Who isn’t aware of Willy Wonka’s crazy candy innovations? Our childhood classic truly had some innovative ideas of future candies decades ago. Fifty years down the line, those food possibilities now seem to be relatable, like the Three-Course Dinner Gum seems an interesting possibility for the future of food. With innovations like a drinkable meal, 3D printed food and lab-grown meat the future of food is here already! Science has been working hard to bring us food which is not only convenient to use and cheap but is also capable of catering to sustainability issues for a greener future. Alternatives to food to feed the increasing world population and coping with the ever depleting resources is becoming as crucial as it was never before.
Here’s a list of few foods that are most probably going to be there on your dinner table three decades down the lane. Not-too-far, eh?
Lab-Grown Meat
Lab-grown meat is actually a muscle tissue developed from a stem cell taken from an animal and is affixed to a sugar molecule where it develops between two points, and with a continuous supply of nutrients, it can grow into a complete muscle tissue. It is combined with proportions of fat and minced to eventually get a patty for a hamburger. The taste tests of this meat claimed of it is edible but not delectable. Scientist Mark Post is leading this project at Maastricht University. Is working on developing the taste of this meat. But it still needs 10-20 years more for its mass production possibilities.
Bugs
As cringe-worthy as it sounds, you’d be surprised to know that approximately a population of 2 billion people are already consuming insects, as reported by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. We now know that Bear Grylls (Don’t know him? The guy from the extreme survival shows on NatGeo, go ahead use your Charter Spectrum Internet and look him up, you definitely will recall his familiar face) isn’t the only person comfortable with ingesting insects conveniently for their high protein, fat and fiber contents. In future, we sure will need to get comfortable eating bugs, as they might form a considerable proportion of our meals. Pasta and food bars made with cricket flour are already available for sale in the market. Crickets, grasshoppers, and mealworms are the most favorable insects for human consumption with a 100 gram serving good enough to give 13-21 gm of protein. In addition to that, insects are claimed to taste quite good if cooked the right way.
Algae
As gross as it may sound to us, algae is a low tech yet extremely healthy alternative to meet our future food needs. Algae are known to have greater amounts of protein, iron, vitamins, calcium, minerals, fiber and antioxidants as compared to the fruits and vegetables we know and use. Algae can be a great option for feeding the world sustainably, as it can be cultivated in pools with fish and it causes lesser damage to the environment. Experts from the sustainable food industry claim that Algae farming could become the largest farming industry. Algae are known to utilize carbon dioxide just like other plants and develop into something with the highest amount of nutrients including vital fatty acids like Omega 3. Soylent is already using algal products in their drinkable meal bottles. Fun Fact: it is estimated that there are approximately 10k types of seaweed that all can taste differently, so there is a wide variety to satisfy out the palette.
Genetically Modified Food
Genetic modification isn’t something new to the food industry. The genetic modification did sound like a nightmare or scary thing to many but historically no adverse cases have been reported ever. Biotechnology sure is going to come to mankind’s rescue in providing more sustainable alternatives to food scarcity. Like flood-resistant Rice, non-allergenic peanuts, herbicide-resistant soybean, tomatoes with longer shelf life, and virus resistant papaya etc. are some of the genetically modified food varieties already being consumed by the human population in a great quantity.
Drinkable meal
As the future generation is getting busier every day, people need more quick and efficient alternatives to food, especially the breakfast! Products like Soylent and Schmilk claim to provide a solution to it. With it, you can scoop, shake and drink your breakfast or a 3-course dinner. Sounds weirdly cool, isn’t it?
3D-printed Food
In order to cater to the challenge of food storage in space since it gets too costly to store greater amounts of food up there, a group of researchers from Denmark is working on ways to 3d print food in space. They are also working on making a “Super bacterium” that can survive in space, sounds risky, eh?
Edible Packaging
Skipping Rocks Lab, a tech startup based in London is already producing water containers made out of seaweed that is absolutely edible with no taste at all and is completely biodegradable. It is a no-waste alternative to plastic containers aiming to reduce the plastic consumption and wastage which is adversely impacting the environment. This technology can grow in future to be used in the packaging of soft drinks, and cosmetic products. Another benefit of such packaging is, it is relatively cheaper to make such packaging with extremely low emissions.
Sound-enhanced foods
A recent study was conducted by Professor Charles Spence at Oxford University by the name Bittersweet project, claiming that the taste of food can be amended by changing the background soundtrack. It hasn’t been confirmed that this is because of something happening in our brains. It claims that any harmful ingredients from the food can be removed too by this technology without people noticing it happening. Imaginably you can put lesser sugar in the food but make it taste sweeter, just by the music.
Pseudo-Fish
Just as the meat, Lab grown fish is also a phenomenon, first experimented in 2002 by scientists from Touro College created small fish fillets by putting a goldfish muscle in a serum called ‘Fetal Bovine Serum’. Some companies have also claimed to have made a shrimp out of red algae. Attention people! The world of “fak-er” things is coming close.
DNA Based Diet
Technology is being developed that can read your genetics and suggest personalized diet since everyone is different and has different dietary needs which can’t be satisfied by one ideal diet. They might collect data from a toothbrush that reads your saliva and similar technologies to build their algorithm, but it still is a long time to go.
Tell us, which products came to you as a surprise?
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