The Future of Food Technology

[AlHazred]

Here's a subject that doesn't really receive a lot of coverage in most of the sci-fi gaming I've seen and done: food technology. Everybody basically either ignores it (a la Star Trek and its magical matter synthesis technology) or assumes things will be much as they are now (as in Firefly, with its kitchen serving as the backdrop for many dramatic beats).

 

But food storage and preparation technology is not only something fairly important to the human organism, but is also often used as the yardstick by which technological progress is judged. Consider the central place food technologies took in the various interpretations of the future envisioned at the 1939 World's Fair -- it was the mother, with her command of the futuristic kitchen inventions, who shaped her family. Showing that food would come from factories instead of farms was a gauge by which the fair's organizers wanted to show that "this is the FUTURE" in big, bold letters.

 

I recently came across the MIT Media Lab's Digital Gastronomy section. There, designer Amit Zoran and prototype developers Zachary Nelson, Josh Ramos and Varun Perumal have provided concepts of several such food technologies.

 

• Digital Chocolatier: Mixes ingredients from a carousel into a variety of chocolate candies according to it's programmed recipes. The prototype shows four ingredients columns, but I imagine more wouldn't be a problem.
  
• Digital Fabricator: "[A] personal, three-dimensional printer for food" that mixes ingredients from refrigerated storage canisters. The food is deposited by a precision extrusion head which heats or cools the ingredients as they are applied.
  
• Robotic Chef: A mechanical arm with what is essentially a cooking multitool in one of its heads; this device can take any particular food item, such as a steak or pineapple, and perform manipulations on it according to programmed operations.
  
• Virtuoso Mixer: A device with food storage bins at the top, food processing chambers in the middle, and a food deposition area at the bottom.
  

Although these seem to have been created with more immediate ideas in mind (experimental cooking, for one), I see these as a great idea for inclusion into Star Hero spacecraft. Why waste the space of an entire kitchen, when you might be able to fit everything you need into a small closet? You don't need appliances (microwave, range, refrigerator, etc.) when you've got the same functionality in a single device that can do all of those in a much smaller area with one device with a fraction of the power consumption.

 

I have to admit, I've never gone into much detail thinking about or describing the food technology in my Traveller Hero game. Maybe now I will.

 

Via Inhabit.

[Xavier Onassiss]

Re: The Future of Food Technology

 

My last Traveller campaign featured an android bartender in the ship's lounge. (What, you thought we'd promote him to Commander and let him sit on the bridge?)

 

Turns out reality is catching up with this idea....

 

[AlHazred]

Re: The Future of Food Technology

 

Wait, you guys had that, too?!? Maybe it's a gamer thing -- one player got one for the bar in the passenger lounge, and then proceeded to put other crewmembers' faces on it from time to time.

[L. Marcus]

Re: The Future of Food Technology

 

"You-want-some-more?"

[Xavier Onassiss]

Re: The Future of Food Technology

 

Wait' date=' you guys had that, too?!? Maybe it's a gamer thing -- one player got one for the bar in the passenger lounge, and then proceeded to put other crewmembers' faces on it from time to time.[/quote']

 

The one in my game was a bit different. He was nearly-human, to the point that it took most of the campaign for folks to figure out that he wasn't. His best scene:

 

The 'noob' from Engineering is getting the run-around all over the ship, trying to find out who's got the 'blinker fluid.' (Yeah, some gags never get old.) Someone tells him the bartender, Mr. Flattery, has it up on the lounge deck. When asked about this, Flattery proceeds to hand the Noob a foul-looking concoction to drink.

 

The Noob does so, and pulls a face -- it tastes terrible. In thickly-accented Anglic he shouts, "Is not blinker fluid!"

 

Flattery: "Made you blink, didn't it?"

 

[AlHazred]

Re: The Future of Food Technology

 

Ah, that's beautiful. I'm playing up the Vilani anti-robotics-ophobia in my game for plot purposes, so that would have led to some paranoia. Usually a good thing.

