Journalist Elze van Hamelen discusses the rise of 'pharma food' like lab-grown meat and precision fermentation, revealing financial backers and health risks. She advises on making informed food choices, avoiding biotech foods, and activism action plans. The podcast delves into the battle for real food, emphasizing the importance of connecting with local farmers and advocating for food freedom. It explores the inception of lab-grown meat in space, challenges in land ownership, and empowerment through knowledge for health choices.
Lab-grown meat and precision fermentation are part of the pharma food era, raising health and environmental concerns.
Financial backing from tech companies and big food corporations drives the push for synthetic foods, threatening food freedom.
Deep dives
Pharma Food: The Tech Industry's Takeover of Our Food Supply
Lab-grown meat, precision fermentation, and milk without a cow are part of the pharma food era, backed by the tech industry. Elsa Van Hemelen unveils the problematic aspects of pharma food, revealing its toxicity and threats to health and small farms. Clean meat, under various names, poses risks with synthetic alternatives and unnatural processing methods. Consumers are urged to defend food freedom by understanding and identifying these novel foods in the supply chain.
Cell Cultures in Phama Food Production
Cell cultures used in lab-grown meat mimic biotech pharmaceutical production processes, raising concerns about their safety. Precision fermentation creates products like milk without cows by modifying bacteria with genes to produce substances like HMO. The reliance on genetically modified bacteria and synthetic alternatives reveals potential health risks and hidden processes in food production.
Challenges and Concerns in Novel Food Production
The emergence of lab-grown meat and precision fermentation presents technical and market challenges. While FDA approval exists for some lab-grown meat, technical and market issues hinder its widespread availability. Precision fermentation-based foods are already on the market, with labels often misleading consumers about the bioengineered nature of these products.
The Push for Synthetic Food and Food Freedom Advocacy
Pharma food initiatives receive vast financial support despite limited consumer demand, driven by tech companies and big food corporations. Policies advocating for industrial agriculture shifts and environmental concerns influence the push for synthetic food. Advocates recommend voting with consumer choices, supporting local farmers, and advocating for policy changes to protect food freedom and natural food sources.
Is there biotech food on your plate? Foods derived from cell-cultures or made in a lab? How would you know if there was?
Elze van Hamelen is a researcher and journalist, and today she covers the topic of "pharma food". This is, in essence, her term for the takeover of our food supply, as we know it, by the tech industry, that results in pseudo foods like lab-grown meat, precision fermentation, and "milk without a cow". Elze unveils today what pharma food looks like, who's backing it financially, and why. She explains why it's problematic and toxic, actually, and how her extensive research compelled her to change her own diet. She also offers insights into what we can do to defend our food freedom and what to look out for when it comes to these so-called "novel foods".