YORKTON - We have a growing problem in our world, and how we deal with it moving forward will be critical.
The issue is how we determine what is ‘real’ in our world.
It starts with what we see every day.
You can have cellphones where the camera feature can add and delete aspects of a photo seen on a whim. The resulting image is at that point a thing of fiction, no longer representing what was actually before the camera lens when the photo was taken.
We read of course about how artificial intelligence has crept fully into the work animation. We see long dead actors appearing near seamlessly in film. Words to a story can come as easily from a computer program as if from the human mind.
So what is real?
Even social media has waled away from caring.
Facebook was fine blocking Canadian media posts rather than paying a fee for that content – a Canadian perspective on the news of the day lost, and then months later stopping its checking of facts completely. Anything you see on social media is at least suspect these days as to its accuracy.
The election of Donald Trump – a notable stretcher of truth and teller of tales and fantasies has only muddied the waters of truth further.
And then what is real in terms of our food?
Take for example meat which one online dictionary defines as “the flesh of an animal, typically a mammal or bird, as food (the flesh of domestic fowls is sometimes distinguished as poultry).”
But how often is a concoction of grain proteins, flavouring, colouring agents and other ingredients mixed up and sold essentially as ‘meat’. The finer print might note it is a meat substitute but the marketing is assuredly as meat in one’s diet.
And what of ‘meat’ grown in a lab? Is it real? Fake? Or something in between we have yet to fully define.
Then a recent produer.com story begins with; “the level of fake honey on store shelves has reached a boiling point.”
The story goes on to note “it’s so bad that the International Federation of Beekeepers’ Associations will not hand out awards for the best honey at its 2025 meeting in Denmark.
“The associations cannot ensure that all honey in the competition is genuine, so judging and prizes for the best honey will not happen.”
The fake honey is produced with sugar syrup or other technology in a lab.
Another story on the same site is focused precision fermentation, a process where something like milk could be created in a vat. As if milk – generally defined as “an opaque white fluid rich in fat and protein, secreted by female mammals for the nourishment of their young” – isn’t muddy enough in terms of a marketplace with milk somehow miraculously coming from almonds and oats too these day.
Wading through everything we see, read, eat – well that we live day-to-day – is becoming harder to define in terms of truths and fakes to the point we must be increasingly diligent to know which is which.