[Xavier Onassiss]

Re: The Future of Food Technology

 

Ah' date=' that's beautiful. I'm playing up the Vilani anti-robotics-ophobia in my game for plot purposes, so that would have led to some paranoia. Usually a good thing. [/quote']

 

The main source of paranoia in my game was the Zhodani. There was an infiltrator in one of the ship's low berths who'd wake up at critical junctures in the mission and mess with the ship's computers. It took forever to find her. When the players asked me what she was doing hiding in a low berth, I just shrugged and said "Sleeper Agent."

 

Did I mention there were some really bad jokes in this game? (The players and I were all Red Dwarf fans, so....)

[Ternaugh]

Re: The Future of Food Technology

 

Of note, the Vilani had special food preparers (shugilii), mainly because so much of the stuff on Vland was toxic or inedible without processing. The megacorporation, Naasirka ultimately evolved from that part of Vilani society, though it had to branch out into other business lines to survive once the Vilani started conquering its neighbors.

 

Mongoose Traveller has in the Scouts rulebook a food processor that takes basic foodstock packs and converts them into meals that are compatible with the consumer's biochemistry, which would be like the end results of the "food processors" listed above. Most other versions of Traveller tend to either lead toward preprocessed meals (T4's Food Kitchen in Central Supply Catalog--basically "heat and eat" dinners), or assume some sort of fresh components that are prepared (Steward skill expressly includes food prep/cooking as part of its description). And a few sources have suggested that high tech methods could provide protein, including vat-grown "chicken" or "beef". For larger ships, it might be possible to culture a variety of products, while on smaller ships, they might be stuck with one, unless an opportunity to trade with another ship came up.

 

JoeG

[prestidigitator]

Re: The Future of Food Technology

 

Asimov went into this from time to time. His vision was that eventually we'd be eating mostly yeast. He had giant yeast vats with thousands of strains of edible yeast for all the nutrients we might need, and additives mixed in for flavor and texture and such until traditional foods were synthesized to the point of being almost indistinguishable. Care for a barbeque-flavored yeast-chicken drumstick?

[L. Marcus]

Re: The Future of Food Technology

 

Om nom nom.

[AlHazred]

Re: The Future of Food Technology

 

Asimov went into this from time to time. His vision was that eventually we'd be eating mostly yeast. He had giant yeast vats with thousands of strains of edible yeast for all the nutrients we might need' date=' and additives mixed in for flavor and texture and such until traditional foods were synthesized to the point of being almost indistinguishable. Care for a barbeque-flavored yeast-chicken drumstick? [/quote']I can't tell -- is that better or worse than Niven's Puppeteers bioengineering Bandersnatchii to feed them? Giant sentient yeast-amoeba for the win!(?)

[Lucius]

Re: The Future of Food Technology

 

I can't tell -- is that better or worse than Niven's Puppeteers bioengineering Bandersnatchii to feed them? Giant sentient yeast-amoeba for the win!(?)

 

Wait a minute - I thought the Bandersnatchii were engineered by the Tnuctipun (or whatever) as part of the latter's plots to overthrow the Slavers?

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Cloning a palindromedary

[sinanju]

Re: The Future of Food Technology

 

Wait a minute - I thought the Bandersnatchii were engineered by the Tnuctipun (or whatever) as part of the latter's plots to overthrow the Slavers?

 

You're correct. The Tnuctipun created the Bandersnatch a billion years ago. They were designed as food animals for the Slavers (Mmmmm! Bandersnatch!). They were also designed to be sentient, and thus to serve as spies for the Tnuctipun. (To give the Slavers what little credit they deserve, they didn't know that.) The Bandersnatch were also designed to be mutation-proof (and immune to the Slavers' mind control power), which is why they're still around unchanged all this time later.

 

To get back to the original topic, yeah, once we perfect the technology to assemble objects an atom/molecule at a time, there's no reason it couldn't be applied to creating food too. Why bother with having to freeze or refrigerate foodstuffs on your spaceship/station when you can simply carry supplies of easy-to-store chemicals (or even elements) and combine them into food as needed? Or barring that tech, if it's too magical, instead of a space-consuming human-usable kitchen, just have a compact autochef that can produce meals using much less space.

[Ragitsu]

Re: The Future of Food Technology

 

Why, Soycaf, of course.

