I know quite a few people who self identify as "foodies." According to Wikipedia, a "foodie" is "a person who has an ardent or refined interest in food; a gourmet."
My "foodie" friends are less of the "gourmet" variety and more of the safe, and healthy, and locally-grown food variety. If I knew how to participate in the Wikipedia adventure, I would edit the current entry. Who knows, by the time you read this blog posting, someone else may already have handled that, and made a change in what Wikipedia says about "foodies." Take my word for it, though, at the time I am writing this, "foodie" is described as above by Wikipedia. And, take my word for it, my own "foodie" friends are "ardent" in their interest in food, but they are much more focused on food safety issues than on what is typically called "gourmet cooking," not that they don't care about that, too. The word "foodie," in other words, has a broader definition than the definition from Wikipedia I quote above.
Which brings me to an article that popped into my email inbox on Tuesday morning, September 24th. It is titled, "Why Is The Food Industry Poisoning Us With Trillions of Nanoparticles?" the article talks about the use of titanium oxide in food products, and cites to a medical study that seems to indicate the carcinogenic nature of the ultra tiny particles of titanium oxide that corporate food companies are putting into various food products.
The injection of nanoparticles into our food products is not something that my "foodie" friends will consider to be good news. I don't think it is good news either. It is, however, just one more example of our human tendency to think that the works of our own hands are ipso facto worthy of promotion, and even of reverence.
We should have more reverence for the World of Nature, which continues to be offended by our presumption.
And "Nature bats last," as the saying goes.
Now, we have one more reason to become "foodies," all of us, in the "safe, natural, and locally-grown" meaning of the term.
We also have one more reason to insist that the "precautionary principle" be respected in all of our human endeavors.
http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/why-food-industry-poisoning-us-trillions-nanoparticles-1
There's a difference between high doses of ultra-fine, engineered nanoparticles of titanium dioxide, and the white pigment used as a food additive. Also, proteins in mucus protect the stomach lining, just as did the proteins in fetal bovine serum (which prevented damage in this study).
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I appreciate that heads up! I have alerted the world in my blog posting on October 9th.
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