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Want to see a predication fly clean over the mark, veer to the left
and auger into a stone wall? Then consider the case for future
food. Look at any of the prognostications about what the Dinner
of Tomorrow would be like and you'd probably find something on the
order of the Soylent Green factory on the left. Whether the raw
material was people, soy, or chemicals, the end product was something
that looked suspiciously like floppies and tasted about the same.
Granted, there are any number of microwave meals that are
indistinguishable from the packaging, but that's the fault of
convenience rather than necessity and it's equally possible to get a
meal that's more like the dinner above that used to be served aboard
Concorde. In fact, if you walk into any supermarket you'll see
something that just about everyone missed: overwhelming abundance and
staggering choices. Whether the future was going to be one of
rationing or full bellies, the one thing that both the optimists and
pessimists agreed on in the area of food was that the exploding
population of the Earth would mean that even in the wealthiest
countries people would be relying on synthetic foods for most of their
calories. I mean, once the United States reached a population of
200 million what choice would they have but to make steaks out of coal
tar? No one imagined that the 21st century would be a
time when obesity would be a major public health issue, food shortages
would be more a matter of corrupt governments instead of absolute
shortages, or that the average shopper in industrialised nations would
be faced with sixteen varieties of apples to select from year 'round.
 For
the citizen of Future Past, however, synthetics and technofood would
be everywhere. They would be the staple; the meat and potatoes
of commoners and kings. Even that wild techno-optimist Hugo Gernsback
in his novel Ralph 124C41+ envisioned a world where traditional
farms and foodstuffs couldn't hope to feed a groaning world of four
billion souls. To avoid starvation, the masses have to rely on
industrialised farms where wheat is grown like over-hormoned battery
hens, sugar is only available as a synthetic made from sawdust, and
milk comes from mechanical "cows" that reduce lactation to the level
of an oil refinery: in goes grass, out comes grass-coloured... uh,
milk, I guess.
What few people realised was that even though synthetics would show up
by the second half of the 20th century
they would never replace bread, or even nachos, as the staff of life.
Far from being a substitute for ordinary foods, synthetics are usually
too expensive for a steady diet, but they have found their niche on
the market as supplements, diet foods, and as an ingredient in that
weird field known as "food engineering" that manipulates foodstuffs
as if
they were plastics to produce snacks that taste like plastic.
They have also found their place, oddly enough, by acting as
substitutes, not for the dinner table, but for industrial materials
such as making soaps that perfectly good food was once used for instead of feeding people.
But what really sailed over everyone's head was the rise of
fast food in a world of drive-through breakfasts, bento lunches, and
delivery pizza suppers; a world where hunger could be satisfied
with a phone call.
One prediction that, thankfully, never came to pass was Gernsback's
restaurant of the future, where old fashioned cuisine is replaced by
"scientific" food. Gernsback seemed to have the idea that the
healthiest of food is that which has been pureed and liquefied for
easy digestion, so his future eatery is notable for a lack of plates
and cutlery. Instead the patrons stick tubes in their mouths and
have liquid entrees squirted down their throats. Hopefully with
minimum drowning. Yes, it's the All Soup Restaurant. No chewing
needed. |
