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{{trope}}
[[File:Tofurkey 2257.jpg|frame|[[Blatant Lies|It's just like turkey!]]]]
{{quote|'''Neon Samurai''': You know, in all my 29 years, I've never had a real steak.
'''Feral''': Meat is overrated. Fruit, on the other hand... You haven't lived until you've tasted real, fresh fruit.
'''Digger''': Drek, I'd be happy to know I was eating every night.
|'''''[[Shadowrun]]''''': Shadowtech Sourcebook }}
In the future, things are going to change drastically—including our diets. Whether it be from [[Gaia's Lament|the destruction of arable land]], food processing technology becoming cheaper, or just plain ethnocentrism, eventually, real food will become a luxury item, unavailable to all but perhaps an elite few. So, what does the rest eat? Processed foodstuffs, based usually on soy or yeast, loaded up with artificial flavors and engineered to be nutritionally complete<ref>In all fairness, it is one of the few legumes that has all 20 amino acids for a complete human protein.</ref>—but not the least bit tasty or satisfying.
Future Food Is Artificial is a staple of [[Cyberpunk]] and other [[Dystopia]]s because [[Only Electric Sheep Are Cheap]], and is often first clue that the [[Utopia]] we see isn't quite what it seems. However, it is also common in the [[Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness|Harder]] varieties of science fiction, particularly [[Space Opera]]s; [https://web.archive.org/web/20130514025343/http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/feature/gardening-in-space gardens on spaceships] are [[Truth in Television]], but [[Let's Meet the Meat|battery farms]] on board anything less than a [[Generation Ship]] strains just about everyone's [[Willing Suspension of Disbelief]].
The [[Darker and Edgier]] version of [[Food Pills]] (it probably first appeared in fiction as a subversion thereof), and the black sheep cousin to [[Veganopia]]. Assuming it's not recycled, this sort of future food usually comes from a [[Multipurpose Monocultured Crop]].
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It's also a component of many [[Utopia]]s as well; if synthetic food is impossible to distinguish from the real thing, then why would you ''want'' to consume the parasitic organisms that pervade just about all food? It is possible that once ''tasty'' synthetic food is invented, awareness of contaminated food could become comparable to current awareness of sanitation as opposed to [[The Dung Ages]]. The average person might find the idea of ''choosing'' to risk food poisoning to be similar to the notion of choosing to risk [[wikipedia:Cholera|cholera]] and [[wikipedia:Dysentery|dysentery]] by drinking [[Cool, Clear Water]].
{{examples}}
== Alternate Reality Games ==▼
* The ''[[Halo]]'' ARG ''[[I Love Bees]]'' features a scene at a restaurant, where a character gawks at how the menu has ''real'' tuna, instead of what is implied to be this. Further implications of human society relying on this includes a mention of how Customs Agents were bribed with four ''goats''.▼
== Anime and Manga ==
* In ''[[Rebuild of Evangelion]]'' this is partially the case for humanity. Following [[Apocalypse How|Second Impact]] sea life is all but extinct and many of the coastal arable lands are now underwater. Additional climate changes have devastated agriculture and wildlife, further reducing food sources. The exact amount of replacement food in any given meal is never explicitly stated but what passes for meat is at least two-thirds artificial.
** Also implied in the original series. The fact that Misato, a Colonel working for the agency ''saving the world'', would break her bank buying three steak dinners says something about the new pricing of meat.
* In ''[[Vandread]]'' the Men of Tarak subsist off of [[Food Pills|Pellets]]. Some of these might be better than others.
* In ''[[Future Police Urashiman]]'' the protagonist Ryuu is hilarious about an deli offering original spaghetti. Sadly it's only for upper class g-men.
== Comic Books ==
* "Munce" is the staple diet of Mega-City One citizens in ''[[Judge Dredd]]'' comics. It's a kind of high-protein plant, usually highly processed by the time it gets to the consumers because it happens to look like a human head. Sometimes munce is even made out of dead humans.
