Soon to come  bison with "grass fed " flavor, then" clover flower  fed"  or
"dandelion fed "flavor , ...
promising research and no surprise there is lot of money invested and
possible .
keep your buying power ready  .
genetically enginered foods .didn't work( it is going to collapse) so let's
try that one .( guaranteed success)
jean-claude
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ANOTHER EXCELLENT REASON TO EAT FRESH PRODUCE ONLY.
> New area of genetics finding flavor
> Research could be used to create new flavors, fragrances
> By Justin Gillis
> THE WASHINGTON POST
> LA JOLLA, Calif., May 29 - A computer jockey named Michael Richards
> punches a keyboard to search a database of chemicals kept at a
> biotechnology company here. With a few keystrokes, he calls up one of
> the more unusual inventory lists in corporate America.
>
> There are plans to create seasonings to make vegetables more
> palatable to young children by blocking specific tastes that overwhelm
> their palates.
> "HARSH BUT SWEET, floral-hay odor; sweet cherry-berry
> taste," reads the entry for a chemical called 1-acetyl-4-methyl benzene.
> "Fruity, floral, weak, vanilla-like odor and taste," says another entry,
> for 4-methoxybenzyl acetate.
> The chemicals at Senomyx Inc. are part of new genetic
> research that is attempting to unravel the human senses of taste and
> smell. The start-up company is one of several around the country that
> hope to use that knowledge to come up with flavors and fragrances that
> effectively create new foods and other products.
> It's part of a new discipline that might be called
> "consumer genetics." There are plans to create seasonings to make
> vegetables more palatable to young children by blocking specific tastes
> that overwhelm their palates. Some companies foresee additives that
> precisely mimic the taste and feel of rich foods without the fat, or
> room deodorants that temporarily block the ability to perceive nasty
> smells. Some are interested in developing artificial sweeteners that can
> survive cooking, as some of today's popular ones cannot.
> In the near term, scientists envision medicines, diet
> sodas and coffee that have no bitter aftertaste because they would
> contain compounds that momentarily block the tongue's perception of
> bitterness. The first product from the industry might well be a cough
> syrup that babies can stand.
>
> The scientists believe that they can eventually not only
> make ordinary products better but also - starting with compounds like
> those in the Senomyx stockroom - use the tools of genetics to create
> smells and tastes never before encountered by the human race.
>
> TASTY VISIONS OF THE FUTURE
> Researchers foresee a time when genetics can explain
> precisely why one steak tastes better than another, why some people hate
> broccoli but others love it, and why most of humankind goes crazy for
> chocolate. They envision a day, moreover, when those responses can be
> precisely manipulated by adding smells or tastes or suppressing old
> ones.
> As word spreads of the potential of this work, start-up
> capital is flowing, and genetics companies that previously focused
> entirely on disease are making deals to use their knowledge in service
> to the new field.
> Some groups that monitor food safety worry that the
> discipline will spur greater industrialization of agriculture and food
> production, separating consumers even further from real food grown on
> real farms. And they say new ingredients produced by molecular
> techniques will face major safety concerns.
> Paul Grayson, chairman and chief executive of Senomyx, is
> optimistic that such concerns can be allayed. "We want to make healthy
> food taste better or make good-tasting food healthier," he said.
> The Center for Science in the Public Interest in
> Washington publishes lists of food additives, deeming some of them safe
> and desirable and advising people to avoid others. Its executive
> director, Michael Jacobson, said he could see some potential benefits
> from the new technology, such as the ability to make more palatable milk
> or meat substitutes, reducing the environmental impact of large-scale
> farming.
> But he also expressed concern that, over time, the
> technology could harm people's diets.
> Advertisement
>
> "Companies love artificial flavors and colors because
> it's cheaper to add them than it is to add, say, strawberry juice to
> soda pop," he said. "The additives are more economical than the real
> food, and they can replace the real food. Many people's whole diets are
> made of fake foods. It seems like this would open up new avenues to
> facilitate the production of these foods."
>
> FOOD-ADDITIVE RESEARCH
> Research into food additives has been going on for
> decades. A vast industry located in factories along the New Jersey
> Turnpike supplies flavor and odor ingredients by the ton to companies
> that make consumer goods.
