Amid all the media predictions for the year ahead, we’re looking even further into the future of food with Gourmet Live’s first issue of 2012. We start with a glimpse at how we might be eating in 2050: Holding the crystal ball is reporter Robert Sietsema, who talked to rooftop vegetable farmers, proponents of raising smallstock (a.k.a. insects) for human consumption, meat growers (yes, growers), and more of those who “dream about food for a living.”
Other forward thinkers, including futurist Faith Popcorn, chef Wylie Dufresne, and Modernist Cuisine author Nathan Myhrvold, share their vision of what dinner will look like in a setting that today usually robs you of your appetite: the airplane. Travel writer Janice Wald Henderson shares the scoop on this whimsical world of turbulence-free supersonic jets and robotic flight attendants.
No doubt some of the meals that Popcorn describes—dinner created on a 3-D printer, for example—will seem commonplace in 50 years, just as what seemed fantastical 50 years ago is everyday fare today. Gourmet Live contributor Casey Barber goes back to the future of yesteryear at the 1964 World’s Fair in Queens, New York, where many Americans got their first taste of Belgian waffles and sushi.
Of course, the future isn’t likely to be all about joyfully zipping around by jet pack noshing on nanotech nuggets. Journalist Pervaiz Shallwani explores the potential fallout on the food supply from one of last year’s biggest disasters: the multiple meltdowns and explosions at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant following the March earthquake and tsunami. He uncovers as many questions as answers.
However grim some predictions about the future may be—toxic seafood, irradiated crops, widespread food shortages, the disappearance of entire species—Mark Stevenson, author of An Optimist’s Tour of the Future, gives us his upside view in our latest “10 Questions for…” interview. Based on all of the expert opinions, we think the future will end up being…delicious.
What are some foods you’d like to invent or improve on for the future—and some you’d like to see disappear? Tell us via Twitter or Facebook, email us (gourmetlive@condenast.com), or post a comment on our blog.
We look forward to sharing much more food for thought with you in 2012.
Happy New Year!
The Editors of Gourmet Live
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