Three visions of the future of food

Lunchabios

WHAT: Hey Kids! Make Lunch on the Grow™ with new Lunchabios! Don’t wait for mom and dad to make the same old boring food, make your own! Lunchabios come with a gooey cheese bioreactor to culture your own cheddar, yeast and nutrient packets to help your cheese grow, and crispy crunchy crackers to make the experience magical! Whether you’re a mad scientist or a kooky chef, Lunchabios is your chance to show your creation to the world. Our Pro-GMO Project certification means you know we have the most sustainable and tasty ingredients, designed to maximize deliciousness and delight. Take learning out of the classroom and into the cafeteria with Lunchabios today!

SO WHAT: The introduction of ultra-cheap bioreactors means that the process of synthesizing simple food products, such as cheese, will leave the realm of well-funded labs and enter the realm of, well, everyone. Today’s debates over GMO labeling will only get more complicated and contested as the science advances and more third party certifications fight for space on packaging. One strategy food companies will likely adopt is to increase transparency into the process of cultured foods in an attempt to engage eaters in a learning opportunity that increases scientific literacy and enlists people in hands-on experiences of new food production methods. Some of those hands-on food experiences will be targeted towards kids, likely in both a creative and somewhat controversial manner, whether parents like it or not.

Gotta Eat ‘Em All!

WHAT: Your microbial diversity score just hit the 95th percentile! Nice job! When you started playing “gotta eat ‘em all” you were only at 80%. An intestinal sensor transmits real-time information about your microbiome to the game, which then uses computer vision to identify foods--in your refrigerator, at the grocery store, or on a restaurant menu--that could help boost your gut health. The goal: maximize diversity. Every new microbe you “capture” in your gut adds to your score, and also helps build the world’s largest crowd-sourced database of microbiome data. This microbiome game craze has taken over cities around the world--kids in Singapore are begging to go hunt for rare microbiome-boosting foods at wet markets, and urban foraging teams in Seattle are mapping public fruit trees in search of polyphenols that help increase Bacteroidetes. Fermentation bars have opened up everywhere from Kyoto to Johannesburg with lines out the door for coveted krauts and misos. Prior to the launch of the game, the average person consumed just over 100 species. Now, the global average has jumped to over 500.

SO WHAT: Low-cost genetic sequencing will enable direct-to-consumer microbiome testing, which will usher in an era of discoveries about the intimate connection between our diet, our gut microbes, and our health. Using this new wealth of data, game designers and citizen scientists can join forces to create engaging ways to help people maximize their microbial diversity. Not only will this result in measurable improvements in lifestyle diseases, but it will actually drive demand for diversified agricultural systems - even in those areas where industrial monocrops once reigned supreme.

Churchill’s Carnery

WHAT: When Winston Churchill said “Fifty years hence we shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium,” he probably wasn’t imagining that Sydney’s most popular weekend destination would eventually bear his name. Great white shark sushi rolls, deviled dodo bird eggs, and Tasmanian Devil tartare are the inventive creations that keep adventurous eaters lining up for a taste of Australia’s rarest and most dangerous creatures. Located on the ever-popular King Street in Newton, lines for the Carnery wrap around the block with people waiting for a chance to see how their cultured meat is made. The airy warehouse has been outfitted with 25 NewHarvest bioreactors that produce 900,000 kg of meat each week. That’s almost one fifth of the total meat consumed by Sydney!
Pro tip: skip the queue and tour the Carnery in virtual reality (here you can actually go inside the bioreactors!), then pick up a frozen pack of Dingo Paw Fritters, now available at most Woolies!

SO WHAT: Animal agriculture is plagued by a host of pernicious environmental, economic, social, and animal welfare problems, and 89.5% of our wild fish stocks are either fully-fished or overfished. The next wave of domestication will not be on land or in the sea, but in petri dishes. This will revolutionize animal-based protein production, relegating slaughterhouses to our history books and opening up new opportunities for animal products to be grown anywhere. Unlike the ag-gag laws in many US states that forbid the filming or photographing of farm activity, the public will be welcomed into these “animal farms” of the future to see how bioreactors are creating more humane and environmentally-friendly meat. Similar to beer breweries of today, meat factories of tomorrow will be centers of social activity, laughter, and good food.