Institute For The Future

PROVOKING THE FUTURE OF FOOD: 51 micro-forecasts from the Blended Reality 2008 crowd-sourcing experiment

At our Fall 2008 Technology Horizons Conference, we crowd-sourced five questions (via Twitter, blogs, email, and SMS) about Blended Realities in 2019. Here are the massively collaborative food results!

Question #5: It’s 2019. How do you decide what’s for dinner?

My wife (the technology lover) logs onto the social website FindTime Thursday nights to see what our social group has planned for the weekend. Unfortunately my technology backward friends don't keep their plans updated. As a result, I blast out the message (through some media) that there is beer and smoked brisket at the house, Saturday, 4pm. Feelings are shown after about 3 beers.

Any of the restaurants that I frequent will have rotating seasonal menus with great daily offerings...they'll pretty much decide for me as I'll be eating at one of them almost every night. Which one doesn't really matter--do I feel like a long walk or a short one? Food is scarce in some parts of the world, but that still doesn't really affect me. A portion of each of my meals is siphoned into a Hunger Fund that nebulously alleviates my guilt. Somehow.

Everything will be pre-cooked and reheatable.  Christ, it already is.

Depends, what does one eat in 2019?

First I look to my rooftop garden, then my local food co-op, which gets

a big chunk of food from vertical farms and other producers in this

bioregion. I'm vegetarian, but meat would be too expensive anyway, and

no one wants to eat dangerous prions anymore.

anything that isn't gmo

Lunch will be decided for us.

Higher prices will force everyday people to consume the processed foods

more often. Healthy eating will not get cheaper. More things may be

grown in controlled enviroments. I'm sure more instant, pre-pared

manufactured meals.

We will be eating more vegetables, grown and bought locally (easy for us here in California) since transporting food will have become too expensive. Meat will be primarily from local sources also, with laws to prevent abuse of cattle and chickens in factory settings. Some of us will be utilizing small plots for our own vegetable gardens, or joining communal farm banks to make small farms successful, and farmer's markets will spring up in most communities. I think the simplicity and enjoyment of fresh foods and time spent making meals will become a choice, rather than going to a restaurant.

My food recommendation agent decides what's for dinner--it has my  

genomic data combined with a whole slew of daily health data that it  

collects through my wearable phone--glucose, blood pressure, metabolic  

leves, etc.  The data is processed by the optimum health algorithm  

which spits out dinner recommendations, list of ingredients, recipes,  

and best places to purchase ingredients.

Well, there's not much of a choice really. What you eat is all the same,

you just get to choose the flavours. We've got to the point where meat

and veg and protein are all "farmed" and then flavoured and textured as

part of the finalisation process. So, you can have anything you want really, but its all the same thing

anyway.

In 2019 we will eat food we grow in our gardens and our greenhouses

in 2019 we will eat food grown in our communities

In our house hold we decide whats for dinner for only a week ahead.  Saturdays first thing in the morning we go to the farmers market and buy local fresh fruits and vegetables. What is in the shopping cart is usually what will be on our table for the next seven days.

Now with the current economy I like to ask the farmers how they decide what to grow for our dinner!

What's for dinner is whatever is ripe in my community garden. How about I pull some root vegetables out of the year-round garden I have planted on my rooftop garden...in a cold climate its important to have access to fresh produce growing enclosed. You know exactly where they came from! The potatos and carrots will be perfect for my stew made with homogenized soy base and lentils. Yum.

What's for dinner is whatever is ripe in my community garden.

Look to see which organic vegetables grown in my backyard are ready for

harvest, perhaps growing under a glass dome, depending on the pollution

factor.

We will check what produce is growing in our yard, and take a trip to the food collective where we'll barter and trade for food without any money exchanged.

the local VS mass distribution and quality gap (greenmarkets v wal

mart) will continue to widen, freshdirect will team up with seamless

web to offer instant produce and takeout ordering

open the refrigerator and see what my wife has left for me to eat. bill.

