White House chef says future food to be made from chemicals, not real food ingredients

by Ethan A. Huff

(NaturalNews) Every two years, a consortium of Europe's most active minds converges at the Euroscience Open Forum to discuss the latest advancements in scientific research and innovation. But this year's meeting, which was held in Dublin, Ireland, featured a disturbing workshop held by White House executive pastry chef Bill Yosses, who explained and demonstrated to audience members how the food of the future will not actually contain real food, but rather various combinations of lab-created chemicals that mimic food.

As reported on Six One News, a feature of RTE News in Ireland, Yosses and several other food experts showed a live audience how to create various foams, gels, solids, and other food-like textured substances out of chemicals that, when combined, resemble things like lemon souffle and chocolate pudding. These food scientists then shared samples of these laboratory creations with audience members, who were told that the imitation food products are the wave of the future.

"You take the (chemical) compounds and you make the dish," said Herve This of AgroParisTech, a science and research organization based in France, to RTE News in Ireland. "So you have no vegetables, no fruit, no meat, no fish, nothing except compounds. And you have to create a shape, a color, a taste, a freshness, a pungency, an astringency, everything," he added, likening traditional cooking methods such as "cracking eggs" and using real food ingredients to "living in the Middle Ages."

White House executive pastry chef Bill Yosses shares a similar sentiment, as he believes creating fake food out of chemicals will actually help improve the quality of cuisine and availability of food. He told Six One News that chefs can use the information he presented to gain a "(better) understanding of what they're doing and use that to improve the processes, to improve not only the flavor but the hygiene, the longevity, how to store things."

"All that comes about from understanding cooking on a really molecular level," he added, with sort of a twinkle in his eye. But when he was asked if these same chemical food experiments are used at the White House in meals served to the Obamas, Yosses laughed and said no, explaining that "the First Family is looking for traditional, sort of 'happy recipes' that people are familiar with."

You can watch the disturbing segment in its entirety at:
http://www.rte.ie/news/av/2012/0712/media-3342255.html

While intended to specifically showcase some of the more offbeat scientific developments circulating the "technosphere" today, the Euroscience Open Forum, including the troubling seminar on chemical-based "foods of the future," is actually a troubling foreshadowing of what may soon come for Americans. Some scientists are apparently of the strong persuasion that man-made food items are preferable to natural foods, and the former is what they hope the public will eventually accept.

The average person, in other words, will eventually be expected to happily eat green gelatin-like blobs made of chemical compounds, along with ambiguous cracker products that resemble "Soylent Green," while the White House and the world's other elites continue to eat wholesome, natural foods, including those hand-picked from Michelle Obama's organic garden.

Deadly Seal Flu Virus Poses Threat To Humans

After testing five seals that died from flu last year, scientists make a worrying discovery.

Seal flu could pose a new threat to human health, scientists have warned.

A new flu virus identified in American harbour seals has the potential to pass to other mammals, including humans, say experts.

The H3N8 strain was discovered after the death of 162 New England harbour seals last year.

Post-mortem examinations of five of the animals showed they were killed by a flu infection.

The strain is closely related to one that has been circulating in North American birds since 2002.

But unlike the bird strain, it has adapted to living in mammals. It has also evolved mutations known to ease transmission and cause more severe symptoms.

Specifically, the virus has the ability to target a protein found in human lungs.

Dr Anne Moscona, from Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City, who led the researchers, said: "There is a concern that we have a new mammalian-transmissible virus to which humans haven't been exposed yet.

"It's a combination we haven't seen in disease before."

The warning is published in the online journal of the American Society For Microbiology (mBio).

One cause for concern was the fact that few scientists had considered the possibility of a bird flu virus infecting seals, said the researchers. It highlighted the fact that pandemic influenza can appear in unexpected ways.

Price of Olympic gold: Malaysia tops London 2012 bonus list

Malaysian athletes will get biggest bonuses at the London Olympics, with half a million euro promised to each gold medalist.

­A generous owner of a local gold mine says he will present a bar of gold valued at 500,000 euro to each Malaysian who tops the podium in the British capital.

Second place on the bonus list went to Kazakhstan, which is eager to award 200,000 euro to their London 2012 champions.

Despite its well-documented economic hardships, Italy also has no plans to pinch pennies on its sporting heroes, with 140,000 euro for gold, 75,000 for silver and 50,000 for bronze.

Egypt isn’t far behind either, with a reward of 130,000 euro to gold medal winners.

Olympic champions from Russia will get a bonus of 100,000 euro, as will those from Belarus, Lithuania and Bulgaria.

The US Olympic Committee will present their gold medalists with the modest sum of $25,000, but the different sporting federations in the country have their own ways of remunerating their athletes.

For example, a wrestling champion will grow a paltry $250 richer, while his winning colleague from the American cycling team can count on an extra $100,000.

At the same time, the German athletes are going to London for sporting glory, but not the big bucks, as the local sporting authorities are ready to pay only 15,000 euro for Olympic gold.

Meanwhile, on the home the Royal Mail has prepared a special surprise for those able to clinch gold at the British Games.

The British Olympic champions will see their postboxes, traditionally red, painted gold.

Iran rapidly gaining new capabilities to strike at U.S. warships in Persian Gulf: analysts

U.S. and Middle Eastern analysts say Iran is rapidly gaining new capabilities to strike at U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf, amassing an arsenal of sophisticated anti-ship missiles while expanding its fleet of fast-attack boats and submarines, the Washington Post reported on Thursday.

