By Andrew Schneider | AOL Special Report | March 24, 2010

According to a USDA scientist, some Latin American packers spray U.S.-bound produce with a wax-like nanocoating to extend shelf-life. 'We found no indication that the nanocoating ... has ever been tested for health effects,' the researcher says. (Getty Images)

(March 24) — For centuries, it was the cook and the heat of the fire that cajoled taste, texture, flavor and aroma from the pot. Today, that culinary voodoo is being crafted by white-coated scientists toiling in pristine labs, rearranging atoms into chemical particles never before seen.

At last year’s Institute of Food Technologists international conference, nanotechnology was the topic that generated the most buzz among the 14,000 food-scientists, chefs and manufacturers crammed into an Anaheim, Calif., hall. Though it’s a word that has probably never been printed on any menu, and probably never will, there was so much interest in the potential uses of nanotechnology for food that a separate daylong session focused just on that subject was packed to overflowing.

In one corner of the convention center, a chemist, a flavorist and two food-marketing specialists clustered around a large chart of the Periodic Table of Elements (think back to high school science class). The food chemist, from China, ran her hands over the chart, pausing at different chemicals just long enough to say how a nano-ized version of each would improve existing flavors or create new ones.

One of the marketing guys questioned what would happen if the consumer found out.

The flavorist asked whether the Food and Drug Administration would even allow nanoingredients.

Posed a variation of the latter question, Dr. Jesse Goodman, the agency’s chief scientist and deputy commissioner for science and public health, gave a revealing answer. He said he wasn’t involved enough with how the FDA was handling nanomaterials in food to discuss that issue. And the agency wouldn’t provide anyone else to talk about it.

This despite the fact that hundreds of peer-reviewed studies have shown that nanoparticles pose potential risks to human health — and, more specifically, that when ingested can cause DNA damage that can prefigure cancer and heart and brain disease.

Read on: http://www.aolnews.com/nanotech/article/regulated-or-not-nano-foods-coming-to-a-store-near-you/19401246

A picture of health?

This has got to be the quote of the day, if not week, month or year. Kim Barrett Johnson on Facebook referring to Rush Limbaugh’s claim, “exercise freaks … are the ones putting stress on the health care system.”

How healthy (or not) certain foods are—for us, for the environment—is a hotly debated topic among experts and consumers alike, and there are no easy answers. But when Prevention talked to the people at the forefront of food safety and asked them one simple question—“What foods do you avoid?”—we got some pretty interesting answers. Although these foods don’t necessarily make up a “banned” list, as you head into the holidays—and all the grocery shopping that comes with it—their answers are, well, food for thought:

• Canned Tomatoes
• Corn-Fed Beef
• Microwave Popcorn
• Nonorganic Potatoes
• Farmed Salmon
• Milk Produced with Artificial Hormones
• Conventional Apples

Read on: http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/health/the-7-foods-experts-wont-eat-547963/

Chemicals from cosmetics, perfumes and other fragrances were detected along with dozens of other industrial compounds in the umbilical cords of African American, Asian and Latino infants in the United States, according to a national study released Wednesday.

Stacy Malkan wrote a book critical of the beauty industry. [Photo: Handout]

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/12/03/MN5I1ATVS2.DTL&type=health#ixzz0Yg5lH9T7

The abortion issue threatens to drive a fatal wedge into the Democratic Senate bloc favoring health care reform, just as it nearly did in the House of Representatives. But it’s possible to keep intact the strongly held principles of anti-abortion and pro-choice members of Congress and avoid a schism. The solution is a compromise – based on simple mathematics.