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What Dinner Will Look Like in the Next 100 Years, According to Scientists
- hirundo 4y ago> Hidden Valley Ranch dressing, still the reigning ranch champ, but hopefully from a compostable squeeze bottle by then So this is a dystopian future? Our descendants will look like the people in WALL-E? I think an optimistic prediction would have our diet in 100 years look a lot more like our diet 100k years ago, preferrably out of choice rather than because that's all that's left after WWIII.
- sybercecurity 4y agoConsidering all the sci-fi authors listed wrote stories featuring dystopian themes - yes. Even the most optimistic one features earth "depleted of natural resources". I think this article says something about the state of pop sci-fi novels as well as cuisine.
- BurningPenguin 4y agoMaybe it's just me, but i somehow doubt that insects will ever become mainstream. I think plant based food will be on the rise long term. Especially with the possibilities of vertical farming, which i think is inevitable. The lab-grown meat might have a hard start in my country, since people are very strongly "anti-gmo".
- Zigurd 4y agoYou could use benign muscle tumor cells if GMO is unpalatable. These kinds of tumors are common in beef cattle. Might be in your burger already.
- dabbledash 4y agoThat doesn't sound more palatable than GMOs?
- actionfromafar 4y agoIf it's cheap, non-perishable and transports well, it will have a big market.
- coldtea 4y agoEspecially if it's marketed to hell. People will eat dogshit if it's promoted enough.
- xadhominemx 4y agoNot really
- coldtea 4y agoBacon, McDonalds, HFCS, ...
- frankbreetz 4y agoIf fast food starts slipping bugs into your food without many people noticing, it will become mainstream.
- scythe 4y agoIf insects were actually efficient, they'd be processing them into tasteless protein powder already and nobody would know the difference. They already do it with milk, eggs, soybeans, peas, et cetera. I suspect that the only true economic niche of insect foods is getting gross-out clicks for infotainment media. Existing insect-derived products range from expensive to unobtainium: carmine, silk, honey, resilin, spider silk. I guess shellac isn't that expensive.
- vinyl7 4y agolive in a pod, eat bugs
- onion2k 4y agoless ridden with sea lice (don’t ask) I did ask. I really wish I hadn't. https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/the-problem-of-sea-lice-in-salmon-farms.html https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/the-problem-of-sea-lice-in-sa...
- pc86 4y agoHoly shit this is the worst cookie screen I've ever seen. You load it, and the optional cookies are off by default but the slider background is medium-ish gray. The required one has a white background. You click the slider thinking you're turning them off, and the background gets darker (you just turned them on!) Everyone who implemented this from the marketing people to the front-end developer should be ashamed of themselves.
- ecmascript 4y agoIf this is the dinner in the future, I am sure glad I am alive today. I think we probably at some point will realize that food like we ate in the past are way better than it is today and the type of heavily processed food we eat today is unhealthy. I think we will go back to more raw food and also the biggest change will be in how we grow that food and treat our animals. There is a lot of issues with modern agriculture and the future is probably not in a lab. At least I hope so.
- mtberatwork 4y ago> I think we probably at some point will realize that food like we ate in the past are way better than it is today and the type of heavily processed food we eat today is unhealthy. That point is here, right now. Michael Pollan and much of the food blog-o-sphere has been writing about this for years. The article is tone deaf to say the least.
- ecmascript 4y agoYes of course there is a lot of talk about it but it's hard to actually prove anything since studies on food are extremely hard due to the many variables that exist. Another example is the extreme use of vegetable oils that was supposed to be healthy but as it turns out it seems like it is quite the reverse. Even if it is proven to be unhealthy it will continue to be in everything because it's cheap and makes products last longer. I don't know how it is in other countries, but at least in my country of origin (Sweden) they have pushed a lot of oat milk for example but pretty much all milk derivatives have vegetable oil in them and a lot of it too. Then they make adverts suggesting it to be the more healthy option.
- 3qz 4y agoI will not eat the bugs.
- Zigurd 4y agoIf you are eating crustaceans you are eating arthropods that are differentiated from insects by living in water and having two segments instead of three.
- tsimionescu 4y agoCrustaceans are philogenetically farther away from insects than you are from fish (they are as far from insects as we are from the non-vertebrate chordata, like this [0]). And note that just because you like chicken, you shouldn't expect to like vulture meat, even though those are much much closer related. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Branchiostoma_lanceolatum https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Branchiostoma_lanceolatum
- senectus1 4y agothey're not so bad.. my last bug meal was ok ish.. mostly the issue i see is that no one really knows how to make them palatable.. they over season them or over cook them and they're just way too crunchy and bland.