> The usual way of finding new ingredients often involves
> sophisticated chemistry in the early stages but then runs into a
> bottleneck. New compounds have to be screened by human panels. Hours of
> tasting or sniffing can overwhelm the senses, and the panels can screen
> only so many compounds. Many of the additives begin as extracts from
> plants or animals, and patenting them is difficult or impossible,
> limiting their profit potential.
> The new gene-based companies are devising a much faster
> and potentially more lucrative way of approaching the problem. As they
> learn the precise structure of proteins in the tongue or nose that
> detect taste and smell, they can copy those proteins. The copies can be
> used to build robotic testing systems that can screen tens of thousands
> of new chemical compounds a day. If a new compound binds tightly to
> taste or smell proteins, it's a clue that the compound might elicit a
> strong sensory perception.
> The system is similar to the screening methods that
> pharmaceutical companies use to find new drugs. Human taste or smell
> panels would get involved only after much of the drudgery has been
> handled by machines, and only to sample the most promising compounds.
> Because they can be created from scratch and not extracted from plants
> or animals, such additives probably could be patented-and sold at higher
> prices than traditional additives.
>
> SENOMYX AT FOREFRONT
> The most visible company in the field is Senomyx, which
> has raised about $33 million in start-up money, hired 70 employees,
> filed for an initial public offering of shares and secured control of an
> extensive set of patents. Most notably, Senomyx has licensed patents
> believed to cover virtually all the human genes that permit detection of
> bitter tastes and it has filed for patents on many of the hundreds of
> genes involved in smell.
> Grayson, the Senomyx chief executive, said the company's
> research method will resemble that of a pharmaceutical company, but
> product development should be far easier. Pharmaceutical companies must
> not only test their products to ensure safety, they also must put them
> through lengthy trials to determine whether they are effective. For
> Senomyx, once a compound passes safety tests, proving that it works
> should be a simple matter of tasting or smelling it.
> The company would make much of its money by collecting
> royalties on products whose sales increased with Senomyx ingredients -
> a radically different business model from that of the traditional flavor
> and fragrance companies.
> The technology could, in principle, be used to alter the
> genetics of plants or animals to make them tastier. But Grayson, noting
> the rising public concern about genetically modified food, said Senomyx
> does not plan to do that. "We're not trying to replace food," he said,
> just create new ingredients to make existing food taste better.
>
> COMPANIES SHOW INTEREST
> The concept is unproven so far, but big consumer-product
> companies are interested. Senomyx has signed major research deals with
> Kraft Foods Inc., the nation's largest packaged-food company, and with
> Campbell Soup Co., which owns such brands as Pepperidge Farm, Swanson
> and V8.
> Other companies are also pursuing such research. A
> smaller company, Linguagen Corp. of Paramus, N.J., controls key patents
> and is busy devising compounds, including a "bitter blocker." Smaller
> start-up companies are in the early stages.
> Some huge consumer companies, notably Procter & Gamble
> Co. of Cincinnati, have started genetics programs. P&G, which sells $40
> billion worth of consumer products every year, confirmed that it is
> buying gene-analysis devices from a California company, Affymetrix Inc.,
> but would not reveal the goals of its research except to say they do not
> involve food or beverages. P&G sells many products that depend on odor
> ingredients.
> One of the leading scientists in the field, and a founder
> of Senomyx, is Charles Zuker, a biologist at the University of
> California at San Diego. Many of the proteins that detect bitter tastes
> were discovered in his laboratory, which licensed patents on them to
> Senomyx.
> In an interview, Zuker expressed excitement about the
> potential of the field. "I hate drinking diet soda," he said, lauding
> the prospect of an additive that could block the aftertaste of
> artificial sweeteners. But he also noted that many foods and drinks are
> very complicated mixtures of chemicals that scientists won't be able to
> emulate with artificial ingredients anytime soon.
> He seemed to derive some comfort from that fact.
> "It's going to be a while," he said, "before you take a
> poor bottle of wine and turn it into a wonderful Petrus or
> Cheval-Blanc."
>
> © 2001 The Washington Post Company
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