“When I start selling this gum in the shops it will change everything! It will be the end of all kitchens and all cooking! There will be no more marketing to do! No more buying of meat and groceries! There’ll be no knives and forks at mealtimes! No plates! No washing up! No garbage! No mess! Just a little strip of Wonka’s magic chewing gum — and that’s all you’ll ever need at breakfast, lunch, and supper!” — Willy Wonka

Forty-three years after Roald Dahl wrote “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” his fantasy of a piece of chewing gum that tastes and feels like a three-course meal may not be all that far-fetched.

In our increasingly industrialized food supply, the line between natural and manmade is getting harder to discern. Thanks to advances in science and the development of nanotechnology, we can tinker with just about every part of our food supply, from produce to packaging.

There are already more chemicals in our food than many of us care to admit.

Take a walk around the supermarket. In addition to whole aisles of processed foods, you’ll find a growing number of products advertising, in big letters, the ways in which they’ve been modified or enhanced. We take out the sugar and the fat and replace it with chemicals. We boost the nutritional value by adding fiber to bread, vitamins to cereal, calcium to orange juice.

Sometimes, we mess with nature for no good reason. Consider the Grapple (rhymes with maple), a gimmicky new fruit from Washington state. Made by soaking Fuji apples in Concord grape juice, the Grapple has no added sugar or calories, but, according to its manufacturer, lots more flavor. (And according to its ingredient list, some of that flavor is artificial). I tried one and it was horrible: a too-sweet apple with an odd, grapey taste – and none of the cool, juicy flavor burst you get when you bite into a grape.

I like apples and I like grapes. If I want both, I’ll have a fruit salad.

In December, the Food and Drug Administration concluded that meat and milk from cloned animals are safe, raising health and ethical concerns among consumer-protection and animal-rights groups.

Meanwhile, the food industry is working on “smart” packaging, which will not only alert consumers when food is spoiled or contaminated but also help protect us from a bioterrorist attack on our food supply. This is a much better use of technology than dreaming up more ways to add chemicals to our foods.

Yet our society’s obsession with health will, no doubt, lead to more “functional foods” and “nutraceuticals” _ everyday foods enhanced with vitamins, minerals and disease-fighting compounds. We’re a culture that’s bought the idea that anything can be fixed with a pill, and we’re already hooked on food made in the lab _ energy bars, frozen dinners, sports drinks … Is it such a stretch to imagine a daily food pill that “cures” obesity by providing all the nutrients a person needs, customized for their nutritional requirements, food allergies and even flavor preferences?

So what does all this mean for the average consumer? At one end of the spectrum are the people who live on Pop Tarts, hot dogs and frozen pizza. At the other end are those who insist on fair-trade coffee, natural peanut butter and organic produce.

Most of us are somewhere in the middle. Our shopping carts contain some whole, fresh foods and some processed convenience items. We try to be smart shoppers by looking past the large-letter claims to the fine print. We compare labels and read ingredient lists. We try not to let the pretty packaging get the best of our common sense. But as more and more modified products appear on shelves, it’s getting harder to spot the ones that are truly healthy.

Willy Wonka’s gum would solve everything. It even provides the sensory pleasure of eating. In describing his tomatosoup- roast beef/baked potato-blueberry pie gum, Wonka says, “You can actually feel the food going down your throat and into your tummy! And you can taste it perfectly! And it fills you up!”

Of course, in the story, the gum was still in development when a curious girl tasted it – and turned into a blueberry. Can our food scientists do better than Wonka’s Oompa-Loompas? Perhaps, but it may be quite a while before the chewing-gum meals are perfected.

Until then, I’ll keep making my own pies with blueberries picked at the farm down the road.

Lisa Miller is a freelance writer who lives in Oneonta. She can be reached at lisamiller44@hotmail.com.