I disagree! The previous owner of this nodeshell clearly was questioning the usefulness of all those too-sweet artificial foods, the burger rings, sugar wafers, and pork rinds that can turn an otherwise healthy human being into a pile of high-inertia meat.

While just about everything these days has artificial coloring, artificial flavoring, and (shudder) high-fructose corn syrup, it can also have benefits. If properly executed, an artificial food can be ulta-fortified with vitamins, minerals, amino acids, herbs, spices, etc. The excess fat and toxins can be left out, as soy-based protein substitutes were defended by Purvis. Finally, it's a heckuva lot cheaper to mass-produce a batch of chemicals than to raise plants and animals to do the same job. Tends to be less waste, too.