<h1>First, the origin of artificial food</h1>
For thousands of years, human food has come from nature. Ancestors could only improve varieties by means of selection and hybridization to provide new foods. Only in modern times, when chemists have reached the molecular level, can they study the deep structure of food and begin to produce artificial food like making light, making sound, and making compounds. But this act was despised from the outset, linked to labels such as fakes and black-hearted merchants. Believed or not, the vast majority of people believe that food is a gift from the gods, a masterpiece of God. Artificial food is an unethical act. Chilling things like melamine milk powder, shanglu ginseng, human hair soy sauce, red brick pink pepper and other creepy things are often reported in the news. As a result, artificial food is often a forbidden area in food production.
The counterfeit milk powder incident that shocked the whole country
But there are also many reasons why artificial food has to be pushed forward. The first is hunger. Not counting meat, the yield of human food crops did not rise until the german professor Haber invented the technology of making nitrogen fertilizer from air in the last century. (See A Furnace of Good Dan (xxiii) Nitrogen and Potassium: He Supplied the Whole World with Beef, But Deliberately Forgotten.)
In the long ancient times, whether in the East or the West, most people were starving for a long time. This makes it necessary to find more food. Chinese eat offal is also due to this. Not to mention the year of the great wilderness, not to mention the bark grass roots, white eel mud are all eaten. It is also called "Guanyin Earth", which means the bodhisattva's final mercy to the world.
At that time, there was already the idea of artificial food, that is, using a relatively cheap ingredient to simulate another relatively expensive ingredient to fake the truth. The description of the artificial food in "Chatting with The Dancing" is very romantic. The plantain fairy's cooking tool is a pair of scissors. Use it to cut the banana leaves into a round cake like a real cake, and cut a chicken like a real chicken.
elegant
In 1860, the first chemical artificial food was born in France. So it's "maybe" because Europeans had a long history of counterfeiting food with chemicals at least a hundred years ago. For example, replace lemons with tartaric acid or dye peppers with red lead. Its shamelessness is no different from madness than the black-hearted bosses in China today. Only this time with the participation of the government, or even the approval of an emperor. At that time, the whole of Europe was suffering from a shortage of edible fats and oils, which could be a side effect of the nascent global trade. At that time, the butter that was necessary for the White family was gone. This is an important solid oil made from milk, and its status in Western food is similar to that of vegetable oil in Chinese food. If it cannot be solved, it will cause people's hearts to fluctuate.
So the French Emperor Napoleon III issued a reward, asking all the heroes to find alternatives to butter. As a result, this reward was won by the French chemist Hippolys Meger-Mosier (also translated as "Mauch Maurice"). His method is to use chopped beef stomach and cow plate oil to turn into oil, and then emulsify these oils with the cow's udder, adding sodium bicarbonate, that is, baking soda, which becomes margarine. It is very similar to real butter and tastes the same. The difference is that its color is pearly white. But this can be achieved entirely by adding a stain or by other means. This alarmed Europe at the time. The Queen of England has designated July 17 of each year as the birthday of McKiller, which is the invention day of margarine. Cheap margarine soon became popular all over the world.
Modern margarine has long been based on animal fats and oils
However, many people hate margarine, believing that it is harmful to the human body, or at least a deception to people. But there is also a group of people who warmly welcome margarine. Some of them are poor, or producers. The two factions engaged in a protracted debate on the issue. In the end, the allegations against margarine did not materialize. By now it has become one of the most important foods in Western countries, sold on the shelves along with natural butter, and some special mcChit is even more expensive than natural butter, but the producer must indicate the category.
It must be noted that the use of cheap ingredients to integrate and pass off as high-end ingredients has been around since ancient times, but the ingredients used to simulate other foods at that time were at least natural. Just like the so-called "hanging sheep's head and selling dog meat", although this meat is not mutton, it is still more or less meat. Or take a step back, like the so-called "vegetarian shrimp", not shrimp, but yam, no chemical products.
Vegetarian shrimp
But margarine has a completely different meaning, not only adding chemical products, but also opening the prelude to the large-scale industrial production of food. As a representative and beginning, various chemicals are legally added to food for a variety of desired purposes: to add color, to flavor, to taste.
<h1>Second, the advantages of artificial food</h1>
The biggest advantage of artificial food is in terms of efficiency. The most typical of this is MSG. In ancient times, whether east or west, the way to enhance the umami taste of food was to use broth. Use large bones or whole chicken to spend the whole day boiling juice to increase the umami taste. But the finished product is neither easy to store nor easy to carry. So at the beginning of the last century, the Japanese chemist Kikunabi Ikeda invented monosodium glutamate (he was also the discoverer of perceived umami), and its chemical name was sodium glutamate. Because MSG is too convenient to use, as long as a small pinch can give food fresh, more convenient to preserve and carry, soon swept the world, especially in Chinese food, MSG is used in large quantities.
