ORLANDO, Fla. – Consumers, already anxious about cloned or genetically engineered food reaching to them may soon find nano-foods in their grocery carts.

Consumer advocates taking part in a food safety conference in Orlando, Fla., this week said food created by using nanotechnology is silently spreading onto the market, and they want United States authorities to force nano-food manufacturers to identify them.

The nanotechnology bases on the design and manipulation of materials. It works on molecular level, invisible to the naked eye. Nanotechnology applying companies claim it can increase the aroma or nutritional value of food.

U.S. health officials generally prefer not to place warning labels on products unless there are clear reasons for caution or concern. But consumer advocates say uncertainty over health consequences alone is sufficient cause to justify identifying nano-foods.

“I think nanotechnology is the new genetic engineering. People just don’t know what’s going on, and it’s moving so fast,” Jane Kolodinsky, a consumer economist at the University of Vermont, said at the conference.

Americans are normally more satisfied about genetically modified or cloned foods than their counterparts in Europe.

But Michael Hansen, a senior scientist with the Consumers Union, said “polls show that 69 percent of Americans are disturbed about eating cloned meat.”

He also said no parents were keen to feed their children with cloned animal meat.

In a recent CBS/New York Times poll, 53 percent of Americans said they wouldn’t buy genetically modified foods.

Hansen said there is slight public awareness about foods produced through nanotechnology. New consumer products by using nanotechnology are coming on the market at the rate of 3 to 4 per week, according to an advocacy group, The Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies (PEN), based on an inventory it has drawn up of 609 known or claimed nano-products.

Nano-products are common today includes tennis rackets, bicycles, and sunscreens containing lucid, nonwhite versions of zinc oxide and titanium dioxide.

Lipsticks are also included, and many items labeled as anti-microbial that contain silver ions such as socks, washing machines, salad spinners and food containers.

Hansen, whose organization publishes the nonprofit product-testing magazine Consumer Reports, said there is no requirement that nano-products be identified as such.

He called for stronger federal regulations to require safety testing and labeling.

“Just because something is safe at the macro level, doesn’t mean it’s safe at the nano size,” Hansen said. “All scientists agree that size matters.”

Recent studies have proven that nano-sized particles in few cases can penetrate in cells and break the blood-brain barrier, and some forms of nano-sized carbon might be as harmful as asbestos if inhaled in excessive quantity.

“This represents science at the cutting edge. These technologies raise basic scientific issues,” Hansen said.

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