Armed with hefty grants from the Pentagon, squads of corporate and governmental food technologists are on a mission to supplant nature with a great leap forward in the Brave New World of synthetic foodstuffs.
Not satisfied merely to tinker with genetic re-engineering of nature’s products, these mad scientists have a God-like goal of “creating” new food (assuming that God is a supernatural robotic being with a wicked sense of humor and not enough real work to do). Who will eat the stuff? Soldiers are to be the first lucky consumers.
Lauren Oleksyk, team leader of this operation at the US Army’s Natick Soldier Research Center, explains that battleground troops will be outfitted head to toe with electronic sensors that’ll constantly monitor their essential bio chemical levels, sending info about any imbalances to computer software attached to a 3-D printer, which will be a part of each individual soldier’s field gear. Low on potassium? No problem – “We envision to have a 3-D printer that is interfaced with the soldier,” says Oleksyk. “Then they would be able to have either powdered or liquid matrices [printed out] on demand that they can take and eat immediately to fill that need.”
Yes, a potassium patty! It’s synthesized on the spot from various oils and powders and “printed out” as a sort of food-like edible. Yum! Well, not really, for taste and texture are still futuristic concepts. But still, instantly-printed food is upon us, an ungodly high-tech hallelujah moment.
These tech deities are targeting soldiers first… but then us. With world population exploding and climate change endangering old-fashioned agriculture, they say that printed-out nutrition is our future. As one of the corporate engineers rather ominously put it: “We eventually have to change our perception of what food is.”

Pity the poor stressed-out rich

Here’s a random thought that might not have occurred to you: It’s not easy being rich.
Well, yes, there are all those things that money can buy to alleviate the burden of fabulous wealth – things like servants, summers in Provence, private jets, and such. But, as an article in the “Wealth” section of the New York Times reminds us, money buys things, not happiness – and the article reports that America’s poor upper-one-percenters are not happy.
The chief source of superrich sadness? Overwork. It seems that our vaunted CEOs and Wall Street titans feel as though they’re always on the clock, expected to be in charge of every little facet of their business. But, before you fall into uncontrollable weeping over their suffering, let me give you the good news that whole flocks of psychologists, neuroscientists, and other healers are rushing to conquer this tragic malaise of the rich. They’ve even coined a term for this trauma: “Stress of High Status.”
The main symptom of SHS syndrome, we’re told, is “the feeling of always being rushed for time.” Excuse me, but if all these soothers of the elite think high status is stressful, they might examine the lives of those with low status. Try being a single mom with a couple of kids who’s juggling two part-time fast-food jobs and her kid’s schedules, while worrying about making the rent this month, and then having her car break down. Yet the Times devotes a full page to the pseudo-misery of these pampered ones, even citing a prominent psychologist who laments that “[wealthy] people spend less time doing pleasurable things and more time doing compulsory things and feeling stressed.”
More time doing “compulsory things” than that single mom? Get a grip! The sickness that has infected the wealthy class is not stress, but a plague of narcissism.
“How to Gladden a Wealthy Mind,” The New York Times, October 23, 2014.

Time for a trust-busting beer bust

Okay, that’s it – no more Mr. Nice Guy from me. The avarice of corporate power has now turned personal.
It’s about beer, the nourishing nectar of a civilized society. Since my teen years, I’ve done extensive and intensive consumer research on the brewer’s art, from the full array of ales to the most substantial of stouts. I weathered the depressing era when Budweiser, Miller, and a couple of other nationalizers of bland beer drove a diversity of livelier regional brands out of business. But then, I rejoiced in the last decade or so as a flowering of craft and micro brews has spread from city to city, creating an abundance of real gusto and local flavor from coast to coast.
But beware, ye who love local beer – do not just sit on your duffs, doing 12-ounce elbow bends, for here come the Big Brew Bastards again, bigger and more menacing than ever. In fact, they’ve gone global, wielding their predatory marketing clout and political muscle to rule Beer World once and for all. SABMiller, now a South African conglomerate, is trying to take over Heineken, the world’s third largest beermaker. But Anheuser-Busch, now owned by a Belgian-Brazilian monopolist called InBev, is trying to buy SAB Miller, creating a single beer behemoth that would control a third of all beer sales in the world. In our USofA, the monopolization is worse, with InBev and SABMiller effectively controlling three-fourths of our beer market. If InBev swallows SABMiller, we’re looking at higher prices, lower quality, and fewer choices.
Meanwhile, the red-white-and-blue icon of American beer – Pabst Blue Ribbon –– which dates back to 1844 and itself is a merged conglomerate that owns Colt 45, Old Milwaukee, and Schlitz – is being bought by a Russian brewer. Where is Teddy Roosevelt and his trust-busters when we really need them?
“Monopolizing Beer,” The New York Times, October 8, 2014.
“Pabst Beer Being Sold to Brewer In Russia,” The New York Times, September 19, 2014.