ImStillMags wrote:
>
> http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com...or-the-future/
>
> He's right on as far as I'm concerned.

What will food look like in the 22nd century? About the only thing
we can say for certain is that it won't be anything like food today,
but here are a few modest predictions:

MASS-FREE FOOD -- the next generation of dieter's food beyond "fat-
free" is "mass-free". These will be extremely light but strong
edible structures made from freeze-dried agarose, the world's lightest
solid material. The material is colored, flavored, and texturized to
resemble bread, baked potato, etc. A "mass-free" hamburger on a bun
will weigh only 1 gram. Don't put mustard or ketchup (preferred IUPAC
nomenclature over "catsup") on it, because the water they contain will
break down the structure of the freeze-dried agarose.

RESTAURANTS -- direct brain-implant/virtual-reality technology
will let people experience animal eating experiences. For example,
you could directly experience what a cat feels when it catches and
eats a mouse. Restaurants will specialize in particular eating
experiences, for example they might have a yard populated by
rabbits and a set of falcons. Or a large aquarium and some piranha.

FAST FOOD -- with the excellence that will be available in food-
experience restaurants and home food-entertainment centers,
the lesser quality eat-out places will degenerate into a role
where they provide food for purely nutritional purposes, for
people who don't have time for a restaurant experience or home
cooking.

A fast food restaurant will be like a gas station, a place you stop
on a long road trip to get re-fueled. Molecular assembly technology
will allow a portable car unit to generate the delights of home
cooking from a unit the size of an ash-tray, if the "fast food
service station" can provide the necessary raw materials (e.g. glucose,
amino acids, etc.) to tank up the food synthesis unit.

SMART FOOD -- the development of edible semiconductors will
allow snack chips, etc. to plead for its life prior to being eaten.
"Please don't eat me! Please don't eat me! AAAHHHRRRGG!"

SNACK FOOD -- In early 22nd century, the most popular snack food
will be Nacho Critters edible robots by Nabisco. Based mostly on a
wheat-corn alloy, fried in zero-calorie non-fat vegetable shortening,
these are little crisp chips shaped like gingerbread men, but only
about 1 1/4 inches tall (that's 2.733 decihectares, for our Canadian
friends). When you open the bag, the sudden exposure to oxygen
activates their neural circuitry and locomotive machinery which
permits them to walk around for a few minutes.

Open the bag, and they slowly walk out, then proceed in random
directions. Left to themselves, it creates a real mess because they
get into everything! Then they "die", which causes problems if you
got ants. It's fun to put the critters in a big jar with a stopper on
it and watch them crawl over each other trying to get out! Dogs and
cats love Nacho Critters!

FOOD WEAPONS -- with the ever-increasing population, disruption
of food supplies will become increasingly common. To meet this
problem, food weapons will be developed which can feed large
numbers of people from the safety of a helicopter gunship. A food
weapon would be aimed at the person being fed. The projectile
would be a like the stinger of a honeybee, barbed to hold it in
place and with a sac of chemicals which are pumped in through the
stinger. Attempts to remove it before the sac was empty would
be extremely painful. The stinger would time-release its contents,
then shrivel up and drop off once it was empty. Birth-control
chemicals, anti-AIDS drugs, and Prozac could be included in
addition to the nutrient food chemicals.

CARCINOGENIC FOOD -- advanced medical technology will make most
human illnesses curable, including cancer. This will eliminate any
reason not to eat the wide range of delicious food additives such as
safrole that are currently banned. In fact, there's a wide range of
wonderful new dangerous food additives waiting to be discovered!

GENETICALLY ENGINEERED FOOD -- soon it will be possible to transfer
genetic material between completely different animals. The dream
of a cow that gives chocolate milk is fast approaching reality. How
will this boon be used? Probably we'll make many of the same
combinations we do today in convenience foods for the microwave,
except the food would be grown in a pre-mixed, ready-to-eat
condition. Instead of buying frozen, you'll buy live! It'll taste
much better than frozen because it'll be real fresh, the animal not
actually dying until about 30 seconds after you hit START on the
microwave. You won't ever have to worry about your Chicken
Cordon Bleu leaking, because it won't have a seam. Advertising
jingles can be genetically programmed into the brains of food.
Just stick the food in the oven, and in the last few seconds you hear
"M'mm m'mm good, m'mm m'mm good, Campbell's ChickeAAAACK!"

COOKING SHOWS -- advanced molecular replication technology will
allow you to smell, taste, and even sample the food seen on cooking
shows. They may also be used so that members of the audience
can interact with the chef, sending him samples of their own recipes.
And you can enjoy the same meal over and over again, just by
popping the same tape in the TV. The TV and microwave oven
are likely to converge into a single unit, responsible for both food
and entertainment.

FOOD SCARES -- the one disease completely untreatable by advanced
medical technology is hypochondria. There will be rumors of software
bombs implanted in food programming. These would range from just
causing a case of gas, to making someone sick, to programming
all the food animals to rise up at one time and take control of
society.

REUSEABLE FOOD -- a food flavor delivery system, consisting of a
texture unit and rate-controlled flavor agent releasing system.
It's sort of like a big piece of chewing gum, except the texture
will be programmable (e.g., chewy like jerky, delicate and brittle
like baklava, tender like meat). The flavor will also be programmable,
by releasing different flavors in unique combinations. In fact, the
flavor and texture can change while you're chewing it, so a complete
meal with many courses can be enjoyed without even removing the
device from your mouth.

MICROSOFT FOOD -- the software which produces food from your
standard PC architecture will literally have bugs in it.
Malicious computer viruses invented by thirteen-year-olds will
modify the executable file of Food for Windows so that when you
bite into a chocolate chip cookie off the computer, it'll be
filled on the inside with earwigs, worms, and cockroaches.

PLAYING WITH YOUR FOOD -- toward the end of the century, food robots
will progress to the point where you can chase your food around the
house, have sex with your food, and your food won't know it's food
until you start eating it. Some of the lesser-willed members of
society will fall in love with their food and want to get married
to food, but the food industry will modify their products to keep
that from happening before the food-lovers have enough political
clout to obtain civil rights for food.

RACE-SPECIFIC FLAVOR AND TEXTURE AGENTS -- as food hits tongue,
food analyzes the DNA of the eater and decides what ethnic group
they belong to. The flavor and texture of food then automatically
adjusts (e.g. hotter for Mexicans and Thais, creamier for
the French, a flavor component connoting "spoiled meat"
for the British).