One of the greatest problems for the human race is hunger, the others are water, shelter and medical care. Over the years science has tried to develop all different types of food that had a protein value, but much of it was pretty unappetizing. Some will say that if you are starving you should eat what is given to you. I guess in a way this is true, but if food is revolting to the taste, you are going to create an angry mob. I remember years ago that a powder was invented that came from fish protein and it was said that it could be used to feed the world's poor. Today I don't hear much about that anymore. One of the problems with getting food to the people that are starving is that many of them live in areas that are controlled by tribal chieftains. If you happen to come from a tribe other than the one the chief is from, you may end up last on the food supply chain, or get no food at all. Another problem is that the poorest countries seem to be the ones that have large criminal type organizations that steal food shipments. These people could care less about who starves.

Food is a funny thing. Eating the wrong kind of food can be as bad as not getting enough food. A case in point is junk food. Junk food is perceived as being cheap, although sometimes if you add all the items it takes to get a full meal, you could just as well go somewhere else and eat healthier for the same price. Obesity is associated with too much junk food, as is diseases such as clogged arteries, diabetes and a few others. When you look at the nutritional value of some of this stuff, you realize that even though you are filling your stomach and eliminating your hunger, you are still starving your body of nutrition. Think about that the next time you order that big fast food burger, which by the way can contain 20 percent bone filler. I always like to say, take the burger out of the bun,scrape everything off of it and try and eat it, it usually is the equivalent of eating cardboard.

Every time some chemical is added to our food, we take a chance on long term effects. Children are particularly sensitive to some of these things. Some tests have shown that when some additives are put into children's food, such as coloring and other additives, that levels of hyperactivity increase in some children. A study was published in The Lancet, in September 2007. Not only do we have to be very careful about what is added to our food, we should also be very careful about what our food is packaged in. It has been found that certain plastic baby bottles leach chemicals from the plastic into the bottle's contents, especially if it is an acidic juice. I always say that you just can't beat good old glass as a container, but unfortunately that makes baby bottles very heavy and too heavy for young babies to hold on their own.

I was looking at a can of iced tea the other day. Hey what could possibly be in iced tea besides tea, water, sugar and maybe lemon, right? Nope wrong. The ingredients read like a chemists delight. The can listed water, high fructose corn syrup, citric acid, instant tea, sodium hexametaphosphate, flavors, phosphoric acid, sodium benzoate, potassium sorbate, carmel color, calcium disodium, edta and Red 40. Yum, yum, yum, isn't that hard to resist? I think the best thing to do is get a tea bag and make your own iced tea, what do you think? Is it so much to ask to be able to get a can of ice tea without additives? The companies don't want to do that because for one thing it won't last as long without preservatives and this makes it more expensive for them, because stores might order less to avoid spoilage. The second thing is that they can get this stuff to look great in the can by tampering with colors and each manufacturer of iced tea, for example, is trying to out do his competition. The third thing and something that seems to have been going on for a long time is adding sodium to everything, even our breakfast cereal. Did you ever wonder why? It is to get you hooked on the stuff. Many in the food industry believe that by adding salt (sodium) it makes us unconsciously want more of that product to satisfy our salt craving. If they could put heroin in our cereal and get away with it they would, such is the nature of business today.

The whole idea of artificial food actually came from China. They invented Tofu somewhere around 200 BC give or take twenty years or so. While Tofu comes from all natural products, it is entirely different than any of them. It is made from bean curd and is made by coagulating soy milk and pressing the curds into blocks. Today the food sometimes has additives added to it also.

A bizarre invention has come from all this fooling around with artificial food and that is the artificial mouth, a recent scientific invention. The mouth is said to mimic the first vital steps of human digestion which is chewing, saliva release and the initial breakdown of food. I guess it makes sense using an artificial mouth to test artificial food, who can argue with that?

As most of us know by now, we have been busy altering the genes of plants. The idea was to create plants that can bear more fruit, so to say and to even carry their own pesticides. This has caused an outcry in many places in the world and well it should, since you can not control where the wind, birds and insects take the seeds. This causes other plants to cross pollinate and they become altered. This is exactly what has happened in this country and truthfully we don't know what the long term effects of eating this stuff could be, even though we are continuously told that these plants are not harmful. I know that I am not too excited about eating plants that contain pesticides are you? It only takes one planting to alter everything and I can't blame the Europeans for not wanting this stuff on their continent. Many of the plants here are already contaminated and there is not much that can be done about it.

Food is something that should be kept as natural as possible. I realize that sometimes we need to do something to preserve it, but beyond that I am of the opinion that we should leave it alone. Many of the organic food growers are doing quite well in producing food. It is true that it does cost a little more for organic food, but if everyone was growing it wouldn't the price go down? We may already be beyond where we can rely on getting unaltered crops in North America thanks to the big seed companies who have already “ACCIDENTLY” let the seeds from their plants spread around on the outside. How can they say they they didn't know that seeds travel in the wind and get moved around by different natural forces, they are seed companies aren't they?