08-toxic-nanoparticles-human-food.html

A research collaboration led by Michael Shuler, the Samuel B. Eckert Professor of Chemical Engineering and the James and Marsha McCormick Chair of Biomedical Engineering, studied how large doses of polystyrene nanoparticles -- a common, FDA-approved material found in substances from food additives to vitamins -- affected how well chickens absorbed iron, an essential nutrient, into their cells.

http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2012/02/ingested-nanoparticles-could-be-harmful-health

The revolution in nanotechnology is set to bring advantages in areas of our lives as diverse as engineering, information technology, and diagnostics. Part of this will necessitate large scale production of nanoparticles with new formulations and surface properties to meet novel demands. Our current knowledge of the toxicology of nanoparticles and nanotubes is poor but suggests that nanoparticles may be able to have adverse effects at their portal of entry, for example, the lungs, but that some nanoparticles may also escape the normal defences and translocate from their portal of entry to have diverse effects in other target organs. We suggest that a discipline of nanotoxicology be built up to address the new potential threats that widespread use of new nanoparticles could bring in support of the growth of a safe and sustainable nanotechnology industry.

http://oem.bmj.com/content/61/9/727.1.full

 

[Malintent]

You are right, English has some odd idioms. in this context "fold" means "times". it was 10 times greater = it was greater by 10 fold.

I wonder if it used to mean doubled, but lazy people with poor math skills watered it down.
Like 'i couldn't care less' is becoming 'i could care less.'
Or 'dammit, you idiot, pay attention next time!!' is becoming 'Recalculating.'

lol, ya, I think you are probably right.

 

[GenesisNemesis]

Nano? Sounds bad even though I have no evidence for that. I don't like it.

 

[barbos]

titanium dioxide has been main ingredient of tooth paste since forever.
It's actually pretty common in dirt.
And it's used to give white color if food industry I think

 

[EricK]

They should remarket nanoparticles as homeopathic additives. Then the anti-science brigade wouldn't know whether to be for it or against it.

 

[Perspicuo]

I thought that's what fold meant. From folding over to double the thickness.
Why the hell would 'multiply by' mean fold?
God, language is stupid.

It's a European language thing. Latin has it too. 'Multiply' contains 'ply', and means "many folds", i.e., manifold. When you fold something once you make it double, once again and make it triple.

 

[Perspicuo]

That's where the nano story gets murky. Remarkably, the US Food and Drug Administration, which oversees the safety of the food supply, both 1) acknowledges that nanoparticles pose risks that are substantially different from those of their regular-sized counterparts, and 2) has done nothing to slow down their rapid move into the food supply.

Back in 2012, the FDA released a draft, pending public comment, of a proposed new framework for bringing nano materials into food. The document reveals plenty of reason for concern. For example: "so-called nano-engineered food substances can have significantly altered bioavailability and may, therefore, raise new safety issues that have not been seen in their traditionally manufactured counterparts." The report went on to note that "particle size, surface area, aggregation/agglomeration, or shape may impact absorption, distribution, metabolism and excretion (ADME) and potentially the safety of the nano-engineered food substance."

If so, this is dangerous. The FDA is not your usual fear-mongering woo institution.

 

[barbos]

People confuse "nano" with "micro". Most of the time it's merely micro.
And nano particles of titanium oxide would be pointless becasue they would not give white color.

Nano-tubes are believed to be dangerous because they can mechanically pierce cells in the body.

 

[Keith&Co.]

People confuse "nano" with "micro". Most of the time it's merely micro.
And nano particles of titanium oxide would be pointless becasue they would not give white color.

Nano-tubes are believed to be dangerous because they can mechanically pierce cells in the body.

Lordy, don't tell my kid.
He'll rush out to get his cells pierced, too.

 

[Jarhyn]

As with all other such issues: take the net benefit of the science, in terms of total time and resource cost to replace the information that this will ultimately obscure, and then subtract the total time and resource cost of the information it prevents from being obscured.

If you have a net savings, who cares about the risks? It's not just about risks, it is about risks vs rewards.