Machines will control our diets in 2034?!?!?!?!
What the future of food will look like in the next 15 & 30 years
Tonight 1 in 7 people will go to bed hungry.
By the end of today, 29,000 children will die; 13,050 (45%) of them because of poor nutrition.
That’s 10 kids/minute dying of poor nutrition.
Today, almost half of the world lives on less than $2.50 per day.
80% of the world lives on less than $10/day. Meaning, 80% of human beings are at least $1.07 short of affording a chipotle bowl/day.
The universal median for income is $8 per day. An “average” person doesn’t have 11.07 on any given day.
(Chipotle bowl is just an arbitrary value ($11.07), but I’m really hungry right now and I thought it could be a relatable comparison. Also yes it’s probably slightly concerning that I have the price memorized).
This is unbelievable.
In North America, we’re in a “bubble”. It seems normal to be able to buy chipotle or Starbucks or Macdonald’s a few times/week.
But, It’s abnormal.
I will likely spend $11.07 on a chipotle bowl today. One of my meals for the day will cost 1.5X the average daily income($8) of a 4-person family in Somalia.
While I’m enjoying a rice bowl, millions of people are starving around the world.
What’s crazy is that we have enough food — in fact, we have more than enough food. Every day we produce enough calories to feed everyone on the planet 1 and a half times.
We have 1.5 times the food we need yet 800M people are still hungry??
While 800M people don’t eat enough, 2 billion people are overcoming (and they’re becoming obese).
Two of the most significant problems in the world are hunger and obesity. That’s stupidly ironic.
This makes no sense.
On a different note…
In the next 35 years, we’ll have to produce more food than all of the food we’ve made in the past 2000 years combined. In the next 35 years, our temperature will also rise by 2°C.
2 seems like an insufficient number. I probably eat chipotle twice every week. Doesn’t sound too bad, but annually that’s 104 chipotle bowls, and also $1,151.28. A simple burrito bowl twice a week will seriously dent my wallet.
Let’s steer away from chipotle 😥 and back to Earth’s temperature rise:
Do you remember the last time you had a fever?
The Excessive sweating, shivering, shaking, pounding headaches, body aches, hot skin and overheating.
Fevers suck. Fevers happen when your body temperature (37°C) rises 2°C to 39°C.
Imagine having a fever all the time.
That’s what we’re doing to the planet!!!!!
My personal goal in my lifetime is to re-invent the way we make food: so it’s local, sustainable and can reach everybody.
So, what is “the future of food” and how are we going to get there?
Now here comes the good part…
It’s 2034
We’ve mastered lab-grown meat and it’s cheaper than conventional meat.
Synthesizing lab-grown milk and eggs is a piece of cake (and they make for some yummy vegan cakes). Chickens? Cows? Who? Not in 2034.
We also use AI to optimize the microbe in plants so that they grow better in severe weather conditions. Indio Agriculture is making superpowered plants to survive climate change; some companies are even just editing plants to grow faster.
AI has its time to shine in the food industry. We have algorithms that can predict exactly what you’d like to eat.
We have urban, local farming. Instead of growing food outdoors, food is grown in small incubators (vertically) across the largest cities in the world. We use aquaponics (plant + fish farming combined), advanced greenhouses and areofarms. Growing plants requires no sunlight, no soil and 98% less water.
Let’s breakdown what 2034 food looks like, in detail…
The Lab-Grown Meat Revolution
Our meat no longer comes from animals, that’s so 2019 🙄.
If you’re skeptical that lab-grown meat is “unnatural” or “unsafe”, how about an analogy?….
Would you rather drink completely clean water out of a freshly disinfected cup, OR drink slightly polluted water out of a bottle of cough syrup that you emptied (with some syrup residue). I’m assuming you’re a clean-cup, clean-water type of person.
Well, Lab-grown meat is the “clean cup of water” version of meat, while growing meat in a cow is equivalent to drinking dirty water out of an old cough syrup bottle.
*** I was going to insert an image of the inside of a cow, and I decided you’d probably rather not see… you’re welcome 🤠 (I took one for the team).
Lab growing meat works by taking a muscle stem cell, putting it in a growth serum and allowing it to turn into muscle.
Here’s an infographic ☺️
The biggest challenges in the field were finding alternatives for FBS (fetal bovine serum, a key ingredient in the growth serum) and making more complex tissues like steak.
But…
By 2034 scientists have replaced FBS with a cheaper, plant-based alternative. This reduced the cost of lab-grown meat by 80%. They’ve also mastered tissue engineering and can make lab-grown anything, regardless of complexity.
Lab-grown meats uses 99% less land, 98% less energy, 91% less water and emit 65% less greenhouse gas.
In 2034, we also have super cool farms 👨🌾
The most considerable challenge facing indoor farms was energy usage. In 2019 that’s why all our farms are outdoor farms in Iowa and Missouri rather than indoor farms in Los Angeles and Miami.
In 2034, nanotech and AI optimized LED usage within indoor farms to make their products cheaper and fresher than products from traditional farms.
In 2034, our average vegetable farm looks like:
And our average beef farm looks like this:
Shanghai, New York, Tel Aviv, Dubai, London, Melbourne, Barcelona, Singapore, Mexico City, Toronto, and any other major city are the biggest agricultural hubs thanks to vertical farming + cellular agriculture.
More on Vertical farming…
It uses 90%(aquaponics + hydroponics) to 99%(aeroponics) less water than farms in 2019.
It also takes up 200 times less space while producing 3x the amount of crops.
In 2019, our food is designed to be shipped away halfway across the globe. With innovative farming, we produce food literally in our backyards. Since these farms are indoors, we have complete control of their climate. We can grow any food, anywhere in the world.
What’s next for humanity’s stomach?
It’s 2049
Once we’ve mastered the art of local farming, food is accessible, cheap and fresh. 800+ million people ARE NOT starving!!
We’ve been eating meat that doesn’t come from animals, grilling fish that have never seen an ocean, and scrambling our eggs cruelty-free for a while now.
But, in 2049, food is customized to your genome. Food is literally made for you. Chipotle bowls personalized for me, a dream come true 😍.
30 years ago our food came from 12 plants and 5 animal species (crazy considering there are over 35,000 different types of plants.) However, in 2049 we take advantage of all plants, and we even have bio-synthesized foods.
Bio-synthesized foods = We’ve come up with our own foods.
Using AI, we’ve been able to understand plants and foods at a molecular level, and using that data; we’ve created optimal superfoods.
Our kitchens are entirely different. We have 3D printers printing the majority of our meals. Recipes are no longer ingredient based; they’re data points/instructions for the 3D printers.
2049 is 2034 but better(cultured meat, better farming, bio-synthesized foods). Our food is sustainable, accessible and customized. Eating is going to be a completely different experience. Our kitchens look super dope; we even have fancy robot arms cooking our food.
What does all of this mean?
- The way we eat will fundamentally change
- We’re going to take advantage of technology, like AI to explore new chemical combinations in order to synthesize new foods. Foods that are cheaper and more accessible so, everyone has access to nutritious meals.
- AI will make our food customized
- We’ll eat environmentally-sustainably thanks to lab-grown foods and vertical farms.
The #hastags of 2049
#cleanmeat #urbanfarms #freshfood #localfood #bioreactortanks #3Dprintedmeal #labgrown #Robotmakingsnacks #personalizedfood #milkNOTfromcows #eggsNOTfromchickens #accessible #sustainable #fishthathaveneverswambefore #customizedsnacks😍 #healthyandyummy #mykitchenisdope #cheapgoodfood #mylunchreversedclimatechange
