Wen Zhou Dieyao
What will we eat in the future? Will food be mouth-watering or unappetizing in the future?
People may not have a particularly strong interest in housing, transportation, and clothing in 30 years, but no one does not care about what they will eat in 30 years.
The imagination of the future of food has long been seen in various science fiction novels and movies.
People eat at a river restaurant in Kuala Lumpur on July 14, 2020. /Visual China
In the science fiction novel "Disappear! In the book, the protagonist Robert Sontag, although living in the best conditions of Zone A, still cannot afford to eat real food, and can only rely on the addition of various flavor bars (unknown synthetics) as a substitute, such as coffee-flavored flavor bars.
In the movies Snow Train and Blade Runner 2049, people make a living from food made from insects such as worms and cockroaches; in I, Robot, all dishes are made from fungi grown in barrels; and in Super Century Spy Murder, humans eat seaweed energy bars.
In "Snow Country Train", people feed on cockroaches. /Movie "Snow Country Train"
These ideas may seem bizarre at the moment, but whether it's insect foods that sound a bit disgusting, or fungi, seaweed, or flavor bars, these foods that exist in the minds of writers and screenwriters are or are likely to become a reality in the near future.
Food cyberpunk, when science fiction shines into reality
The meaning of food has gone far beyond maintaining food and clothing. Dragon Boat Festival, Mid-Autumn Festival mooncakes, Spring Festival dumplings, as well as wedding candy and various banquets... At specific traditional festivals and moments that represent major milestones in life, we eat special foods. The memory of food carries our exclusive memories of rituals and people.
To understand food is to understand our common story. There are very few things that can connect you to the past, and food is one of them. Food allows people to travel through time and space to find fragments of the past, people put food in their mouths, breathe in the smell, experience its touch, as if completing a time trip.
Like language, food carries human memories and understandings of life. /Figure unsplash
We eat more than 80,000 meals in our lifetime, and for many people, chewing food is a treat. But if you're in nature, food is a necessity.
Food is indispensable to survival, and we seem to have forgotten that. Nowadays, people's problem is eating too much, not not eating enough. But there are still about 1 billion people in this world who face hunger, and food safety is still a problem for them.
Although humans have historically eaten about 7,000 species of plants, according to scientists, 95% of the food eaten by humans today actually comes from about 30 species. Of those, 60 percent of calorie intake comes from three crops — rice, wheat and corn. This makes the human food supply system very fragile, and there is an urgent need for human beings to develop a more sustainable and resilient food system.
So someone set their sights on insects. Insects have high protein content, complete amino acid species, rich trace elements and other characteristics, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization has issued a report that human edible insects in the world more than 1900 species, can be used as the main source of human food, help alleviate the current global food and feed shortage problems.
Switzerland is the first country in Europe to approve the sale of insect food for human consumption. As amended by the Swiss Food Safety Law, food products containing three species of insects– crickets, grasshoppers and whiteflies – are available for sale. Dutch retail giant Jumbo also sold insect food across the board in 2015, including mealworm burgers and "crispy snacks" made from honeycombs and moth larvae.
In order to reduce the discomfort of people eating insects directly, smart manufacturers and chefs mix insects with other food ingredients to make insect flour, and then make small biscuits, protein bars, pasta and other foods.
In addition to the types of food sources, the way food is cooked is also undergoing earth-shaking changes.
Maybe a few years ago, robotic stir-frying sounded like a fantasy, but now, dishes made by fully automated equipment have entered supermarkets, chain restaurants, and even long-established restaurants.
In the context of brand expansion, hygienic and standardized dishes have become a necessity. My Government is also actively promoting this practice in the catering industry to reduce soot pollution. The "central kitchen" method of making dishes uniformly by factories and transporting them to restaurants through cold chain transportation has been widely popularized.
Different from what you imagined, in addition to cold dishes and simple hot dishes, the current central kitchen can also produce high-end dishes such as fried sea cucumbers, squirrel cinnamon fish, and Buddha jumping wall. Perhaps, these big meals you enjoy in the restaurant are concocted by the same stir-frying machine of the same pre-made vegetable manufacturer.
Are you afraid to eat artificial meat?
When various "man-made things" attack all corners of human life, the food that needs to be imported daily becomes the last bastion of "natural manufacturing".
Although the development of the food industry has made food less natural, many people still choose real meat that may contain bacteria and antibiotic residues, and cannot accept clean artificial meat copied in Petri dishes - even if it tastes like natural meat, the expression "replicated and blended meat in the laboratory" is easy to make people lose their appetite and instantly "get down".
An employee of Farm 8 co. works on a farm inside a subway station, Seoul, South Korea, April 22, 2021. /Visual China
So why do we need artificial meat? Because, love of meat is a nature engraved in the bones of human beings, but meat production is an ecological disaster.
Worldwide, each person consumes an average of 83 kg of meat per year. The United Nations estimates that by 2050, the world's total population will reach 9.7 billion. This means that by then, more than 800 million tons of meat will be consumed every year, and meat production will need to increase by more than 100 million tons to meet human demand.
