As science advances, our food changes. The kitchen is no longer aprons and knives: white coats and test tubes play an increasingly prominent role in it. Let's take a look at new eating patterns and nutritional trends.
Atlantico: Today we are in more and more rush, and meal breaks are getting shorter if not eliminated altogether. In order not to dive into the sea of fast food, we buy ready-made broths, peeled and chopped vegetables, take nutritional supplements … To what extent our lifestyle can change the appearance and contents of our plates.
Perico Legasse It is a matter of life choice. Today, in our relationship to food, we view humans as a machine that must be content with receiving energy. Therefore, we are increasingly leaning towards ready-made meals, as has already happened with ready-made clothes in the past. I don’t know where it will stop, because now we sell already refined and prepared products … Maybe someday they will even start to digest them for us. As for the consistency, some no longer even need to be chewed: I mean powders and jellies … We need teeth less and less. The goal of the whole process is to spend as little time as possible on food in order to assimilate it as soon as possible.
This is our life choice, which is abstracted from the food culture: the body is a machine, in which fuel needs to be poured, and no more. The agro-industrial complex offers consumers meals that can be prepared quickly and easily. Often they are offered in such a way that you just need to open the container and you can already eat food in the form of puree or paste. Then you can go back to the TV screen, watch sports and advertisements that offer you even faster meals. This is where the consumer society is heading: it wants the citizen to turn into a consumption machine, spend the money earned on semi-finished products, be it food or entertainment …
An ordinary citizen-consumer is not at all obliged to blindly accept this system, to allow himself to be manipulated. The easiest and cheapest way to eat may be to buy fresh food and cook it yourself. You will get the same result, spending maybe more time, but not necessarily more money. In addition, it seems to me that such products are cheaper than industrial semi-finished products. A kilogram of a product that has been processed at a factory is more expensive than a kilogram of fresh.
Today the consumer has a choice between ready-made meals and free grocery shopping, depending on what is available on the market.
How do food tastes change from generation to generation? What is the main trend now, and how can it change in the coming years?
“Today, the main trend in the food industry is aiming at what is most successful: simple sweet taste in an easy-to-consume form, childhood taste (in some ways, even addictive). Nowadays sugar is put everywhere, even in salty dishes.
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The second trend is the pursuit of the purest taste. It's about finding out where the food comes from, in what form they exist, at what time they are grown, how best to cook them. People prepare dishes with aromatic and gustatory nuances. Pay attention to the consistency. They want to understand what they eat, they strive for a variety in nutrition.
The society divided into supporters of these two tendencies. The first trend is gaining more and more adherents, although it encounters some resistance from part of the population (from 5% to 10%, these numbers are likely to change).
What other factors other than changing eating habits can cause us to rethink the contents of our plates?
- World demography suggests that we will not be able to maintain consumption in its current form (in particular, this applies to meat farming, which requires a large amount of feed and water). Humanity will be forced to be content with seasonal and local products. It will no longer be possible to send them further than 100 kilometers. In such conditions, certain regions will certainly have an advantage. For example, the food situation in Spain, France, Italy, the United States and in general in the temperate zone countries will be better than, for example, in Greenland and southern Australia.
Humanity will not survive if it does not pay attention to the methods of land cultivation.
How to feed 10 billion people in the future? It may seem like a paradox, but this can only be achieved by abandoning high production volumes. To feed everyone, you need to respect the land. If she becomes poor, she will not be able to give anything. We will be forced to eat as much as necessary. We will no longer have food available everywhere and at any time. We will only eat what is in a certain place at a certain moment.
Some foods may disappear? Are you currently looking for some food substitutes?
- Many products have already disappeared: this applies to both livestock and crops. Although, of course, many more of them still remain, and they need to be preserved. Be that as it may, if the agribusiness sector as it stands does not give way to environmentally friendly agriculture, other species will disappear. They will no longer be grown and will no longer be found in areas where soil conditions are unsuitable for their growth. In this case, we will be forced to develop the production of artificial food.
Experts are already considering the option of producing meat from biochemical components. Instead of villages, we will have machines and biological elements from which products will then be produced. This is a very likely option, which, in my opinion, will mark the end of humanity: I cannot imagine that a person would be able to live and prosper, eating food that machines give him, not the earth. All this, of course, gives a bit of science fiction, but such a problem, it seems to me, will arise before us soon enough …
For the past 20 years, people have been doing research in this direction. In particular, the European project Inicon should be noted, which is based on the principle that natural agricultural production may become impossible in some regions of the world. Therefore, it examines the prospects for the production of artificial food. Artificial products should taste the same as natural products, thanks to synthetic additives and flavors. In addition, we have already managed to artificially reproduce all tastes and smells existing on our planet. It is possible that in the future some people will be able to eat only thanks to these production methods.
Are famous culinary experts, food industry and scientists returning to traditional dishes today? What are the craziest projects in your opinion?
- They don't come back to them. Famous culinary experts put their signature, name and photo on the boxes of industrial products to convince consumers of their quality. Enterprises are trying to lend legitimacy and cultural value to their products. But in the end, a semi-finished product still remains a semi-finished product.
When celebrity chefs sign contracts with companies, it is implied that they bring their craft to the production. In fact, nothing like this happens, because they do not affect him in any way.
However, Catalan chef Ferran Adrià is fully supportive of industrial production. And puts his knowledge at the service of the industry. He wondered if the machine was capable of replicating all existing tastes. He believes so, and gives evidence of this.
Be that as it may, Michel Guérard addressed this issue most thoroughly. But his projects were never completed, because they turned out to be too expensive. He wanted to combine high culinary arts with industry.
How do you imagine lunch in 20 years? How will pleasure and necessity be combined?
- It seems to me that in the future we will face the strongest fragmentation in sociological and environmental terms, so that some segments of the population will have to be content with exclusively industrial food. At the same time, there will be an elite that will have the means and opportunities to consume natural products. In other words, one part of humanity will have access to food with a human face (depending on the season), while the other will go to the "refueling" to fill the tanks of their body with fuel. Such people will get jelly capsules or tablets that will be equivalent to a full meal (with all the calories, vitamins, etc.). A meal will take no more than 40 seconds. It is easy to imagine selling food kits that will contain all-day food.
Perico Legasse, journalist and food critic