** Another example is the Gunge product line, consisting of delicacies like the Slime Sauce, Bacteria Soup, Maggot Steaks, Black Widow Spider Wine matured for a week in an old boot, and Mould Jam. When the initial release sparks huge protests, the Justice Department outlaws Gunge, buys the factories and re-releases the products under a artificial brand.
== Film ==
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*** Probably because it's the best food '''''period''''' he's had in years. Being in suspended aniimation for a few decades tends to do that for you.
* Implied in ''[[Trancers]]''. Jack Deth has been sent to the past from the future and is given beef Chinese food, prompting him to say "Beef? Like from a ''cow''?"
* A subject of dissent among the Tomanian people in ''[[The Great Dictator]]''.
{{quote|'''Hynkel:''' "What are they dissenting about?"
'''Garbitsch:''' "The working hours, the cut in wages; chiefly the synthetic food, the quality of the sawdust in the bread."
'''Hynkel:''' "What more do they want? It's the finest lumber our mills can supply!" }}
== Literature ==
* In [[William Sleator]]'s ''[[House of Stairs]]'', meat is a luxury.
* In a good many [[Isaac Asimov]] novels, especially the Elijah Baley series, people are vegetarian through no particular choice of their own—the Earth is so overcrowded that real meat is a luxury most people can't afford, and artificial yeast-based proteins grown in vats ("zymoveal") are the food of choice for the working class.
** His short story ''The Evitable Conflict'' features pleasant yeast-copies of steak, and mentions they can copy anything from meat to crystallized fruit.
** But in the late ''[[Foundation]]'' novels, some of these yeast-based proteins are ''luxury'' foods grown on Trantor in the Mycogen sector. Bland gloop exists, too, for mass consumption. And the Mycogenians keep the very best for themselves.
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* In Bruce Sterling's ''Islands in the Net'' (set [[Twenty Minutes Into the Future]]), there's no shortage of 'real' food, but one major character eats only synthetic so as to avoid the toxins that real plants put in their tissues to discourage animals from, y'know, eating them.
* ''The Millennial Project'' recommends doing this with algae of all things in order to properly feed the denizens of space habitats, algae being quite easy to grow hydroponically and some species containing complete proteins.
== Live Action TV ==
* In ''[[Star Trek: The
** Not exactly pure energy. The replicator uses transporter technology to rearrange the molecular structure of some kind of raw material (basically any sort of solid matter) into the molecular structure of edible food. This process can also be used to fabricate tools and spare parts. A line from an episode of Enterprise suggests that the crew's "waste" products are also used for the "raw materials" that are fed into early versions of the replicator....
* ''[[Firefly]]'': in "Out of Gas", the gang makes an entire birthday cake for Simon out of protein. And, of course, there's Kaylee's reaction to Book's strawberries in the pilot, to say nothing of [[Erotic Eating|the way she eats them later]]... mmmmm...
** And the valuable cargo looted from a derelict ship in the pilot? Nutrition bars, of the sort issued as rations to brand-new colonies; thanks to the central Alliance government's utter disinterest in doing anything to support any brand-new colony which can't survive entirely on its own, these ration bars are much more valuable as loot than the ingots of precious metal they're initially portrayed to be. Especially as each one can feed a family of four for a ''month''.
** On the other hand, many of the worlds they stop off at are largely occupied by agricultural settlements, so it's not as if real food is difficult to acquire. The protein bars they seem to mainly live off in space are likely chosen because they're cheap, have a high calorie-to-mass ratio and can probably keep for long periods without refrigeration; sort of like the futuristic version of MREs.
** Possibly a bit of [[Fridge Brilliance]], as that agriculture is probably sold to central Federation worlds or on the Black Market, and therefore cannot be consumed by the people farming it. There were several instances of the crew smuggling cows and horses between planets for profit.
* In the [[dystopia]]n Alt!world discovered by Wendy Watson in the course of her duties as [[Sidekick]] to ''[[The Middleman]]'' the only food available to the masses is aerosolized soup. This is listed as among the main complaints of the mad scientist trying to escape this dimension.
* ''[[Farscape]]'' has food cubes, although Rygel seems not to mind.