However, meat production is an uneconomical and environmentally friendly activity.
In beef production, for example, it takes about 6,800 litres of fresh water to produce 460 grams of beef. Meat production is also an important source of carbon emissions, producing 14.5% of emissions associated with human activities. Since 2006, livestock has produced more greenhouse gases than all means of transport combined.
However, meat production is an uneconomical and environmentally friendly activity. /Figure unsplash
In this context, artificial meat, which is more environmentally friendly and is used to replace traditional meat, has emerged. There are two types of artificial meat: the first is "vegetarian meat" made from a combination of plant proteins, mainly made from soy, peas and other legume proteins, which mimic the taste of meat; the other is similar meat grown by animal stem cells. The artificial meat currently sold on the market refers to the former.
The 2021 China Plant Meat Industry Insight White Paper shows that producing 1 kilogram of plant meat instead of animal meat can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 90%, production water by 99%, and land waste and destruction by 93%.
If the world replaced 10% of animal meat with plant meat, it would be able to release 38 million hectares of land, equivalent to a Yunnan province, and reduce the water consumption by 9.6 billion cubic meters, equivalent to the total annual flow of the Wei River.
2020 is known as the first year of Plant Meat in China. International plant meat giant Beyond Meat, Nestlé's Jia Zhi Cuisine, Unilever's Zhi Zhuo Butcher, Cargill's Zhi Qi, etc. have entered the game to participate in China's plant meat competition.
Walk into any KFC, Starbucks, IKEA, Heytea, Hema Fresh, in addition to the familiar tea and dishes, you will definitely find its new dishes launched in cooperation with major plant meat manufacturers.
For example, KFC and Zhiqi have teamed up to launch plant broiler nuggets, Starbucks and Beyond Meat have teamed up to launch sandwiches and lasagna, and IKEA has launched plant protein meatballs and hot dogs. The local plant meat brand "Zhou Zero" has also launched products such as plant meat dumplings, rice dumplings and even plant meat mooncakes.
Healthier is also one of the important reasons why people choose plant-based meat. Compared with animal meat, plant meat has the advantages of zero cholesterol, zero hormones, zero trans fatty acids, and zero antibiotics.
In addition, a new study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association shows that a healthy plant-based diet and less consumption of animal foods may lead to a healthier heart and a lower risk of death from heart attack, stroke or other cardiovascular disease.
Although plant meat has the advantages of being healthier and more environmentally friendly, at present, the generally high price is an obstacle that needs to be overcome for plant meat to go to the public.
Beyond Meat and KFC's cooperative burger is priced at 35 yuan a piece, far more than the ordinary KFC burger; its cooperative product with Starbucks, the price of each product is up to 45 yuan.
There is still a long way to go before plant meat is recognized by more people.
Brain holes opened, N kinds of imagination of future food
What will we eat in the future? Will food be mouth-watering or unappetizing in the future?
Although no one can give a standard answer now, there is no doubt that healthier, greener and sustainable are the future trends in food development.
The 2019 Food of the Future Report by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) lists 50 sustainable foods, including 13 grains and tubers, 12 legumes and their sprouts, 18 vegetables, 3 fungal mushrooms, and 4 nuts and seeds. There are many well-known ingredients such as spinach, lentils, red cabbage, pecans or walnuts, but there are also many niche ingredients such as wakame, cacti, and black brahmin ginseng.
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Today, when life is becoming more and more stressful, food has become a cure for people. / Clip from "Chinese Restaurant"
Jing Hao, a professor at the College of Food Science and Nutritional Engineering of China Agricultural University, said that in the future, food will not only develop from a functional point of view, but also whether it is healthy and environmentally friendly will also become an important consideration indicator. For example, plant-based foods and fermented foods are both directions with great potential for development.
With the expansion of the radius of human action, when space travel became a reality, space food has also received more and more attention.
In the 1960s, space food was still toothpaste-like aluminum tube-wrapped minced meat and jam; today, astronauts can eat as much food as they do on the ground.
According to reports, on the International Space Station, you can eat brown bread, honey cakes, ham, pork with sweet and sour sauce, quail, Polish barracuda, Russian cheese, sturgeon, vegetable soup, strawberries, biscuits, chocolate, tea and coffee... These foods are packaged in special utensils that can be placed directly on a workbench with heating equipment, or some are packaged in polymers and can be eaten with spoons or forks.
And the Chinese astronauts sound much happier. They can eat braised pork, dry roasted apricot abalone mushrooms, fragrant milk tea, Sichuan spicy sauce, assorted fried rice, snow vegetable meat shreds, char siu sauce, curry fried rice, mushroom chicken nuggets, chocolate, instant lemon tea, winter bamboo shoot ham fried rice, black pepper beef fillet, instant pineapple juice, seafood sauce and other delicious meals. These foods use a special heating device that can be heated in just half an hour.
and other delicious meals. These foods use a special heating device that can be heated in just half an hour.