The Future of Food

Hi all!

I came across two intriguing stories this week. One was an article and one was a video. They both talked about the future of our food culture and how we, the world, are going to support our exponentially enlarging population with a limited food supply. Both stories offered inspired approaches to this serious problem. 

The article I read appeared in The New Yorker and was entitled "The End of Food." It made the novel suggestion of blending all the most basic components of our diet to make a liquified version of an ideal meal. It's called Soylent and it might be change the way we think about "food" forever. The shake is chock full of protein and other nutrients (find the full list of ingredients here) and to taste testers, has a distinct doughy flavor.

It seems obvious and simple to turn to the purest forms of essential nutrients that our bodies need. In Wall-E the 2008 Disney Pixar movie that depicted the earth's environmental demise also showed the obese people of the starship living off of "Lunch in a cup!" The alternate food source the people consumed sounds very much like Soylent. 

Bitty Logo

I've recently become addicted to TED Talks. And when I came across this talk, I was completely enraptured by the speaker's concept. This other solution to our future famine is one that could be a bit controversial with Entomophobiacs/Insectophobes. It is the brainchild of Megan Miller, a former employee of the USDA and founder of Bitty. Bitty is a company that sells baked goods, but here's the twist: all of their foods are made with cricket flour. What is cricket flour? It is essentially dead crickets that have been ground up into a flour that has been described as "nutty" and "wholesome." The genius behind this idea is it's incredible sustainability. Crickets are in abundance and incredibly cheap to farm. Also, cricket flour is very healthy and nutrient-rich as well and would be a much cheaper alternate to buying big brand refined white flour. 

So how do these alternate food sources help? I think the end goal of both companies is to take a large slice, if not the whole pie, away from the pizza of world hunger by sending their products to impoverished nations. Soylent could be used as a filling form of nourishment and become a staple in poorer county's food support system, while cricket flour can be substituted for other flours in foods such as bread, muffins, or even cookies!

So which would you prefer to be the future of our food? Both? Neither? I'd definitely like to try both!

More,

Amanda