CAN A HAMBURGER BE CREATED IN A LABORITORY?

 In my previous blog I wrote about my curiosity of what the future will hold.  Most of us do not have a clue, while others will speculate using their imagination.

Not giving a thought since my last piece, my imagination wondered into the future during dinner one evening. I thought about how poorly our meat and chickens have become. There’s controversy of Mad Cow in our meats which may cause demented minds and Alzheimer’s disease. Many countries refuse to purchase our meats. There is so much cruelty done to those poor baby chicks and the slaughter of animals, yet from what I read, there is not enough food to go around the world. These are all raising concerns among us.

“Wouldn’t it be nice if we could raise meat in a lab?” I asked my husband. “After all we have in-vitro babies in a lab, why can’t we have food made that way?” I continued, “I bet it is being done now, just as we speak. We would not have to worry about acid rain, arsenic and pesticides in our foods.”

After dinner, I immediately went on line to research future foods. Sure enough, I learned that futurologists are making different kinds of foods including creating hamburgers in a lab using stem cells from cows.  For more information read below:

http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2013-08/first-lab-grown-hamburger-served

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/aug/05/first-hamburger-lab-grown-meat-press-conference

Other companies are using insects such as caterpillars, locusts, crickets, and grasshoppers in creating food. They boast that insects have more nutrients than other foods.  Some companies are processing them into flour, making delicious cookies, adding them to chopped meat, and other kinds of foods.   Others are making food with 3 D printers.  The thought of consuming those turn my stomach.  However, what would my grandmother say if she knew I was eating lobsters? In her world it was unheard of and disgusting. In the future, insects in food will be a normal way of eating.

  Read more information below:

http://www.epicurious.com/articlesguides/blogs/editor/2014/04/cricket-flour-   baking-mixes.html

 Thank you for coming into my website.  I hope you enjoyed my blogs.

I always look forward to your coments, so please do not be shy.

HAPPY & HEALTHY NEW YEAR

THE CHICKEN DILEMMA

For many years I have enjoyed Costco’s rotisserie chickens until I tasted chlorine. After researching, I learned all chickens are given chlorine baths to protect against diseases.  Perhaps the one I tasted had too much.

Reluctantly, I returned to the supermarkets only this time I purchased organic, paying a little more for better quality. However being aware of organic foods does not guarantee a better taste.  Sometimes the organic chickens tasted great yet other times it was tough and tasteless.

The final straw that disgusted me was learning about our USDA government approving our raised and harvested chickens to be shipped to china for processing and packaging.  China then returns those chickens back to us for human consumption-- without labeling. 

Consumers have the right to know where their food is coming from and where they were processed. In my research, I found many consumers questioned whether the chickens we shipped to China would be the same chickens we get back.  How would we know if they were our chickens?

Meanwhile advocates are fighting over this as I write.  From what I understand China is cooking our chickens now making chicken dinners and soups. I wonder if Chinese restaurants among other favorite restaurants are getting them from China.  Wasn’t it a while ago that they banned purchasing pet food processed in China?

A little panic came over me as I had to think of ways to protect myself against all this madness regarding where our food supply is coming from and where they were processed and packaged. Presently, no labeling is required for GMO foods, drugs, etc.  We have a right to know about everything we consume.

At first the thought of farming my own chicken and eggs seemed like a good idea after reading these deals with china; that concept was not appropriate in my community, I looked for private farmers to sell to me. They told me the chickens and eggs would cost between double to triple what we pay in supermarkets free of chemicals, hormones and antibiotics. The chickens would be fed with grass healthy grains and protein and be free range.

One chicken farmer interested me as he raises chickens on his farm and sells to restaurants.  After a long conversation, the farmer offered to come to my home to personally deliver a free organic chicken and a dozen eggs.  The chicken was a special breed from France which is different than the ones we purchase in the super market.  He warned me that there will be little white meat similar to Duck.  After cooking the French chicken with my regular spices, my husband and I were disappointed.  Perhaps we were not used to this type of chicken.

Russia and most countries in Europe do not trust our meats and chickens. There really are not enough USDA inspectors going around checking our food.  The only thing we can do is raise hell with our politicians demanding better quality and enforcing labeling.  That gives us the choice whether or not to buy the food..

There is a website www.forcechange.com  Please add your name and email if you wish to be part of a petition to institute labeling indicating where our foods are coming from, ingredients, whether or not it is not GMO (Genetically Modified) and to restrict shipping our food to China for processing.

SMART DUST AND WHAT I WILL MISS IN THE FUTURE

Tonight I am thinking about my life, as tomorrow I turn 75 years old. "Seventy Five", that is quite a number. How did I get here so fast?  Wasn’t it the other day I was dancing at the Pizza King in Queens, Roller skating at the Empire Roller Drum, and bowling at Freddie Fritzimmons Bowling alley in Brooklyn during my teen years.

After marriage I’ve been so busy raising a family, and working, I did not notice how thin and pretty I was.  I was always worried about keeping my family well and fed.  There was very little time for me.

What should my grandparents say?  They worked harder than I.  There were no washing machines and dryers, dishwashers or cell phones.  They had to boil dirty diapers by hand and dry wet clothes outside on the line.  To prepare a chicken, they had to pluck the feathers and clean it. Some had to carry ice blocks up stairs to their apartments and place it in their ice box.  And, they told me they came a long way since they were teenagers.

Being present today at the age of the greatest technology of all time, I feel very fortunate. With my computer at my disposal, I can research any question that comes to mind.  All I have to do is click on the google website and in seconds the information is there.  If my parents and grandparents could not afford encyclopedias, they had to take two trolley cars, even in the dead of winter to travel to a library to find the information they needed. The time spent would take almost a whole day. Everything is fast compared to the old days.  The mail and letter writing is almost extinct as we email now and if we needed it faster we’d text.

Just today I posted a picture on Facebook of a friend.  Facebook recognized the picture and tagged them to the individual’s Timeline, with their names.  How did they know their names just by the picture?  Amazing, I thought.  My grandparents would be overwhelmed.  I am aware of face recognition and eye recognition which to me is amazing. It is used to detect our enemies and terrorists.  We have RFID which is Radio Frequency Identification to detect items and people.

We certainly have come a long way since my grandparents.  I am sure our military has increased their technology; however I am not up on that at the moment.

Thus, I am thinking to myself in the early hours of the morning, as I am writing this down.  My life is three quarters over.  Some of my friends my age have passed.  They will never know what is ahead.  Will I? I am afraid not.  I sit here at my computer wishing I knew what’s in the future.

Recently I learned huge corporate companies like Intel, Cisco and Hewlet Packard among others have been working on Smart dust for years. I’ve heard of Smart Tours, Smart Phones, Smart TV’s , even Smart Alec, but not Smart Dust.  It aims to monitor everything from our enemies to the health and well-being of all of us. Someday it will tell how we think among other uses.  If you should notice a little dust around the house that looks iridescent, it could be Smart Dust and you may be monitored. 

For more information go to http://chaione.com/smart-dust-communication-systems-and-the-future-world/

Or you can surf the Internet for more research on Smart Dust.  It is real!