Truly Artificial Food

[Fat Guy]

It seems to me that, eventually, we will live in an age of truly artificial food. In other words, it will be possible to replicate any combination of flavor, texture, color, etc., using laboratory-created materials. Like the replicators on Star Trek. Forget sous-vide cookery. We will have absolute control over culinary outcomes.

When it becomes possible to have any food with the push of a button, what will it all mean for cuisine?

[mkayahara]

Of course, one could argue that the future is already here.

[Fat Guy]

Exactly, and there are other fairly simple items that are being made from lab-created ingredients or from soy-derived protein or whatever. Bacos, for example. But these are a far cry from replicating a chicken. Still, I'm pretty sure it's only a matter of time.

[emannths]

I dunno--what counts as "artificial?" We eat rocks that are mined (salt). We eat the products of microbial growth (xanthan gum, alcohol). We eat "artificially" produced meat and dairy mimics (albeit not very good ones). We eat chemicals produced in the lab from sources that have nothing to do with food (artificial colors and flavors).

Would someone who grew up as a farmer, with no access to food other than that which they raised on the farm, look at a caramel-based candy and say that it was "natural?" It's made using sugar, which is highly purified. It uses salt, which is mined. It may have some texture-modifying starches or gums. It may be flavored with a liqueur. And it may include some artificial colors or flavors. And the final product bares almost no resemblance to any of the source plants, animals, or rocks.

[Fat Guy]

I'll be the first to agree with you that the distinction between natural and artificial is, to a great extent, artificial. And that lots of taken-for-granted ingredients and processes, ranging from sugar to fermentation, are pretty artificial. But I'm talking about a leap forward from all that. If you make a chicken out of sugar it still tastes like sugar. I'm talking about the fake chicken that tastes just like a chicken.

[Dakki]

I love this idea. Cheap truffles, truly cruelty-free meats and all the faux wild-caught fish you'd care to consume with no environmental conscience pangs.

And the step after that: foodstuffs with original, engineered tastes rather than imitations of the ones found in nature.

Unfortunately I suspect the actual devices would be more like the ones on Hitchhiker's Guide than Star Trek. You know, claiming to make food specifically satisfy your particular nutritional needs and taste preferences while serving up some inedible slop.

(The Apple version will make marginally better food but force you to choose from their iRecipes service at 1.99 a pop.)

[IndyRob]

I see it either leading to the end of cuisine or a headlong dive into a hedonistic wonderland.

On the one hand, once you can have anything you want, any time you want, how could food remain special?

But then, with a nearly infinite range of culinary special effects, the people who today are sneaking Pop Rocks into desserts will acquire a new and fearsome arsenal of the bizarre.

[Jenni]

I love seeing traditional, old fashioned foods produced using old techniques with minimal or simple processing. That's all.

[Darienne]

Artificial food is here and from what I've read, animals are refusing to eat some of it, not recognizing it as 'food' at all. Some simian species in a zoo I read about.

We have our own artificial food story. A number of years ago we had a pup with epilepsy and after a seizure we would always feed him a substantial amount of food, to help bring him around. Some experts say that having a grand mal seizure expends a great deal of energy...anyway it helped Nigel a lot. In the car, I had a package of crackers and one of cheese slices (won't name a brand...I might not remember correctly).

So in time Nigel died and we are not known for our pristine cars and one day when cleaning out the front area, I picked up the rubber mat which protects the floor rug and there it was: the long forgotten cheese. Nigel had been gone for about two years then...and THE CHEESE HAD NOT ALTERED ONE IOTA. You could have eaten it right then and there with no ill effects. It had not gone bad. Blew me away.

[Moopheus]

Sure, it seems the logical progression. Much industrial food already is only marginally related to the original ingredients--i.e., ingredients are not used as such, but as sources to extract some material. If food manufacturers could created those desired extracts without the raising/growing of the sources, they would do it, and at least some people would eat it. I mean there are people who willingly eat head cheese, and also Twinkies. People will eat anything. Also, as a general rule, if it can be battered and fried, someone will eat it. Maybe I am only saying that because I am right at this moment full of clams. I suppose someday they might come up with something that could pass for an Ipswich clam in a blind taste test. Perhaps it only has to be "good enough" to find a market, because it could be made kosher, or be so much cheaper, or keeps without refrigeration, or whatever. Certainly, in other industries, "good enough" substitutes can change markets.

