Believe It or Not: Cloned Meat and Other Sci-Fi Foods

Just over 50 years ago, freeze-dried foods were fictitious victuals seen only in cinematic spaceships. Commander So-and-So would step up to a dispenser and some colorful pellets would be released onto his plate. One little zap and the pellets became a seven-course dinner. Nowadays, freeze-dried and dehydrated foods are an everyday staple. Not just for astronauts, but also campers, the military, survivalists, and even the family pantry.

Food scientists have come a long way since perfecting freeze-drying. Some of today's foods have undergone an even greater metamorphosis. Not simply freeze-dried (a process that has actually been around since the Peruvian Incas), it's modified and de-constructed and re-constructed and processed and preserved in innumerable ways.

Do you know what's been done to your dinner? Has your meal been manipulated?You might be surprised.

See how much you know about the food you eat by taking this quick quiz and trying to identify which foods are fact and which are fiction.

Believe It or Not: Glowing Food and Beverages

Ever wake up in the middle of the night with the munchies and wish that half-eaten sandwich you left on your bedside table glowed so you could find it easily? No? Well, regardless, you may have this option soon. "BioLume" uses naturally occurring bioluminescence (found in fireflies, and glowing fish, squid, jellyfish, and other marine creatures) to make foods and beverages that emit their own light.

They don't have FDA approval yet, but they're working on it. And, it'll be worth the wait to have their novelty foods - like a birthday cake that has a glowing message after you blow out the candles or a glowing beverage that changes from blue to green to orange to red. Currently, they've only mastered glowing whipped creams and some beverages.

Believe It or Not: Corn that Makes Its Own Insecticide

For farm-workers tired of donning protective gear to spray toxic insecticides on vulnerable crops, this is a Godsend. Bt Corn, a genetically modified variety, produces Bt (which is toxic to corn borers) in every single cell of the plant. How is this possible? Scientists inject the Bt gene into the corn gene to create a new transgenic species. The process hasn't been perfected (there's no control over where the gene will end up in the host chromosome, so expression can vary). I know, it's very technical and complicated, but the corn still tastes just as good! Who cares if we don't totally understand what we're doing? The FDA has deemed it perfectly safe for human consumption.

Believe It or Not: Food Additives Made From Petroleum

It fuels our vehicles. It's the basis of the plastics that make our lives so much easier. It's a building block for many of the thousands of synthetic chemicals scientists have created in the last several decades. And, now we can eat petroleum, too! It's a natural material, right? Why shouldn't we eat it? Scientists have figured out how to manipulate the molecules to create food coloring (with added antifreeze to help the color's staying power) and preservatives that help our foods have lengthy shelf lives. Petroleum. It's what's for dinner.

Believe It or Not: Programmable Food

Programmable or "interactive" food goes way beyond just playing with your provisions. These are new foods being developed that will recognize and adjust to individual consumer tastes, allergies, and nutritional needs. One example is a colorless, tasteless drink that each consumer can design after buying it. You get to decide what color and flavor you'd like the drink to be, and what nutrients it will have in it. How? Through the magic of nanotechnology, which gives chemicals (good and bad) the ability to do things and go places in our body they've never been able to before. Programmable foods will be infused with a wide variety of nanoparticles representing different flavors, colors, and nutrients. All of the nanoparticles will be encapsulated until the consumer decides which ones to un-encapsulate (using some kind of special machine), making the food the desired flavor and color.

Believe It or Not: Cloned Meat

Did your last pork chop come from a Petri dish? Cloning animals allows farmers to replicate animals with desirable traits - like immunity or the ability to produce more milk. They do it by injecting genetic material from the animal to be cloned into a donor egg (this is where the Petri dish is used). Once an embryo is successfully created in the laboratory, a surrogate mother is chosen and artificially inseminated with the clone. At $10,000 to $20,000 a pop, you likely won't be dining on clone cuisine anytime soon. But, in early 2008, the FDA declared that food products derived from the clones of cows, pigs and goats are safe for human consumption. Since then, it is becoming a common practice to use clones for breeding purposes - so, clone offspring could very likely be making an appearance in your grocery bag (albeit, unlabeled).

Though you may have guessed otherwise, all of these experimental foods are real. I didn't have the imagination to come up with anything more bizarre than what's already being done to our diets. Also, the descriptions are likely not absolutely, scientifically accurate. The processes by which these foods are created are too complicated for me to digest. And, even though the genetically modified corn and petroleum-based additives are the only ones ubiquitous in our food supply - the others could be very soon.

Wonder what impacts all of these oddities are having or could have on our health? Me too. More research is needed - particularly for potential effects on vulnerable populations like developing fetuses and babies. We are all subjects in this experiment - unwittingly participating because foods often don't have to be labeled.

What do you think? Is this progress or hubris?

Healthy Child Healthy World is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit inspiring parents to protect young children from harmful chemicals. Learn more at HealthyChild.org.