I recently visited a colleague’s blog site and read a post triggered by Michael Jackson’s untimely death due to cardiac arrest.  The post addressed the issues associated with people, their lifestyles, health background and heart disease.

One of the key points made by the author focused on the relationship between lifestyle and poor health choices as being a major factor leading to heart disease.  Part of the poor choices relates to the types and quantities of food we eat and the manner in which it can impact our health.

Fast Food = Bad and Regular Food = Good, right?

Though no one questions the potential health threat associated with eating processed foods, especially fast foods; what about the fruits, veggies, poultry and meat produced on factory farms or derived from genetically modified or altered organisms?

Organizations such as the National Academy of Sciences, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have already started to assess these problems due to higher risk of allergic reactions and lower nutritional values with food from these sources.  It will be interesting hear about the findings of these organizations.

In the meantime, two questions arose as I pondered the nature of these food sources and their potential health impacts:

• If man deliberately alters the genetic code to create a new organism for a given purpose (higher yield, more resistant, flavor, etc.), can this new organism really be considered natural?  Part of the reason this question instantly popped in my mind pertains to my background in geology.  The most basic type of Earth material is a mineral which by definition must be natural thus created via the Earth’s natural processes.  If we create a pseudo-mineral in the lab, it is not considered a true mineral.  From my perspective, if we genetically alter an organism for a specific purpose, we have effectively done the same thing and therefore that organism (or food) should not be considered natural!
• How long will it be before a new type of food processing facility pops up with a catchy marketing slogan like you see below!

Soylent Green Anyone?

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What is Soylent Green?

Now there is some … “food for thought”