The near future of nanotech food

In 2003 Nobel-prize-winning nanoscientist Richard Smalley rejected claims of parallels between genetically engineered foods and nanotechnology: “After all, we’re not advising that you eat nano stuff”. But while no one may have told Professor Smalley, the food industry has been investing billions of dollars into nanotech research, with a handful of unlabeled nano food products already on the market.

'Smart’ packaging (containing nanosensors and anti-microbial activators) is being developed to further extend the shelf-life of food. Nanosensors will also allow food to be tracked from paddock to factory to supermarket and beyond. ‘Medically beneficial’ nanocapsules will soon enable chocolate chip cookies or tomato sauce to be marketed as health promoting.

Companies such as Kraft and Nestlé are designing ‘smart’ foods that interact with consumers to ‘personalise’ food, changing colour, flavour or nutrients on demand. ‘Smart’foods would sense when an individual was allergic to a food’s ingredients, and block the offending ingredient. Or alternatively, ‘smart’ packaging could release a dose of calcium molecules to people suffering from osteoporosis. Kraft is developing a clear tasteless drink that contains hundreds of flavours in latent nanocapsules. A domestic microwave could be used to trigger release of the colour, flavour, concentration and texture of the individual’s choice.

Senior food technologists at companies such as DuPont Food Industry Solutions are advocating that we scrap inefficient natural production systems altogether and embrace the future of nano-scale robot created food: “Instead of harvesting grain and cattle for carbohydrates and protein, nanobots could assemble the desired steak or flour from carbon, hydrogen and oxygen atoms present in the air as water and carbon dioxide”. DuPont’s food technologists also see nanobots offering a new type of food fortification: “Nanobots present in foods could circulate through the blood system, cleaning out fat deposits and killing pathogens”.

The use of nanotechnology is set to usher in the next wave of industrialization of food and farming and to make food even more difficult to understand than it already is. Sometimes we seem to forget that food (unlike money) actually does grow on trees.

For a detailed overview of the use of nanotechnology in food and farming, download our report "Out of the laboratory and on to our plates: Nanotechnology in food and agriculture", or the ETC Groups's seminal report ‘Down On the Farm’.

 For more information about genetically engineered foods visit www.truefood.org.au