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For a little more than a decade, the food

industry has been using nanotechnology to change the way we grow and maintain our food. The grocery chain Albertsons currently has a list of nanotech-touched foods in its home brand, ranging from cookies to cheese blends.

Nanotechnology use in food has real advantages: The technology gives producers the power to control how food looks, tastes, and even how long it lasts.

Looks Good and Good for You?

The most commonly used nanoparticle in foods is titanium dioxide. It's used to make foods such as yogurt and coconut flakes look as white as possible, provide opacity to other food colorings, and prevent ingredients from caking up. Nanotech isn't just about aesthetics, however. The biggest potential use for this method involves improving the nutritional value of foods.

Nano additives can enhance or prevent the absorption of certain nutrients. In an email interview with Popular Mechanics, Jonathan Brown, a research fellow at the University of Minnesota, says this method could be used to make mayonnaise less fattening by replacing fat molecules with water droplets.

Nanotech also keeps food fresher over a longer period. Brown says the nanopackaging industry is actually larger than its nanofood counterpart, and has three main focuses: barriers, antimicrobials, and sensors. Ideally, the packaging would provide protection from moisture, bacteria, and pathogens. There is also a type of packaging that would involve what Brown calls oxygen scavenging, which means that the packaging would absorb oxygen before it reaches food. Other techniques have involved coating packaging with nano silver particles to make them antimicrobial, using polypropylene and or polyethylene barriers to inhibit moisture, and even embedding packages with silicon-based nanoparticles that can detect pathogens. These are currently being tested, but Brown says that the experimental food packaging has been successful in lab settings.

But even though this seems like the best way to ease nanotech into the food industry, concerns exist. "The main concern is that nanomaterials in the package would migrate from the package to the food," Brown says. "Some studies have demonstrated that certain nanomaterial packages are indeed stable, and no migration of nanomaterials was seen."

The projections for market uses of nanofood are huge but highly speculative. Some are also really weird: Kraft has shown interest in creating a smart "blob" that could become any kind of food with any kind of flavor using nanotech. Basically, you can put this yummy blob into the microwave and specify what you'd like it to be. Nanoparticles in the food would be activated by the appliance and change color, shape, and possibly even nutrients. Eventually, the hope is that this food product could become so smart, it would even be able to tell what ingredient one is allergic to and block it.

If you want to know which companies are using nanotech in their food or packaging, check out the user-maintained database Consumer Products Inventory at the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies website. It lists more than 1,600 manufacturer-identified nanotech consumer products.

Regulation Required

Aside from requiring manufacturers to provide proof that nanotechnology foods are safe, the FDA has yet to implement specific testing of its own. But many countries are researching ways to balance innovation and regulation in this market. In 2012 the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) released an annual risk assessment report outlining how the European Union is addressing the issue of nanotech in food. In Canada the Food Directorate "is taking a case-by-case approach to the safety assessment of food products containing or using nanomaterials."

That lack of regulation is a problem for Friends of the Earth, an environmental group advocating a ban on nanofood until tests have been done to ensure safety. Even Brown admits that risks in food are hard to quantify, due to a lack of research.

"We don't know the risks of nanomaterials in food or how the human reacts to nano additives, and where those nano additives may end up in the environment," he says. "We're left with mostly ambiguity, where initial studies indicate some health risks of certain nanomaterials under certain settings, but these obviously don't apply to all nano materials, nor do they necessarily reflect the risks of nanofood itself."

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