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News From The Future Saturday, August 19, 2006
Small Comfort Trend Example : FDA Approves Viruses as Food Additive
Link

via CNN

If you have heard The Futures Lab's Wayne Pethrick speak over the last two or three years, you can probably recall him talking about the trend of "Small Comfort." Small Comfort is us becoming comfortable with things that we cannot see.

This excerpt from a piece on CNN is a decent example of how we are slowly gaining an appreciation for the tiny and working leverage microscopic organisms in our daily lives.

A mix of bacteria-killing viruses can be safely sprayed on cold cuts, hot dogs and sausages to combat common microbes that kill hundreds of people a year, federal health officials said Friday in granting the first-ever approval of viruses as a food additive.

The combination of six viruses is designed to be sprayed on ready-to-eat meat and poultry products, including sliced ham and turkey, said John Vazzana, president and chief executive officer of manufacturer Intralytix Inc.

The special viruses, called bacteriophages, are meant to kill strains of the Listeria monocytogenes bacterium, the Food and Drug Administration said in declaring it safe to use on ready-to-eat meats prior to their packaging...

...The preparation of bacteriophages -- the name is Greek for "bacteria-eater" -- attacks only strains of the Listeria bacterium and not human or plant cells, the FDA said.

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Tuesday, August 15, 2006
Overweight Top World's Hungry
Link

via BBC

There are now more overweight people across the world than hungry ones, according to experts.

Researchers told the International Association of Agricultural Economists the number of overweight people had topped 1 billion, compared with 800 million undernourished. Obesity is rapidly spreading, while hunger is only slowly declining among the world's 6.5 billion population.

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