[Ockham's Spoon]

Re: The Future of Food Technology

 

Food technology will depend a lot on the tone and tech level of the campaign. Practically speaking the nutrient-loaded yeast vats might be a good solution, so in a gritty low-sci-fi campaign you might see soldiers squeezing flavored tubes of protein paste into their mouths. But that would not be desirable aethetically, so people with money or rank might have real food. In a space opera kind of campaign, the technology is advanced enough that you might have all sorts of food and kitchen space because practical issues are less of a concern (that said, even Luke Skywalker was eating freeze-dried rations on Dagoba). Personally I think this topic warrants some consideration in any campaign, because everyone has to eat and the type of food and its preparation can add a lot of "flavor" to the game.

[AlHazred]

Re: The Future of Food Technology

 

Or barring that tech' date=' if it's too magical, instead of a space-consuming human-usable kitchen, just have a compact autochef that can produce meals using much less space.[/quote']That's more-or-less what we have in the article. I find it fascinating that the dreams of yesterday really are becoming the technology of tomorrow. I still don't really believe we'll ever have economical matter-transmission or Star-Trek-like materializers, but now I can't be sure.

[Cancer]

Re: The Future of Food Technology

 

A point in favor of food synthesizers: there would be a valid reason why Everything Tasted Like Chicken, if everything tasted the same, and that one flavor was labeled "chicken".

[Captain Obvious]

Re: The Future of Food Technology

 

I had details worked out for the 4th Ed Cyber Hero game I was putting together for all the various wealth levels. The Filthy Rich types had real free-range meat and farm-fresh vegetables, with various lower levels settling for vat-grown meat, or fake meat made of soy, krill, or yeast, with vegetables suitably less attractive as well. Clothing and housing got similar treatment. The whole thing fit on a page...it wasn't real in-depth, just enough to show how the other half lived.

[dsatow]

Re: The Future of Food Technology

 

Personally I am on a SciFi bender right now and just happen to be thinking about how food would be done and whether to buy life support need not eat in the ships. I am current against the life support idea. The tech level is fairly high but impractical for the most part. Its along the lines of Cowboy Bebop and Firefly. Energy weapons exist but are damn expensive when compared to guns.

 

So back to the thread...

 

I take a look at the last 2000 years of food preparation, storage, and tastes. I think for the most part, fruits and vegetables will be available to the masses but the taste will be diluted in favor of ease of growth and shelf life. The four basic meats(beef, pork, chicken, fish) will be farm grown the old fashion way but be genetically modified to be more resistant to disease, grow faster, etc. The genetic advances and how they are farmed will affect the flavor again to the detriment of the meat's flavor. Heirloom or enhanced flavor foods would be available to both the wealthy and poor, but will be consumed by mostly the wealthy on a day to day basis. High end restaurants will taste 10x better than comparable lower end food dives but will cost higher.

 

Food preparation will be easier and higher end dishes will have unique properties. People will still cook simple roasts. But the cutting edge dishes might be a roast which is stuffed and when the meat is cut, grave erupts from the meat. Mashed potatoes will still exist but there might be mashed potatoes which changes colors and flavors as it cools. Additionally, foods which might have been considered inedible, could be made edible. Tree bark might now be a delicacy. Gastrochemistry might be able to do very strange things to food in the future. Technological advances might make currently hard dishes easy. We have bread makers, could cake makers be that far off.

 

Finally, fast food and portable food will change. Some of it is not wide spread now but possible in the future. Self heating meal packs exist today but are not widely used. Could self cooling packs exist in the future?

 

I think the best depiction (most realistic) of the future of food in science fiction has probably got to be Babylon 5. People still cook though the more scifi styles of food exist, people still make their own meals. Just like people 200 years ago.

[prestidigitator]

Re: The Future of Food Technology

 

Finally' date=' fast food and portable food will change. Some of it is not wide spread now but possible in the future. Self heating meal packs exist today but are not widely used. Could self cooling packs exist in the future?[/quote']

Certainly. We have ice packs for first aid that'll, "self-cool." But it wouldn't be for long-term preservation; more like a cool beverage or dessert. However, the question is always whether or not it is cost-effective, which would be the reason we don't use self-heating meal packs much now. If we found huge amounts of cheaply available materials that would easily store chemical energy on a long-term basis like that, maybe it would be worth it, or if we get to the point where we are so energy-rich that we can waste plenty of it obtaining such materials....