The new systems are giving Iran’s commanders new confidence that they could quickly damage or destroy U.S. ships if hostilities erupt, the analysts say.

Iran’s advances have fueled concerns about U.S. vulnerabilities during the opening hours of a conflict in the Persian Gulf.

Increasingly accurate short-range missiles - combined with Iran’s use of “swarm” tactics involving hundreds of heavily armed patrol boats - could strain the defensive capabilities of even the most modern U.S. ships, current and former military analysts say.

In recent weeks, as nuclear talks with world powers have faltered and tensions have risen, Iran has repeated threats to shut down shipping in the oil-rich Persian Gulf region. Its leaders also have warned of massive retaliation for any attacks on its nuclear facilities.

Last week, Iran’s Foreign Ministry declared that the presence of U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf constituted a “real threat” to the region’s security.

Pentagon officials have responded by sending more ships, urged on by Congress as well as U.S. allies in the region. This month, the Navy announced that it would deploy the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis to the Middle East four months ahead of schedule. The shift will keep two carriers in the Persian Gulf region.

The United States also has announced new military exercises in the region, including a mine-sweeping drill in the Persian Gulf, and has moved to add new radar stations and land-based missile-defense batteries in Qatar.

Iran’s increased power to retaliate has led some military experts to question the wisdom of deploying aircraft carriers and other expensive warships to the Persian Gulf if a conflict appears imminent.

A 2009 study prepared for the Naval War College warns of Iran’s increasing ability to “execute a massive naval ambush” in the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway dotted with small islands and inlets and perfectly suited for the kind of asymmetric warfare preferred by Iran’s commanders.

Since 2009, analysts say, Iran has added defensive and offensive capabilities. Some of them have been on display in recent months in a succession of military drills, including a missile exercise in early July dubbed Great Prophet 7.

In April Pentagon assessment noted that Iran’s arsenal now includes ballistic missiles with “seekers” that enable them to maneuver toward ships during flight.

Modern U.S. warships are equipped with multiple defense systems, such as the ship-based Aegis missile shield. But Iran has sought to neutralize the U.S. technological advantage by honing an ability to strike from multiple directions at once. The emerging strategy relies not only on mobile missile launchers but also on new mini-submarines, helicopters, and hundreds of heavily armed small boats known as fast-attack craft.

These highly maneuverable small boats, some barely as long as a subway car, have become a cornerstone of Iran’s strategy for defending the Persian Gulf against a much larger adversary. The vessels can rapidly deploy Iran’s estimated 2,000 anti-ship mines or mass in groups to strike large warships from multiple sides at once, like a cloud of wasps attacking much larger prey.

A Middle Eastern intelligence official who helps coordinate strategy for the Persian Gulf with U.S. counterparts said some Navy ships could find themselves in a “360-degree threat environment,” simultaneously in the cross hairs of adversaries on land, in the air, at sea, and even underwater.

“This is the scenario that is giving people nightmares,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in discussing strategy for defending against a possible Iranian attack.

The Iranian naval buildup is described by U.S. officials as part of an effort by the Islamic Republic to bolster its military credibility in the region.

The Pentagon’s April assessment said Iran was making steady progress in developing ballistic missiles capable of striking targets in Israel and beyond.

“Iran has the capacity to attack, from Argentina to Venezuela, in Asia, in Europe and throughout the Middle East,” Danielle Pletka, a defense expert at the American Enterprise Institute, said Wednesday in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “It seems naive to believe it does not have the capacity to launch attacks in the United States.”

Olympics opening ceremony: great in parts, but surprisingly parochial

By Andrew Gilligan

The opening ceremony was a bit of a grab-bag, wasn’t it? I thought some of it was great, some was rather bad and quite a lot of it will mystify the foreign TV viewers (95% of the audience) who it was supposed to dazzle.

Things I liked: Thomas Heatherwick’s Olympic cauldron, a brilliantly imaginative reworking of the old flame. The Queen allegedly parachuting from a helicopter. The Mr Bean turn in the Chariots of Fire sequence – nicely self-mocking and also very translatable. The forging and coming together of the Olympic rings.

Some of the rest was bitty and disjointed; the sub-mobile-phone advert style of the digital section was particularly weak. It was more political than I expected. Voldelonlonmort loomed over the NHS. Tonight marked perhaps its final transformation from a healthcare system into a religion. Dancers made up the CND symbol. The Royal Family looked bored, but the new Right-On Royal Family – Doreen Lawrence and Shami Chakrabarti – got to carry the Olympic flag.

The NHS segment in particular underlined how surprisingly parochial this ceremony was. The idea of the Health Service as a beacon for the world is, bluntly, a national self-delusion. Most other Western European countries have better state healthcare systems – and healthier people – than we do. Does the average Chinese person even know what the letters stand for?

But I suppose the whole Olympics is in a broader sense parochial. Three weeks ago, I was in Libya witnessing that country’s first free election in sixty years: an end, or at least a beginning of the end, to decades of madness and tyranny which killed tens of thousands and blighted the lives of millions. To borrow the words of tonight’s over-excited TV commentators, that really was an inspirational and historic moment. Tonight, by contrast, was just a show.