- t0mmyb0y 4y ago
- debacle 4y agoFor context, Morgaine Gaye's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-morgaine-gaye-4727253/details/experience/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-morgaine-gaye-4727253/details...
- pc86 4y agoWe really need to start differentiating between Dr. and "Dr."
- paisawalla 4y agoI just see someone who, having spent ten years at university studying "Quantum Philosophy," is an imminently qualified futurological expert.
- LAC-Tech 4y agoPeople are really pushing the bug eating thing, aren't they? They never mentioned that in The Jetsons...
- gunfighthacksaw 4y agoI’d eat some of the more famous-for-being-edible-bug bugs like witchetty grub or some spiced locusts, but I’ll pass on the cockroach milk thanks.
- tsumnia 4y agoI think bugs could be plausible, but the biggest barrier in current iterations of "bug" dishes is a lack of transforming "creature" into "food". As much as its lauded as an issue that kids don't know where a hamburger comes from, eating a carcass isn't appetizing for many people. Most dishes involving a fish head get weird looks, at least in Western cultures. An example I saw the other day is a snail pasta [1] video - yes snails are more culturally/culinarily accepted as an ingredient, but the snail formed the base of the sauce as well as meat to create something that isn't just "slug on a plate". I don't know, can we make like a cricket-based dashi? Or extract the meat of a grub so you aren't eating head, feet, etc? Then the meal isn't "bugs in/on a thing" but rather actually creating an ingredient that could be incorporated into a dish. Cricket powder actually looks promising for this extract reason - you're not eating raw cricket, but rather an ingredient made from crickets. [1] [Snail Pasta in Venice] https://youtu.be/KSDz5aQ8704?t=468 https://youtu.be/KSDz5aQ8704?t=468
- b112 4y agoIf anything, people will change how they get meat, not how much of it they consume. Chickens eat the bugs for you. Pigs eat left over vegetable scraps, skin, parts you cut off. They also eat leftovers. Chickens and pigs, if raised locally, recycle for you. I see people raising their own animals more often, before giving up meat.
- xadhominemx 4y agoUnless there is a nuclear apocalypse and society regresses, there is absolutely no way a larger % of people on earth will eat animals they raise themselves in 100 years.
- b112 4y agoYou have a very city-centric view, I think. Here, in Canada, some cities allow the keeping of chickens. These are >1M population cities (not greater metro pop., but actual cities). In suburban areas, this is more wide spread, and in rural communities? Now legal where before it was not. This is not just for eggs, but butchering too. (There are limits on numbers per household...). So it has already happened where I live. You may not be aware, but you don't have to butcher the animals yourself. Here, your local butcher will, just as with any game animal.
- xadhominemx 4y agoOk. Do you think fewer people will live in cities in 100 years?
- b112 4y agoCurrent population trends (declining), along with remote works, says perhaps. But that's not relevant, because most cities I know in Canada, have lots with space for chickens. Neighborhoods may also have communal chicken coops, just like the garden plots they have currently.
- kkfx 4y ago
- shusaku 4y ago> Air fryers are out. Countertop 3D-printing ovens that transform shelf-stable foods into hot dishes are IN! This one baked you a tasty peach cobbler from canned peaches that were genetically edited for “low-chill” conditions This seems like pure fantasy to me, but is there really any tech that suggests something like this could come about in only 20 years?
- Kalium 4y agoEarly forms of 3D-printing of food already exist. Foodini is one example.
- ericbarrett 4y agoHow would you keep the nozzles clean? Also, imagine inkjet DRM, but with food.
- Ekaros 4y agoI could imagine some crappy full of preservatives dough that could be nozzeled out and then some peach jam full of sugar being spread on top... Probably could be automated, but why would you want this as anything but a toy...
- coldtea 4y agoLet me guess: they try to sell bugs for the nth time, a solution to a non-existing problem nobody asked for, but another lucrative step to huge food industry conglomerates selling crap as food.
- campground 4y agoGiant sea bugs transitioned from inedible garbage to inaccessible delicacy in less than a century. I was recently comparing cricket flour to various plant derived high protein powders though, and I agree, I couldn’t see the point. They seemed almost identical. Maybe there’s there’s some difference in types of protein that’s not accounted for in the big numbers?
