Doomscrolling my news sources, I stumbled on these two gems, cookies and milk:
cookies
and milk.
The purpose of microbial ferment of plastic into proteins (and metabolic byproducts, I suspect) is to compress them into cookies that can feed people. Most of whom, according to some poll, would eat it if resource constrained.
My comment to that:
“First they destroy farming, pave the nature with concrete and solar farms, and then they offer plastic cookies. This article is probably a psychological test to see if it actually works on masses. Methinks there will be a mass extinction of anything larger than rats and a global desertification to the tune of Sahara before we reach that level of resource constrain.
More ominously, the elites may have realized that they have destroyed too much of the food system, and the resource constrained conditions might cause social instability like torches and pitchforks, i.e., Arab Spring II. The fact that this sort of dystopia is even attempted to be normalized shows what level of famine they are expecting in their pipeline.”
was missing the risk of microplastics and exotic chemical impurities.
I have already cut down eating certain foods for their suspected plastic content, would not trust the cheap mass manufactured plastic cookies, could not afford expensive mass manufactured cookies.
Lots of current plastics contain many toxic elements or chemicals from manufacturing, and even those that were inert in the original product might be freed during fermentation process. Others, like phthalates were not safe to begin with. And then there are microbial metabolic side products which cannot be cheaply removed fully and may convert inert to toxic. Not to mention that recycled plastic has encountered many environments during its travels and may have collected dangerous souvenirs. I remember from years ago that granola in boxes made of recycled cardboard needed to be bagged into clean plastic bags, because of the hazardous impurities in recycled cardboard.
As for the milk, I believe in whole milk to be the healthiest alternative, unless one is lactose intolerant or is allergic to milk (different ailments but both unpleasant), and I would not trust the manufacturing processes to be safe enough for microbial milk substitutes, especially for people who have yeast allergies.
But based on my understanding on the linked original article, it discussed substituting milk in point of view how much land is saved when rapeseed oil and sugar beet residue is used instead of dairy cows. The paper’s point was not improving human nutrition. The final product is supposed to be nearly as good as milk, but without lactose or cholesterol, and fats coming from rapeseed oil, minerals, vitamins and other nutrients were assumed to be added from somewhere but even the authors admitted that since the fat profile differs from milk fat profile, the milk substitute might not be a substitute for all milk uses.
Why do we want to ‘save’ land? Rewilding, settlement and other agricultural uses were mentioned, as was Net Zero. I have previously discussed rewilding and destruction of food production, but why exactly do we need more settlement when most of the worlds population lives in countries where fertility rates are below replacement level, and soon their populations are beginning to collapse?
I do not trust the nutritional value of microbial milk substitute. Having read some of the baby formula ingredients lists, I am not surprised that babies fed with formula develop lower IQ than breastfed babies, though I am not condemning their mothers, who often do not have a realistic alternative option for formula. Economics may be too brutal to stay home to nurse, and not all mothers produce enough milk to feed a baby. I have not seen the microbial milk ingredients list, the original paper was speaking of rather generalized data, but whatever the final products to be pushed to us are, I expect their industrial requirements to be about as healthy as an average baby formula.
Summa summarum, these milk and cookies would be something I would leave for modern Winter Holiday Santa, the commercial one that is supplanting Christmas Santa and older characters like Joulupukki and Krampus. Even if the hypothetical Winter Holiday Santa would leave me lumps of coal as gifts after such skimpflation, those probably would be welcome in the approaching fuel shortage. And if it were anthracite coal, it might even contain a fossil or two!
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