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The Future is Chow
Posted by The Editorial Desk / Wednesday, October 14th, 2009
I hate to break it to all the Bourdain heads, Alice Waters haters and freshly dubbed Bouludittes, but our culinary destiny is not being plotted within the lower 48.
For a glimpse into the future of caloric intake, we must cast our view across the Atlantic–for it is there that Northern European inventors are hard at work on elaborate schemes to feed the human animal.
The most whimsical example of ingestion innovation comes from the mad scientists/”starving” (quite literally) artists over at Amsterdam’s Platform 21, who cobbled together a fully automated, coffee-eggs-toast slinging contraption that would most likely leave both The Inventor from “Edward Scissorhands” and a suit-clad Paul Reubens begging for seconds:
(Video: Parool.tv)
Across the way in Sweden, aesthete-in-training Rickard Hederstierna took top honors in Electrolux’s 2009 Design Lab competition with his “Cocoon” cooker:
(Video: YouTube)
According to Hederstierna, the next generation food appliance doesn’t just prepare meals, it “grows” food (fish- and beef-mimicking proteins, to start) by splicing together several cutting-edge technologies:
“Similar to heating popcorn in a microwave, Cocoon prepares genetically engineered and prepackaged meat and fish dishes by heating muscle cells identified by radio frequency identification (RFID) signals. The signals detect the specific dish and then suggest the required cooking time. This process uses science to create food, lifting a burden on the planet by reducing the need for further intensive farming and fishing. The negative effects of this process, including the mass transportation of food around the world, clearing of land and distortion of ecosystems, are then negated,” Hederstierna told Electrolux.
I’ve got no real complaints about the frying Dutchmen’s breakfast array (save for it’s incredible bulk and the absence of any visible arepa- and/or sausage-prep attachments).
But the Cocoon system seems to me to be all sizzle and no actual steak.
We’re willing to concede that the “cooker” and its genetically-engineered “ingredients” would take food transportation issues in entirely new directions, but we’re incredibly skeptical about its sustainability, for several reasons:
* Who would produce the pre-conditioned “muscle cells”?
* What type of quality controls/government regulations/bio-ethics guidelines would we use to police this new grade of “food”? And who would have the authority to do so?
* Why/how would highly specialized, bio-engineered “food” be any cheaper than, say, raising a head of cattle?
Mind you, the answers to these questions are, as they say, well above our pay grade.
But since Europe’s best and brightest are already hard at work on the “how” of tomorrow’s eating, we just figured someone should delve into the “why”.
–Warren
Tags: breakfast machine, cooking, Electrolux, food, Gut Check, inventions, Northern Virginia Magazine, Platform 21, Rickard Hederstierna, Warren Rojas
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