Upon completing my work for the day, I make my way to the personal health management room where I take a combination cleansing and nutrient bath which keeps the external layers of my body in top form.  The nutrient mixture really isn't directly up to me, rather it is based on data analysis from various sensors I don't quite understand, but know are scattered throughout the room.  After the bath, I start my exercise program which includes a workout for my digestive system that includes additional nutrients and a rigorous fiber component.

We have a choice of:

- About a dozen dinners we like to cook ourselves.

- Hundreds of standard dinners that our home robot can cook.

- Ordering dinner from a wide variety of standard, still individualized choices.

- Going out for dinner in a self-steering electro mobile.

We'll look forward to even more choice and quality in 2029 when dinner

can be delivered by a nanotech assembly plant in the kitchen. Dinner will then

be only a matter of taste and pleasure, since all nutritious and supplemental

biological needs will be taken care of by enhancements to our bodies.

(1)    Check the community calendar for neighborly dinner invitations.  (2)

Check the garden to see what's ready for harvest.  (2) Check the

community coop for surplus produce.

I consult my little handheld device about what organic locally produced groceries are available today, I click on the items I want. They will be delivered on my doorstep by the time I get home from work. Recipes with dishes I can make with my selection of groceries will be attached to the grocery basket.   

In 2019, I'll still be getting my produce box from my local Community

Supported Agriculture farm.  I'll still cook almost every meal, except

that I'll be a better cook.  I'll still be a vegetarian, but so will

many more of my friends, who will have decided that a meat-eater's

diet is simply unsustainable from an environmental point of view.

They won't care about the ethical or health reasons, but they'll still

do it.  Their pets will love them more.

The future of food I hope is actually a return to more nutrious food. Fast food is fresh food. And that there is enough for everyone world wide so there wont be anymore world vision commericials with starving children. food scrapes will be able to energize our cars like in the movie back to the future! where we are going we don't need roads or gas that pollutes!!

the way I decide what to have for dinner...I calculate my voluntary ration of protein for the day (given that we realize we've passed the "peak protein" mark as well as the "peak oil" mark)...and then I check the energy calculator for the recipe I was dreaming about all day...and then I realize I have to skip the goat cheese and the hickory smoked vegetables and just go for a simple bean and greens salad from the garden if I want to stay in my target food footprint.

2019: there is a variety of synthetic food everywhere. It is cheap, tasty and not really healthy. The synthefood concerns make aggressive adversions and commercials for this cheap food (some of especially impudent concerns also mix some light addictive drugs, to make their consumers crazy about the synthetic food). On the other side, a vegetables and natural products are rare, expensive and luxurious because of climatic changes and leaks of natural ressourses. So if I decide what to eat for a dinner, I check my money stand, and also check my state of health - and choice between cheap/unhealthy and

expensive/healthy.

Higher prices will force everyday people to consume the processed foods

more often. Healthy eating will not get cheaper. More things may be

grown in controlled enviroments. I'm sure more instant, pre-pared

manufactured meals.

I buy local fruits and vegetables.  Cook them using timeless flavors and recipes.  New flavors are invented in labs but I stick to the classics.  I go to restaurants that use more techniques based on molecular gastronomy, which allows me to customize meals with flavored foams and gels which are based on already existing flavors.  Restaurants offer even more specific micro-cuisines, so that instead of going to get simply Indian food, I go to get food from specific individual villages.