- kkfx 4y agoMore important: insect&co to be sold as foods need to be ultra-processed, even if such process does not cost much, witch means: the target is making simple foods disappear. To have food some want to impose industrial-only show to cut out small actors. Once we arrive at that point and nobody know anymore how to produce foods, like simple poultry farming, the perfect dictatorship is served: no one can even survive without a certain scale of industry only giants can own.
- runjake 4y agoThese are always laughably wrong. Has anyone ever found someone who’s forecasted out 20 years and gotten it right? (Actual, not rhetorical question)
- ip26 4y agoscifi as a whole has very prescient moments, although it benefits from making varied, scattered explorations rather than a single prediction of truth.
- endisneigh 4y agoFood in the future imho will be a block of food in whatever shape you’d like with whatever texture you like that will give you optimal nutrition based on the individual and will taste however you like due to advances in neuroscience.
- rufusroflpunch 4y agoI don’t know how many times we have to listen to failed predictions of the future before we stop trusting them.
- null0ranje 4y agoWhen we accept that people who's job title is "futurologist" are full of it.
- throwaway22032 4y agoYeah, I'll just eat fresh meat, fruit and veg, thanks, you do you.
- justaman 4y agoNo thanks. If this becomes a reality(unlikely) and I live that long, I'll be moving somewhere far from where its happening. I currently in a small community. We get our eggs and ground beef from a local family farm. Most of the articles like these are written by people entirely out of touch with life outside of a city. This author has lived in NY city their entire life. Farming and agriculture are entirely sustainable practices even with climate change looming. It is only the methods we use that need to change. Overuse of fertilizers and pesticides, over-farming/tilling, and stupid crop rotations are to blame. The best way to get an insect resistant form of corn? Breed corn. Don't modify its genetics in a lab with the end goal of finding a strain that requires a petrochemical bath to survive.
- ihattendorf 4y agoThere's a reason GMOs have become so popular: their yield was much greater than traditional crops. If a few decades of GMO has created greater yields than hundreds of years of breeding corn, what makes you think the issue is GMO? Because it sounds bad? Large-scale farming is a scientifical process, yields are closely tracked and experimental farms are used to test hypotheses. Even with all of this, there simply isn't enough agricultural land to support a typical USA meat-based diet for everyone on earth. https://ourworldindata.org/agricultural-land-by-global-diets https://ourworldindata.org/agricultural-land-by-global-diets
- feoren 4y ago> The best way to get an insect resistant form of corn? Breed corn. Don't modify its genetics in a lab What an incredibly ignorant statement. "The best way to modify the DNA of corn? Badly. Don't try to do it well." Modifying its genetics in a lab is thousands of times more efficient than selective breeding, and we're getting better at it all the time. Why on Earth would you suggest that using an incredibly blunt instrument that takes hundreds of years is better than being fast, precise, and scientific? This is a very typical attitude of the anti-GMO crowd: "no modifying genetics unless it's done very badly!" It makes no sense at all.
- jjj123 4y ago
- sandworm101 4y ago>> Air fryers are out. Countertop 3D-printing ovens that transform shelf-stable foods into hot dishes are IN! Ok. A hundred thousand years of cooking food over a hot surface/fire is all going to disappear in a generation. Microwaves were new, but we did not abandon conventional ovens and BBQs. Maybe cooking things over heat will disappear, but I would still place my bets on us cooking in basically the same manner as before. >> plankton from the deepest point in the Pacific Ocean, where we have yet to explore the possibilities of food. There is literally no food down there. It is a remarkably low-energy environment. What is alive there survives on the dead matter falling from above. For the energy it would take to haul fish from such depths we could run greenhouses in space.
- Ekaros 4y agoOnly reasonable move in future about cooking I could currently see is cheaper consumer grade steam ovens... And even that is unlikely be worth the investment. Induction will likely be more common, but that is just different way of heating a metal plate where you put the food.
- eixiepia 4y ago> [...] (as opposed to the meat alternatives we have today, which are very good imitations made with plant products). Very good imitations? HA HA! I must laugh! That can only be a statement from someone who have never eaten real meat.
- greggeter 4y ago
- greggeter 4y ago
- EverywhereTrip 4y ago"Scientists" have never done well at predicting the future.
- wenc 4y agoI don't know if most people who say "no thanks" realize that the foods we eat today look very different from the food people ate 100 years ago. Diets evolve. Also, bug eating is normal in many cultures. I didn't grow up eating bugs but I've tried them and they're not bad.