Tales of Future Past v2

In some ways, the story of future food is of prediction running so close on the heels of progress that they tend to fall over one another with tedious regularity.

Take the case of food packaging. The idea of a complete pre-packaged meal that doesn't need any preparation is a perfect artefact of the ideal world of tomorrow, but no sooner did the pundits start to wrap their minds around the concept in the '50s than the Swanson people took several thousand surplus turkeys and turned them into the world's first TV dinners.  

In fact, the very term "TV dinner" was coined to point up the futuristic idea of a complete meal that you just heat and eat. Contrary to popular belief, TV dinner had nothing to do with munching on rubber chicken in front of the goggle box. In '50s America, television was the symbol of modernity and what could make this Ur convenience food seem like the meal of tomorrow better than latching the letters TV to it.  

If it had been invented twenty years earlier they'd have called them Radio Dinners.

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