[薔薇語]

Re: The Future of Food Technology

 

This thread reminded me of a TED talk with Heribert Watzke: The Brain in your gut.

 

 

La Rose.

[薔薇語]

Re: The Future of Food Technology

 

Food, food, and more food. I can still vaguely recall a quote that hung up in my first culinary arts class; "Nothing is more constant overtime than everyone needs to eat." More so than any other skill, the ability to cook is paramount to human survival (I do encourage watching the above video^^). And although the times have changed, and will always continue to change, there will never be a moment when the culinary profession becomes but a memory. No machine reproduces the human flare - and there will always be those who desire to cook. I personally have found few things make me happier than slaving away at producing a good meal for those I'm close to.

 

What does the future bring in the way of food tech, though? Well, that depends on a wide variety of things: living conditions of the target populace, range there within, being the most crucial. What tech do they have access to? What is the average quality of life? Percentage there of? Extremes? And, since this is gaming related, focus of game?

 

Well, one can imagine a wide variety in food tech that produces greater efficiency in transportation, nutrition, taste maintenance, cost (yield), etc. And although these are important factors, they lack for being the exclusive ones of great consideration. Something else to be thought of is: interactive appreciation - how does this product allow the consumer to feel like they are 'part' of the process / control the style and level of outcome? This is can be seen in several levels. First is the simple variety of food selection (beef, chicken, or shrimp ramen? or organic, standard, fully genetically altered? Secondly, how much do I get to / have to work with it? I don't like the buying some things that are fully done when in place I could do it for myself. Even if the overall quality may be the same, I prefer to know a part of me is in something. Likewise, I will never make my own soba noodles, but I make my own YakiSoba all the time.

 

If one is considering a space-born environment, what kid of tech (namely safety concerns are there?). If one can't have an open flame, then one isn't going to be able to do some styles of cooking. Electric stoves will certainly become of greater use; but such devices can and do occupy a sizable about of room. Rice Cookers may become king in such environments, then. For example, I can cook a large variety of things in a simple ricecooker (rice included)- Soups / stews, boiled(ish) vegetables, and even breads and cakes (I've personally made a chocolate cake in a rice cooker). So, perhaps expansion on that simple piece of tech would become the standard for small crew spacecrafts (firelfy). But if you are more in a "star trek" explore the planet setting - perhaps innovations in dietary / health assessment tech will become the standard (captain, my scanners confirm that this is edible and provides .... nutritional value). Or purification tech (iodine: 2.0).

 

La Rose.

[Steve]

Re: The Future of Food Technology

 

I was reading a webpage the other day that was talking about vat-grown meat. One commenter suggested that it would be cheaper to gene-gineer a chicken to have no feathers as they are a waste of protein and cooling the buildings they are raised in is expensive. Chicken metabolism is something like 78 kcal/day/kg, so having a building full of them generates a lot of thermal energy.

[Markdoc]

Re: The Future of Food Technology

 

If one is considering a space-born environment, what kid of tech (namely safety concerns are there?). If one can't have an open flame, then one isn't going to be able to do some styles of cooking. Electric stoves will certainly become of greater use; but such devices can and do occupy a sizable about of room. Rice Cookers may become king in such environments, then. For example, I can cook a large variety of things in a simple ricecooker (rice included)- Soups / stews, boiled(ish) vegetables, and even breads and cakes (I've personally made a chocolate cake in a rice cooker). So, perhaps expansion on that simple piece of tech would become the standard for small crew spacecrafts (firelfy).

 

La Rose.

 

Look at submarines. A sub galley is the same size as closet, and meals are made there for a substantial number: including frying, baking, etc. It's surprising what you can do in a little space with some training and imagination.

 

Also, a little off topic - the sub thing reminded me - if you are intersted in cooking and history, there's an amusing movie called ... Cooking History (with the tag line "6 WARS. 11 RECIPES. 60,361,024 DEAD."). It's a documentary about military cooks and is both serous and pretty funny at the same time: though it comes with a warning for the sensitive for "graphic food preparation scenes". I commented to my wife afterwards "Not that many animals were harmed in the making of this movie". It has a scene with a cook pretending to make a meal in a tiny sub galley, which is literally just barely big enough for him to stand in.

 

cheers, Mark