Kraft Macaroni n’ Anti-Intestinal Worm Cheese
Kraft Foods is teaming up with pesticide maker TyraTech to create a food that will also kill intestinal worms.
Kraft has not said what type of food is being created, but that it will aim to sell the food in rural areas of Asia, Africa, and South America. All of these locations have significant problems with intestinal worms, particularly in children. Worms can seriously affect the health of children, making them lethargic and anemic.
The food, whatever it may be, will contain deworming chemicals from TyraTech, who currently make safe pesticides from plant oils. Dr. R. Douglas Armstrong, CEO of TyraTech, said the anti-worming oils work by attaching to olfactory and nervous system receptors found only in invertebrates. This overstimulates the receptors, which produce a wave of impulses in the nervous system that repels or kills the worms. He likened it to ringing a doorbell so often it causes a heart attack out of annoyance.
Humans, and other vertebrates, do not have the receptors, so the oil does no harm to them. The oil has already been shown to work in mice. Several mice were infected with dwarf tapeworms, but after less than a week of treatment the worms were gone. No tests have yet been performed on humans.
That’s all well and good, but what about the taste? It doesn’t matter how effective Kraft Macaroni and Anti-Worming Cheese is if it’s not to the same standard of deliciousness as regular mac n’ cheese. And since TyraTech will not say which plant they’re using for the oil it’s quite possible it’s something really disgusting tasting. Kraft believes it can get around this, however, by creating blends that remove the taste or masking it with other flavours.
Probably the coolest angle to this whole story is how the researchers discovered the deadly effects of this plant oil on invertebrates. Like many scientific discoveries before it, it was an accident. A power cut in a University of California lab during the summer caused many scientists to open their windows. Clouds of insects forced most of the researchers to close their windows, but biochemist and TyraTech chief scientific officer Essam Enan was unbothered in his lab. Essam had been studying the plant oils, and when he found several dead flies around his workstation he began to realize the potential of the oils.
This is not Kraft’s first time adjusting food formulas in other countries. Tang, the famous astronaut drink, contains extra vitamins in Asia and Latin America. There’s also a cheese sold in the Philippines that has been fortified with iron.
Info from New York Times
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Comments
10 Responses to “Kraft Macaroni n’ Anti-Intestinal Worm Cheese”
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Karianne
Posted: Feb 6th, 2008 at 2:59 am1Reply to this comment.They should check out making some kind of Kraft Food dessert, and putting miracle-berries in it. Then the plant oil’s taste won’t matter one iota, it’ll be sweetly masked by the miraculin.
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Totz
Posted: Feb 6th, 2008 at 3:54 am2Reply to this comment.“anti-worming cheese”, should fly off the shelves lol
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J. Carter
Posted: Feb 6th, 2008 at 4:05 am3Reply to this comment.I want to know what plant that oil was made from. I’d LOVE to get some for the flies around here from Spring to fall!! Anyone (writer of the article for example, hint, hint!!) know what it is and how to get it??
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FredD
Posted: Feb 6th, 2008 at 7:32 am4Reply to this comment.Genius!
Now if they can only come up with something for all of the other horrible HORRIBLE parasitic infections that nature holds for humans!
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Robert
Posted: Feb 6th, 2008 at 10:45 am5Reply to this comment.Sorry J. Carter, even I don’t know which plant they use. I do know they were also considering it for cancer research at other places, but I think they’re keeping the plant under wraps to protect their invention’s marketability. Can’t have other people creating anti-worming food can they?
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Yorkshire Dave
Posted: Feb 6th, 2008 at 11:33 am6Reply to this comment.Kraft are bigtime supporters of junk emailing, the whole world’s had gevalia coffee spam. This is just one parasite eliminating another parasite.
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John
Posted: Feb 6th, 2008 at 1:42 pm7Reply to this comment.So you know the source of the scientist that discovered this plant oil, but you don’t know what the plant is. How did you verify the dead flies story then?
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Dick C. Flatline
Posted: Feb 6th, 2008 at 8:33 pm8Reply to this comment.I can’t wait until the whole WORLD is controlled by UniCorpCabalGov. I can get up every morning and have my big bowl of SoylentFlakes and LactoFaux, secure in the knowledge that it ALREADY contains my mandated daily dose of THX-1138.
“Corporations. In the end, there can be only one!”
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worms
Posted: Feb 7th, 2008 at 12:35 am9Reply to this comment.I can’t wait until the whole WORLD is controlled by UniCorpCabalGov. I can get up every morning and have my big bowl of SoylentFlakes and LactoFaux, secure in the knowledge that it ALREADY contains my mandated daily dose of THX-1138.
“Corporations. In the end, there can be only one!”Hey, uh, I don’t know what enlightened worldview actually thinks that it’s BETTER for poor people to suffer from intestinal parasites just because the people who came up with a cure for them is a large company you don’t like, but I’m guessing if you ever actually had an intestinal parasite (like I did) you might not think Kraft was the biggest problem in your life.
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Posted: Feb 21st, 2008 at 7:28 pm10Reply to this comment.Native peoples throughout the world *traditionally* used the *undried* seeds of several relatives of the common pumpkin. Every fall, *everyone* (adults, kids, pets and farm animals) ingested a small portion of the mashed seeds. NO side effects, 100% effectiveness.
Then UniCorpCabalGov’s little necktied Pepsi salesmen spread out across the planet with briefcases for the politicians and the generals. Traditional cultures are notorious for not replacing free things that work better with exorbitant, poisonous CRAP that makes gazillions for trust fund babies, so they get crushed.
Speakin’ just for us ignorant red darkies on the rez, bubba, if it wasn’t for crystal-twinkies like you showing up at the pow-wows and shelling out greenbacks for “dreamcatchers” and “Apache tears”, WE’D be forced to eat lifeless processed garbage like Kraft makes.
PS–Visit the casino often, Casper.
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