Futuristic Food: The Palatable Prototypes Of Tomorrow
future food intro
Food wrappers you can eat? A veggie burger that tastes exactly like beef? A device that lets you sample recipes before you make them? Some are ideas, some are reality, but all are changing the way we eat and think about food.
By Irene de Vette and Jessica Keller
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Food
Futuristic Food: The Palatable Prototypes Of Tomorrow.
I Can’t Believe It’s Not Burger:
I Can’t Believe It’s Not Burger: While we wait for lab-grown steaks to revolutionise our plates, sink your teeth into this: a healthy, sustainably produced vegan burger engineered with iron-containing molecules to look, taste and cook like real meat. Backed by the likes of Google Ventures and Bill Gates, biochemist Patrick Brown aims to make this faux flesh an economically viable alternative to meat when it hits markets this year. impossiblefoods.com – JK
1/15
Food
Futuristic Food: The Palatable Prototypes Of Tomorrow.
Grow Your Own:
Grow Your Own Grub: In the future you won’t even need to go to the supermarket to get your daily fix of super healthy bugs. A project focussing on entomophagy (eating insects) is the Livin Farms Hive, a Kickstarter-funded incubator that allows you to grow your own mealworms at home.livinstudio.com – IdV
2/15
Food
Futuristic Food: The Palatable Prototypes Of Tomorrow.
Smell My Fork:
Smell My Fork: If you’ve been dreaming of a world where spinach purée tastes like chocolate mousse, it’s time to wake up. Simply dab a drop of aroma onto diffusing paper embedded in this fork, and get ready to confuse the heck out of your palate. Because the nose can detect more flavours than taste buds can, the AromaFork is able to trick the mind into tasting flavours that aren’t there, making for an interesting food experience when pairing, for example, bananas and wasabi scent. Moleculargastronomy.com – JK
3/15
Food
Futuristic Food: The Palatable Prototypes Of Tomorrow.
Green Power:
Green Power: Talk about hyper-local ecosystems: these green ‘blobs’ would not only look beautiful in your home, they’re heaters, lamps and… food. Created by designers Jacob Douenias and Ethan Frier, these “Living Things” are glass bioreactors filled with alkaline water and spirulina, an edible, nutrient-rich algae that can live off the waste heat, light and carbon dioxide from your home. livingthings.us – IdV
4/15
Food
Futuristic Food: The Palatable Prototypes Of Tomorrow.
Breathalyse This:
Breathalyse This: We’ve heard of modern cocktails made quite literally of smoke and mirrors, but this takes molecular mixology to a whole new level. Food innovators Bompas & Parr have opened a London bar that is the drink, featuring a room filled with cocktail vapour. Patrons don a waterproof poncho and can spend up to 50 minutes inhaling the cloud, after which they’ll have “imbibed” the equivalent of a large gin and tonic. alcoholicarchitecture.com – JK [Photo by Ann Charlott Ommeda, courtesy Bompas & Parr]
5/15
Food
Futuristic Food: The Palatable Prototypes Of Tomorrow.
Farming Where The Sun Don’t Shine:
Farming Where The Sun Don’t Shine: Why is Panasonic cultivating veggies indoors in Singapore, or Sharp raising strawberries in Dubai, or Toshiba growing greens in a lab outside Tokyo? At a time when resources are dwindling and populations booming, clean-room farming projects like these are one way to expand the planet’s arable surface while providing healthy, chemical-free produce to areas in need. – JK
6/15
Food
Futuristic Food: The Palatable Prototypes Of Tomorrow.
Are You Gonna Eat That Wrapper?:
Are You Gonna Eat That Wrapper?: Imagine if the packaging that delivers most food products could be shoved in our mouths rather than our landfills. That’s a future companies like Loliware (edible alternatives for plastic cups) and WikiFoods (spherical food containers you can eat) want to live in. loliware.com, quantumdesigns.com – JK
7/15
Food
Futuristic Food: The Palatable Prototypes Of Tomorrow.
For Every Problem, A (Dis)Solution:
For Every Problem, A (Dis)Solution: Vivos Films has another answer to the food packaging dilemma: pouches made of a water-soluble film. When exposed to hot or cold liquids – for example, when cooking oatmeal or making chocolate milk – the wrapper dissolves fully and can be safely consumed with the food product it contained. vivosfilm.com – JK
8/15
Food
Futuristic Food: The Palatable Prototypes Of Tomorrow.
Edible Growth:
Edible Growth: Nowadays 3D printers in the food world are used to morph edibles such as chocolate into something fancy-looking. Designer Chloé Rutzerveld explores how we can use new technologies to create healthier foods, by using living organisms such as spores, seeds and yeast in the printing process. In 3 to 5 days, the printed ‘biotope’ grows out to a real dish for you to have at home. Less farming, shipping and storage space would be required, ultimately reducing your environmental footprint. chloerutzerveld.com – IdV
9/15
Food
Futuristic Food: The Palatable Prototypes Of Tomorrow.
Virtual Foretaste:
Virtual Foretaste: Right now, Pinterest convinces you to start cooking a recipe found online. But how cool would it be if taste (and smell) could be added to the mix? BUD is a conceptual device from Electrolux Design Lab that tries to do just that. It’s based on a real prototype that simulates the sensation of taste by actuating the human tongue through electrical and thermal stimulation. electroluxdesignlab.com – IdV
10/15
Food
Futuristic Food: The Palatable Prototypes Of Tomorrow.
Let’s Get Un-Wasted:
Let’s Get Un-Wasted: Milwaukee wastewater engineer Theera Ratarasarn cast his vote of confidence for the city’s sewage treatment plants when he used its effluent to create his own home brew. It was a long process, as Ratarasarn “chlorinated, dechlorinated, filtered, distilled, tested and added nutrients to the water” before making his wheat ale – called Activated Sludge – and the beer is not intended for commercial sale, but it sure is an interesting development in the quest to reduce water wastage. – JK
11/15
Food
Futuristic Food: The Palatable Prototypes Of Tomorrow.
Appetising Apps:
Appetising Apps: Apps can help us do everything from run a marathon to speed-read and find a soulmate. And now, they can help the world waste less food. Apps like PareUp in the US and OptiMiam in France allow markets, restaurants and even individuals to post their surplus foods that would otherwise go to waste, for other users to buy at reduced prices. Then there’s the USDA’s FoodKeeper app that lets users keep an eye on their perishables, to be consumed before they have to be discarded. pareup.com, optimiam.com, foodsafety.gov – JK
12/15
Food
Futuristic Food: The Palatable Prototypes Of Tomorrow.
Honey, I’m Home:
Honey, I’m Home: The kings of conceptual design, Philips envisions a future in which beehives affixed to our homes provide fresh honey while sustaining bee populations – and two Australian beekeepers are bringing us closer to making that a reality. Their revolutionary Honey Flow extraction system gently channels honey straight out of the hive, rendering the complex, time-consuming process of honey harvesting obsolete. honeyflow.com, 90yearsofdesign.philips.com – JK
13/15
Food
Futuristic Food: The Palatable Prototypes Of Tomorrow.
Insects Au Gratin:
Insects Au Gratin: Get over your initial ‘ew’ reaction, because insects are here to stay. They pack a ton of protein, iron and other beneficial nutrients, and are more sustainable than other forms of animal protein for an increasing global population. In her project “Insects au gratin”, designer Susana Soares experimented with making bugs more palatable by grinding them into a fine powder and forming them into attractive shapes with a 3D printer. susanasoares.com – IdV
14/15
Food
Futuristic Food: The Palatable Prototypes Of Tomorrow.
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