Kikunae Ikeda
But in 1968, MSG got into trouble. A British doctor developed a headache and panic after eating at a Chinese restaurant. Suspecting that msG was caused by the addition of MSG to the dish, he sent a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine explaining the situation, calling it "Chinese restaurant syndrome." As a result, the rumor that "MSG is toxic" spread in the West, and later China was also affected. We were also told when we were young that MSG could not be eaten more. But the truth is that to this day, there has not been a single case of poisoning that can really prove that it is caused by MSG. Moreover, sodium glutamate is already widely present in natural foods. Just like Ikeda chrysanthemum seedlings were first extracted from kelp. Therefore, it is not so much that artificial food poisons people, but rather that the deep-rooted concept of "natural food is healthy and safe" makes people panic.
We have to be clear about a concept. That is, there is no 100% but 90% chance of exposure to chemicals in modern food. They may appear in any kind of food. In iodized salt, in flour, in snacks. Because today's chemicals have long been deeply involved in industrial production, without them, food or spices will deteriorate faster, and production will be more costly, which will be reflected in their prices. Not to mention that modern people have no possibility of returning to the pure natural life of hundreds of years ago, and even if they can, only those rich people can afford to spend. Environmental protection is originally used by Americans to burn other countries' money. Through its call, they can legitimately limit the industrial scale of other countries. The representatives of fine agriculture, like Japan's watermelon and beef, require more time for careful care and capital investment in order to ensure their quality, so production is limited. Ordinary people can only be deterred. However, from the data point of view, one hundred and twenty years ago, the world's population was only 1.65 billion, and as a result, the competition for resources triggered World War I and World War II. Now that the world's population is close to 7.6 billion, people are living a much better quality of life than before. This is due to the industrialization of food. Without industrially produced fertilizers, pesticides, and fine seeds, we would not have been able to produce as much food. Without industrial animal husbandry production, chicken, beef, and pork may be priceless. (For related content, see The Mystery of the Zodiac (19) Golden Rooster Report: What we really miss is the life that we can never go back to.) Not to mention the agricultural population liberated by rising yields. Since we have enjoyed its benefits, we must also bear its shortcomings, and the same has been true since ancient times. All that can be criticized is their possible toxicity. Behind these problems, industrial synthetics are like a surging tide, unstoppable.
The assembly line of industrial chicken farms
The benefits of food industrialization are not only that they can be produced on a large scale, but also in the same quality. Chinese food can not do this, one dish and one taste, a thousand people a thousand tastes is very normal. The modern catering industry requires speed, stability and safety. Like KFC, whether you eat it in China or Singapore, it won't taste much different. This avoids some unnecessary hassles. To this end, the relevant enterprises have stipulated a unified operating method, strict production process, and consistent raw materials, turning food production into factory assembly line operations. And with the development of science and technology. People's understanding of food has taken to a new level.
In the factory's laboratory, all food and cooking methods can be analyzed and tested from a scientific point of view to find the best answer. What is the best temperature for cooking? At what time is it best to put salt in? How to assess and ensure the tenderness of the meat? How to ensure the degree of foaming of the mousse and so on.
In this process, various factors that were uncontrollable in the past are quantified one by one. For example, peppers, which Sichuan people have eaten for hundreds of years, have not come up with a way to measure their spiciness. And this work was done by the American pharmacist Wilbur Tallwell. Therefore, the spiciness unit is called "Scottville". It can measure the spiciness index of different plants. The Schowell unit of bell pepper is 50-100, and the green pepper is 2500-5000, which is actually not high, and the highest pepper is the Death Pepper, up to 2.2 million. No matter how tall it is, it is not peppers, but euphorbia plants, hundreds of millions.
Scottville Spiciness Index
The above results are based on trial and error. It shows the guiding effect of scientific experimental methods on the production of food. On this basis, under the influence of industrial production, our lives will be completely different.
<h1>Third, the future of artificial food</h1>
I have mentioned more than once in previous articles about the environmental problems caused by beef (see The Mystery of the Zodiac (11) The Taurus Carries the Earth, Why Do Humans Fear It Will Destroy the World?). In this regard, the solution for Westerners is to use artificial meat, which may cope with human demand for meat, thereby reducing the pollution of livestock production. Large catering companies in Europe and the United States have been investing in artificial meat research for many years. The results are now divided into two types, one of which is artificial meat that has been listed is plant meat. Its production ideas can be traced back to the tofu invented by our ancestors two thousand years ago. The reason why it is not classified as a man-made food may be because there is no tofu in the world, so there is no imitation problem. The invention of tofu itself is a by-product, (see Let's practice Dan (VI) One man gets the Tao, the chicken dog ascends to heaven - the deified story of Liu An, the king of Huainan) should be the result of inadvertently planting willows in the alchemy experiment, but it has formed a long-standing tofu culture. In fact, the bile and gypsum used in the preparation of tofu are chemical products. But tofu is still regarded as the greenest, healthier and most economical food. Countless chefs have used it to develop a variety of cuisines that have been passed down for millennia.
Plant-based artificial meat
Among these cuisines, "imitation meat dishes" are more famous for some people who have money and are embarrassed to eat meat. The typical "imitation meat dish" is the "monkey brain" in the finale of "Full Table of Man Han", which perfectly simulates the monkey brain flower with tofu. Ah Hao in "The Little Master of China" also has the ability to simulate pork with soybeans.
