Modern medicine vs tradition

[avo]

I don't think a pill can ever have what a real piece of food has. It will always be missing something, the 'x-factor,' if you will. The biggest difference between a pill and real food will be, obviously, the 'lifeforce' in the food, the fact that real food grows from a real tree, which grew from a tiny seed. I think it would be much more realistic to just make a more nutrient-dense food, such as an apricot-sized fruit with the vitamins and minerals of several kilos of fruit. Also, fruit that grows in harsh conditions and small areas, like a bush that grows tons of mangos, even in winter, or something. Actually, if you think about it, there are foods already like this, not as extreme though; dates grow in huge amounts on bushes in the desert, and there are some supposedly superfood-like fruits growing in remote places.

[johndela1]

I'm not talking about today's technology. I'm saying that there is a possiblity of this in the future once we understand all the 'x-factors'

Are you saying you think it is just straight out impossilbe that we will ever understand things enough to synthesis food?

[avo]

Well, if we can create some complex form of life (from scratch! not cloning), then I do believe we will be capable of making food. But until then, I don't know what to think or believe. Hopefully nothing too drastic in changes in my lifetime, my generation has it hard enough as it is.

[johndela1]

why is creating life a prereq for creating food? I know we eat raw food which many people call 'living food' (I just consider it freash).

There are already things in existance which are approaching what I'm talking about that don't need us to be able to create life to have.

I'm talking about having the right mixture of chemicals.

[avo]

It isn't a prerequisite, but a general comment. If we are advanced scientifically enough to be able to create new life experimentally, then we obviously would be able to make a simple food. I don't really have much to contribute to this conversation, I don't have any interesting opinions on the matter, I'm just blabbering.

[Chin-Chin]

why is creating life a prereq for creating food? I know we eat raw food which many people call 'living food' (I just consider it freash).

There are already things in existance which are approaching what I'm talking about that don't need us to be able to create life to have.

I'm talking about having the right mixture of chemicals.

Can you quote me one food source that humans can assimilate that doesn't come from a living organism?

[avo]

Salt doesn't count, right? I believe it passes through the body unchanged.

[johndela1]

Can you quote me one food source that humans can assimilate that doesn't come from a living organism?

First of all, I never said we can't use living things that already exist.
I'm talking about something like the many already existing
'meal replacement' drinks. One that would really have exactly what
we need to thrive.


How does this limit what can be produced in the future? We can create
atoms. I know it is currently very expensive to do but I'm talking about
in the future. When we have better ways of using energy.



You may already have heard of Einsteins famous equation:


E=m*c^2


This means that energy is equivalent to mass and vice versa. This
means if you have enough energy, you can create something with mass,
like a particle. The more energy you have, the heavier the particle
can be.


A common example of this equation in effect is a process called
Pair Production. In this process, a gamma-ray (remember, that is a
high energy particle of light) becomes an electron and an anti-electron
(a positron). The positron is the same as an electron in every way
except it has a positive charge, not a negative charge like the
electron. A positron is what is known as a piece of anti-matter.
This process starts out with energy (the photon, which has no mass)
and becomes two things with mass, the electron and positron.


The opposite effect is called Pair Annihilation. The positron and
electron collide and produce at least 2 photons. Mass becomes energy.


From this you can see that if we could get enough energy we could
produce any particle we wished. However, to produce a whole proton,
we would need to have a photon with an energy over 1800 times larger
than needed for the pair production. The heavier the particle you
produce the more energy you need.

[johndela1]

I know the last example I gave is very difficult to imagine being
that it would take huge amounts of energy.

Scientists regularly use other methods for changing one atom into
another atom (one element into another element.) Nuclear fission
(the thing that made the nuclear bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima
and Nagasaki in World War 2 work) causes a nucleus to split in to
two pieces of roughly the same size. Nuclear fusion joins together
two atoms to make a single atom. There are other methods such as
spallation in which a high speed nucleus hits another nucleus and
a chunk is knocked out of the nucleus that wasn't moving, much like
a car hitting a wall and knocking some bricks out of it.
~

[avalon]

That's it! I'm heading to Radio Shack for some answers!

[Chin-Chin]

Mmmm, I thought this was a discussion on viable food sources.

[johndela1]

it is, my point was we can create anything if we have enough energy.



Here is a quote from a artilce that says they have created carbohydrates from non living things:

"Dozens of amino acids have been synthesized from scratch, along with membrane- forming hydrocarbons, energy-rich sugars and other carbohydrates, and metabolic acids."

you can read more at: http://darwin.nap.edu/books/0309094321/html/81.html