[ermintrude]

And they are working on Printing Food

[Lisa Shock]

The upside, as I see it, would be absolute consistency (as long as foods were stored and handled properly) so, you'd never suffer underripe fruits or mediocre tomatoes.

The downside would be absolute consistency, so that there would never be those moments of tweaking a formula or method and getting something new and exciting.

[angevin]

Although we already have foods that "trick" the brain into thinking we're eating real and nutritious foods - sugars, flavors, MSG - I think the virtual tasting experience will happen before we find we can synthesize food that tastes exactly like the real thing.

And once we experience the ultimate meal using virtual reality, there will no longer be the need to fabricate foods.

[IndyRob]

Although we already have foods that "trick" the brain into thinking we're eating real and nutritious foods - sugars, flavors, MSG - I think the virtual tasting experience will happen before we find we can synthesize food that tastes exactly like the real thing.

While I think our early goals would be aimed at reliably reproducing, say, the perfect Kobe steak, once accomplished, there'd be no need remain true to anything authentic and we'd drift away from tradition and down paths guided only by our whims. The end result would be dishes far removed from anything that ever existed naturally.

I don't look for virtual reality to beat artificial food in the short term since we really know a lot more about mimicking meat growing processes than what makes the sense of taste work. The former is more mechanical than the latter, which includes a lot of cognitive psychology/neurology.

[angevin]

Although we already have foods that "trick" the brain into thinking we're eating real and nutritious foods - sugars, flavors, MSG - I think the virtual tasting experience will happen before we find we can synthesize food that tastes exactly like the real thing.

While I think our early goals would be aimed at reliably reproducing, say, the perfect Kobe steak, once accomplished, there'd be no need remain true to anything authentic and we'd drift away from tradition and down paths guided only by our whims. The end result would be dishes far removed from anything that ever existed naturally.

I don't look for virtual reality to beat artificial food in the short term since we really know a lot more about mimicking meat growing processes than what makes the sense of taste work. The former is more mechanical than the latter, which includes a lot of cognitive psychology/neurology.

Hmmm...maybe maybe not. With artificial intelligence, information will exand exponentially and we'll be cracking these puzzles far sooner than you think. No one thought we'd ever be able to solve the genome, and that was a few years back.

[Dakki]

And yet, flying cars, cancer cures and cheap fusion energy and yeah, AI have been around the corner for the better part of a century.

Some problems are just more stubborn than they look, and I wouldn't lay money on us solving them in my lifetime.

[IndyRob]

Hmmm...maybe maybe not. With artificial intelligence, information will exand exponentially and we'll be cracking these puzzles far sooner than you think. No one thought we'd ever be able to solve the genome, and that was a few years back.

25 years ago I was actively researching and experimenting with artifical intelligence, and despite Watson winning Jeopardy, it really hasn't advanced much since that time. Whatever advancements have been made have been far outstripped by things like Wikipedia that feature a lot of real intelligence.

We have sequenced several genomes, but have we solved them? Not really. We've gotten some valuable clues, but we really haven't put the whole picture together. In the meantime, the advances are more about genetic modifications which are more akin to artificial food than VR or AI.

We really don't have a lack of information, we have a challenge in organizing and understanding it all.

[Chris Hennes]

Regardless of what form our artificial food comes in, I think the question of "what will it do to cuisine?" is an interesting one. My guess is that what we'll see in this hypothetical world is something like what we see in the furniture world: for furniture that just needs to serve the purpose of propping people off the floor, the cheapest option wins. Sometimes that's an inexpensive lumber, and sometimes it's steel and plastic. At the high end of the furniture market things tend to be very split: some furniture makers produce staunchly traditional pieces out of exotic hardwoods (some go so far as to eschew the use of power tools... sound familiar?), and others push the boundaries of what furniture even is with exotic man-made materials. There is a place in the world of furniture for both schools of thought. Likewise, I think there will be a place in the world of cuisine for "all natural food cooked the old-fashioned way" and a place for "our ancestors would not recognize this as food and chimpanzees won't eat it." But outside the rarified realm of "cuisine," in the rest of the world where food is simply sustenance, society will gravitate towards whatever is cheaper. How else are you going to feed so many billions? Not the all-natural old-fashioned way, that's for sure... (whether that is a desirable outcome is an argument for another forum, of course)

[IndyRob]

Traditional furniture craftsmen are nearly extinct. There's no money in it. 50% of the price is in showroom space, commissions - the cost of selling.

