Featured Coffee: Sight Glass Coffee - Colombia, Finca Las Florestales
After covering two of the most pressing issues facing the food industry—food waste and factory farming—Ben and Aaron turn their attention toward the future. As the maxim of the show goes, “Our present reality is not definitive,” and that could not be more true of the food we eat today. Humans have been tampering with and altering the natural processes that produce the food we put on our plates for millennia. Well before the advent of genetic modification, processes like selective breeding, large-scale agriculture, and industrialization have dramatically changed the composition of the food ecosystem.
Despite advances in technology, modern food production must contend with two major issues: obesity and malnutrition. Although a reflection of the rampant inequality plaguing humanity, the fact that half the world is fat while the other half is starving indicates that the future of food must not only be healthy and sustainable, but inclusive as well.
Current developments in technology once again are poising the food industry for a sea change not only in the food we are eating, but how we are eating it. From food scanners to 3D food printing to nutrigenomics, these recent innovations are going to fundamentally change our relationship with food over the next few decades. In the near future, we may be looking back on our current eating habits and think of them as outmoded and rudimentary. Either way, it is an exciting time to be alive and we will see rapid advancements both in food production and consumption that will hopefully lead us to a more sustainable and inclusive world.
Resources for Listeners
Sources
Never Out of Season: Book by Rob Dunn
National Geographic: The Evolution of Diet
FDA: Science and History of GMOs and Other Food Modification Processes
Mashed: Foods You Had No Idea Were Not Natural
Wired: Humans Made the Banana Perfect—But Soon, It’ll Be Gone
Society for Science: Explainer - How CRISPR Works
The Medical Futurist: The Future of Food and Eating
The New Yorker: The End of Food
Discover Magazine: How Scientists Are Planning to Grow Food on Other Planets