Sci-Fi Food: Where Is It Now?

Every time the Jetsons make a meal, I roll my eyes. In an otherwise unfailingly realistic depiction of the future, the imagination of 1962 got the future of food very wrong. We're two years past the end of the world, and I have yet to eat a sandwich prepared by a robot (unless you count the average Subway employee). Robots build our cars, which will soon drive themselves, but making an omelet is apparently too much to ask.

While science fiction predicted bullet trains, cloning, space travel, holograms, laser weapons, flying cars, the Internet and so much more, sci-fi's predictions about food usually end up way off the mark. I, for one, am feeling jilted. Let's check in on sci-nonfi's progress with building the meals of tomorrow, if only to mock their attempts at improving our lives.

Food Pills

"Make you own sandwich, mister."

We all know a woman's place is in the kitchen—supervising and offering commentary as her husband makes dinner. (Joke. This may not be exactly how gender dynamics work in your kitchen.) In fact, I can't make any assumptions about the distribution of labor in your kitchen, or even the makeup of your family unit, since a number of social reforms have shed us of these assumptions. This wasn't always the case, of course. There was a time (like 1893) when I could have comfortably assumed who would be preparing the meals around a given home. And doing the dishes.

Women like Mary Elizabeth Lease had other ideas, however. A gifted orator and suffragette, Lease's contribution to the World's Fair of 1893's Visions of the Future project was, in fact, a meal replacement pill. Well, at least the idea for one. Whereas we might utilize such a pill to facilitate an active lifestyle rife with commutes and long hours, Lease's goal was something much more humanitarian: she wanted to free women of her day from the shackles of the kitchen, for the purpose of pursuing horizons beyond domesticity. Unfortunately, Lease was big on ideas and short on practical food science.

But that was over a century ago. What's stopping us now? A simple problem of physics. As you may have noticed, stores already carry food pills. These are known as "supplements," or "vitamins." And while they may provide nutritional essentials and prevent deficiencies, they cannot replace food. We simply cannot pack enough calories into such a compact form factor. Even pure fat—which is loaded with calories—can't approach the amount of calories necessary to constitute a meal. If you want a satisfying meal-in-a-pill, the pill is going to be the size of a softball.

The real-world applications for superdense meal replacement solids have evolved from feminist ideal or fantasy of convenience into treatments for acute malnutrition. Products like Plumpy'nut, a peanut paste manufactured by a company named Nutriset, are intended for medical emergencies, with a focus on combating third world food scarcity. Plumpy'nut contains peanut paste, milk, vegetable fat, and sugars, with the express purpose of pulling patients from the clutches of famine. Plumpy'nut and other foods designed to combat malnutrition fall under the banner of Read-to-Use-Therapeutic Food (RUTF). From what I understand, this is different than Comfort Food, which is intended to be consumed alongside ice cream, and no less than four (4) episodes of a serial drama.

But if you want that sci-fi thrill of popping a full meal-tasting morsel, you may be in luck. Except you'll have to settle for gum. Scientists at the Institute of Food Research in Norwich, England have developed a technique of storing flavor bursts in "microcapsules." The skin of these microcapsules can be engineered to withstand different amounts of pressure. The result is a single piece of gum (or pastry) that reveals different flavors throughout your chewing experience. Yes, I also see a horrific future in which a vast and pretentious gum culture arises, ultimately ruining the bottom of every public table everywhere.

Food-O-Matic

Most families of the future, as well as star ship crews, need only press a few buttons and wait before a machine synthesizes the food of their choice in seconds. This is another advance that has failed to materialize. We can use 3D printing technology to build guns, or even buildings, but the closest we have to full meal assembly is that contraption from the opening of Pee Wee's Big Adventure.

But tech moves in cybernetic baby steps, often taking countless iterations and subgenerations to comprise what we think of as a leap.

In other words, you can't print your food yet, but you can print a mush version of certain foods. German company biozoon is pioneering "food texturizers for the molecular gastronomy." Want some edible Martini foam? How about some senior-oriented...nutrition cubes...? The future is now!

Speaking of textural advances in food and space travel, NASA, the more fun of the two government agencies whose names contain the letters "N," "S," and "A," is funding an Austin-based company's research into 3D food printing, with spacefaring in mind. NASA says that the possible advantages of this technology would be significant, including longer shelf life, better storage options, and greater variety.

We may not be teleporting food just yet, but this era does contain some amazing advances: a hat that facilitates the drinking of two cans of beer, anyone? A sushi restaurant with a conveyor belt!? Skynet will be making you omelets before you know it. Literally.