I'd like to think that the average person could avoid those showroom charges and commission a custom piece of furniture designed specifically for their space, but that's not the reality.

[Chris Hennes]

But people do it at home all the time: there is a thriving community of craftsmen who are building furniture by hand and not selling it at all. I think the analogy still holds: people will do traditional cooking at home, and in rarified restaurants, but when truly artificial food is vastly cheaper than the natural equivalent, when you eat out it's almost always going to be the manufactured stuff. It's only when cooking at home that you will have the opportunity to go high-end and spend the time and money to cook something "natural."

[angevin]

And yet, flying cars, cancer cures and cheap fusion energy and yeah, AI have been around the corner for the better part of a century.

Some problems are just more stubborn than they look, and I wouldn't lay money on us solving them in my lifetime.

According to futurist Ray Kurzweill:

"With 30 linear steps, you get to 30. With 30 steps exponentially, you get to one billion. The price-performance of computers has improved one billion times since I was a student. In 25 years, a computer as powerful as today’s smartphones will be the size of a blood cell.”

[IndyRob]

But people do it at home all the time: there is a thriving community of craftsmen who are building furniture by hand and not selling it at all.

Well, sure, but there are also a lot of people doing crossword puzzles or knitting socks, but they're really just keeping their minds or fingers busy.

I think the analogy still holds: people will do traditional cooking at home, and in rarified restaurants, but when truly artificial food is vastly cheaper than the natural equivalent,...]

But you're proceeding on the assumption that 'replicator food' will be cheaper and therefore inferior when in fact it could be vastly superior regardless of cost.

[Chris Hennes]

I'm not asserting it will be inferior: no more than I am asserting that wooden furniture is superior to metal and plastic furniture. Some people think it is, and some don't. I love to build tables, but give me an Aeron chair over a wooden one any day.

But I am theorizing that it will be cheaper: perhaps even in the same way that particle board is cheaper than solid lumber, because there is so much less waste. Take the example of the modern pimento-stuffed olive (not hand-stuffed artisanal ones, just the normal cheap ones): that pimento is not really a slice out of a pepper. It's a gelled pepper puree that has been formed into big flat sheets and reformed, in a manner analogous to particle board. It's cheaper, more consistent, and no one even notices the difference. Is this the way of all food eventually?

[Dakki]

And yet, flying cars, cancer cures and cheap fusion energy and yeah, AI have been around the corner for the better part of a century.

Some problems are just more stubborn than they look, and I wouldn't lay money on us solving them in my lifetime.

According to futurist Ray Kurzweill:

"With 30 linear steps, you get to 30. With 30 steps exponentially, you get to one billion. The price-performance of computers has improved one billion times since I was a student. In 25 years, a computer as powerful as today’s smartphones will be the size of a blood cell.”

Except, of course, AI isn't a problem of making smartphones the size of bloodcells or even of making building-sized computers with gigantic amounts of processing power - it's about programming the computer, of whatever size, to be recognizably intelligent, and right now we can't even program one to beat a reasonably bright child at Go.

[IndyRob]

I'm not asserting it will be inferior: no more than I am asserting that wooden furniture is superior to metal and plastic furniture. Some people think it is, and some don't. I love to build tables, but give me an Aeron chair over a wooden one any day.

But I am theorizing that it will be cheaper: perhaps even in the same way that particle board is cheaper than solid lumber, because there is so much less waste. Take the example of the modern pimento-stuffed olive (not hand-stuffed artisanal ones, just the normal cheap ones): that pimento is not really a slice out of a pepper. It's a gelled pepper puree that has been formed into big flat sheets and reformed, in a manner analogous to particle board. It's cheaper, more consistent, and no one even notices the difference. Is this the way of all food eventually?

Ok, so you're saying that it may not be inferior, but it will be cheaper? I'm not finding a problem there.

If no one notices the difference between a gelled pepper puree and a slice of pepper stuffed inside an olive, is that a problem?

With nano-moleculo-blaisology we won't need to make tradeoffs. And we won't need to stay tethered to abstract concepts like olives, or cows.