However, the plant meat under the blessing of modern high technology is far from being comparable to the predecessors. Because through scientific testing and data analysis, improve its protein structure, existing science and technology can already produce it to a very chaotic reality. And everyone can operate, there is no need for kitchen gods such as Liao Jie and Liu Pleixing to return to the world. They are only in the foreseeable time before they are launched on a large scale. Because Starbucks and McDonald's have begun to launch plant-based meat burgers in some key cities. According to the evaluation of those who tried it, although it is different from real meat, it is still acceptable.
Another type of "cell meat" grown from animal cells is still in the laboratory stage and should taste closer to real meat. But the significance of this event is that it proves that humans can produce food directly from scratch, just like nitrogen fertilizers. There are three major nutrients needed by the human body, namely: fat, protein, and carbohydrates. "Cellular meat" is most likely to achieve mass production of the first two. Once successfully listed and the cost is reduced. The number of aquaculture industries in the world is bound to plummet. In this way, some environmental problems will no longer exist.
Animal artificial meat coming soon
But the most critical is the third, that is, carbohydrates. Its most common forms are starch and sugar, which are found in staple foods such as rice and flour. At present, it is not yet possible to produce directly in industry. If there is a day, then the world will no longer need farmers, just like the famous writer Ye Yonglie in his famous work "PHS Roaming the Future". Agricultural production will gradually disappear and all grain will be converted to factory production. The rice we eat can also be of any shape. Fields will also be abandoned, or converted into parks, or residential areas.
Therefore, it makes a lot of sense to be able to make sugar. In fact, in the past, human beings have not made efforts in this regard, and the result is saccharin.
Saccharin, also known as sodium saccharin, is extracted from petroleum and was widely used in China
Saccharin was invented by the Russian chemist Falid Berg. The invention of saccharin should be attributed to the irregular test conditions at that time. One day, when he returned home from the laboratory for dinner, he found that the food had a sweet taste that should not be there. Falid Berg immediately suspected of being contaminated with a compound being tested in the laboratory. As a result, he rushed back to test and finally found a sodium called o-sulfonylbenzimide sodium. It's saccharin. It has been tested to be 500 times sweeter than sucrose. Farid Berg immediately invested in a factory to extract saccharin from coal tar.
This is truly a rich man descending from heaven. Normally, it would have been Falid Belge who had died of poisoning. But not much. Saccharin was originally intended as a substitute for sugar, but it was later discovered that it was not really a carbohydrate and had no benefit to the body, that is, it could not be absorbed by the body and provide energy. Excessive consumption can also cause poisoning. As a result, it was gradually removed from the food list and used only in toothpaste or cosmetics. Later, it was suspected that saccharin causes cancer, and although this view is still controversial, saccharin still appears in the list of carcinogens published by the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer.
But without saccharin, sweeteners and cyclamates are back. Cyclamate is cyclohexylsulfamic acid, and sweetin is methyl aspartylphenylalanine, or aspartame. These two goods are used as substitutes for saccharin, not as sweet as saccharin, but also have little nutritional value, but also have the notoriety of causing cancer, but it is still safer than saccharin.
Cyclamate
In fact, in the end, whether it is saccharin, sweetener, or cyclamate, they are used in industrial food in order to save money for sugar. For this reason, the industry has found many reasons, including saying that these chemicals can make diabetics who can't eat sugar taste sweet, but in essence, there is no technology to synthesize sugar.
Nearly sixty years have passed since the publication of PHS Roaming the Future, and Ye Yonglie died last year, but there is no news of a breakthrough in the direct industrial production of carbohydrates. But who's sure it won't just happen tomorrow? Like forty years ago we knew we had computers now? Did we know about the web thirty years ago? Twenty years ago did we believe in electronic payments? Did we know ten years ago that cellular meat would go on the market?
When the three major nutrients are put together, the direct industrial production of all foods should not be difficult. The way society provides will also change a lot. At that time, we will buy daily food produced by large enterprises like shopping on Taobao. Mix with a variety of foods, from dragon meat to donkey meat. From the queen mother's peach to Zeus's golden apple, you can think of everything. Anyway, they are just a combination of various flavors. Rest assured, absolute nutrition and health. In contrast, the impact caused by the group purchase going deep into the community at the beginning of the year was only a dime.
The basket contains the sea of stars of the future
Perhaps some people will not like this future, because it means that human life will be further controlled by machine production. But most people will eventually adapt and get used to it just as they would to margarine and MSG. And it also means that humanity can go to the cosmic age. Because in fact, the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and hydrogen that make up the three nutrients are the most common elements in the universe. When the time comes, the production will not worry about raw materials. As long as the production equipment is put on the spacecraft, human beings will go further in the universe.
Who says selling vegetables won't affect the sea of stars?
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<h1>The Mystery of Life Part II: Ear-Kidney-Fear System
<h1>The Mystery of Life Part III: Nose-Lung-Lamentation System
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Main reference: A Brief History of the Human Body