In 2019 a few of my friends and I are gathered in a local bar and realize it's getting toward dinner time. I finish my Synthahol and say "Ok, let's pick a place for dinner." I know that they all have the RRC module installed in their neuralnet, so they wait for my signal and we all tap the right sides of our heads three times together. This activates the Random Restaurant Chooser, which locates a restaurant in proximity to our location.  A lot goes on after those three taps. First the RRC determines our location using our built-in GPS. Then it compares the restaurant types to our known cuisine preferences, doing some complicated weighting of our choices based on our recent eating habits and how this group has chosen in the past. It also factors in the price range of the restaurants and our current meager bank balances. It boils all this all down into a match that satisfies all of these criteria and then sends stimulation to the hippocampus, insula, and caudate regions of our brains. In less than two seconds we all look at each other and simultaneously say "Thai!". As we get up to go, following the directions blended seamlessly into our visual cortex, I laugh to myself, thinking of the old-fashioned way I used to do this by shaking my ancient iPhone to pick a random restaurant. It's a miracle I didn't starve back in those Neolithic days.

Again, the privileged have to choose between the caviar from the last sturgeon or the last monk seal cutlets. Most people's choices are made by Wal-mart's weekly specials on Hormel meat products. If the Spam is on sale, then Spam's for dinner.

In the future increased fuel prices and heavily regulated and expensive commercial fertilizers will lead to an explosion of micro-farming: individuals who grow produce on whatever available land is at hand. While this leads to tension between renters and homeowners in some areas, it also leads to the formation of small community markets where micro-farmers sell their surplus to people in the community. Micro-farming leads to an increase in community organization as neighborhoods coordinate their crops and share farming knowledge and techniques. The effect is particularly strong in urban areas like Detroit where large areas of land have already reverted to overgrowth and neglect. While tensions and competing interests in City Council almost derail Detroit micro-farming initiatives, a landmark ruling by the state Supreme Court allows for limited squatter's rights in land with unclear or ambiguous title. (Obama appointee Jennifer Granholm is the deciding vote when the U.S. Supreme Court upholds the decision.)

mrjudkins: @avantgame In #2019 dinner is whatever is in season (limited imports), plus a bit of whatever protien-based foods we can afford / track down

rtgarden: #2019 dinner is seasonal, varied and fantastic. Diversity in food supply means that you can choose organic food freely. vegan happy edibles.

martimu: #2019 prevention. Way fewer processed foods and now so many more are healthier! Fewer vices available in large quantities too.

infrarad2019: #2019 Dinner depends on what's fruiting. Portland's public spaces have steadily become edibly landscaped,tho rebuilding the soil was a bitch

kitode: #2019 @vdistler - dinner=online merging resources via geolocation, ad hoc pot luck. grew most of it. hoping for new tech 2make cheap H20.

kitode: #2019 - education done at home via console as much as in-school; telecommuting comes to kids, also better for disease containment.

senatorgrant: #2019 RAVENOUS If I have disposable income, I will eat whatever survived the growing season. If not, I will eat mass-produced soylent glop 

grohac: @avantgame #2019 What I have access to decides what I make. I'd love to make slow cooker stew or chili again, but that's just not possible.

toadstar: @avantgame #2019 I walk outside and look to see what's fresh in my garden. Sometimes we have a farmers market where we swap food.

Jay_Jordan: @avantgame #2019 I don't decide what I want for dinner. Google got really good a predicting what I want years ago. Now it just shows up.

vdistler: #2019 Answer to my own team's question about dinner? troll through daily farmers' market for whatever is available and affordable.

debs: dinner in #2019 - my kitchen appliances decides for me based on what's in the pantry and what I use the most of - i.e. my preferences #2019

emilicon: @avantgame on my lifepod on South Pacific I decide what to eat based on protein culture matching my blood-analysis-nutrition-report #2019

MAMK: @avantgame #2019 Nutrition sensor queries my home pantry and suggests foods that best suit my current metabolic/physio state.

mfcrawford: #2019 i get my power from kinetic energy sensors embeded in floors, worn on body, solar en. panels on house. where do you get your energy?

billt: @avantgame #2019 dinner decisions will be made by the twitterverse, surely? Or the AI in the fridge!

martimu: #2019 dinner - I decide if it's to be cheese or chocolate based

sixblueten: #2019 RAVENOUS: If I'm living in the U.S., due to fuel costs, I'll be eating a diet largely restricted to foods grown in N and S America.