* In ''[[Lexx]]'', the eponymous spaceship/dragonfly dispenses food for his/her crew as a green, orange or blue slime through an organic-looking tube. It's stated several times during the show that the food consists of processed "organic material" Lexx him/herself ate before. Considering Lexx often consumes parts of inhabited planets or passing starships, this leads to slightly disconcerting implications.
* ''[[Terra Nova]]'', in the 22nd century AD real food is rare, when colonists arrive in Terra Nova they need to drink an enzyme solution to help their systems adjust to the plethora of 850,000th century BC fruits and vegetables.
== Real Life ==▼
* May become [[Truth in Television]] [[wikipedia:In vitro meat|in a few years]], to help reduce the environmental impact of meat and satisfy the [[Animal Wrongs Groups]].▼
== Tabletop Games ==
*
** And Nerps, of course!
* Infamous dystopian-black-comedy
** And of course, Friend Computer is happy to report that no one has ''ever'' [[Suspiciously Specific Denial|accidentally fallen into Food Vat #4589B]] and gotten processed with the yeast strains, nor do recycled cadavers ''ever'' supply the protein content for Vita-Yum Meal Substitute Bars.
** In the more recent editions, it's not just the High Programmers who get to escape this; one of the perks of Red clearance is that you get to eat a ''real apple'' once a month or so, with the promise of more if you continue to be promoted.
* In ''[[Feng Shui]]'', one of the ''many'' unpleasant things about the dystopia of 2056 (equal parts capitalism gone berserk and Stalinist repression) is the awful vatfood. Side note: protein-based bio-plastics have replaced the petroleum version, and almost everything a person living under the Buro uses is disposable. Meaning the bowl and sporky-thing-that-can't-be-weaponized you eat with might just be better nutrition and flavor than the actual food.
* In many of the ''[[Warhammer
* The ''[[Dungeons
▲* The ''[[Dungeons and Dragons]]'' magic item Murlynd's Spoon is a serving utensil that once a day magically provides enough bland (though a 0th level spell can explicitly alter taste...) gruel of unspecified nature to keep a party of four Medium-sized creatures (or eight Small creatures) fed. The "create food and water" spell does the same thing, with a note that characters who have put skill ranks into cooking can conjure slightly more appetizing dishes. Very few Dungeon Masters require players to keep track of food, though.
* Similar to the above is the Gift: Cooking in ''[[Werewolf: The Apocalypse]]'', which allows its possessor to turn any old trash into mush that is perfectly sustaining but looks and tastes like "warm, wet cardboard." Granted, the Gift belongs to the Bone Gnawers, a tribe composed mostly of homeless and vagrants.
** ''Werewolf's'' Asian supplement, ''Hengeyokai'', includes a variant of that Gift that creates—what else—rice.
* ''[[Car Wars]]'' uses processed, flavored algae as its major source of food.
* The ''[[Transhuman Space]]'' setting, with its "fauxflesh" vats, can be either this or [[Veganopia]] depending on how the GM wants to play it, and on what part of the world you're in. Real meat is illegal in the EU, but just expensive (and possibly frowned upon) elsewhere.
* ''Cyberpunk2020'' features the ''Kibble'' that's described to have the same aspect, smell, and flavor of the dog food from which it takes its name.
== Video Games ==
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* 'Soy Food' in [[Deus Ex]]. Apparently advanced nanotechnology lets the user pick a flavour. The Chocolent bars may fall into this category as well, as might the soft drink labelled 'Insert Product Placement Here'. "It is unclear whether this is a name or an invitation."
* In ''[[Dystopia (video game)|Dystopia]]'', the menu at an abandoned coffee shop sells three different kinds of soy products and no other food.
* In ''[[Space Quest]] 6'', the food dispenser in the crew lounge is named "Mr. Soylent," and even comes with a cheeky advertising jingle, ending with "Soylent Clear: Clearly less people, clearly better taste."
* Guess where does the major source of Nutrients come from in ''[[Alpha Centauri]]''? Kelp and people once you got recycling tanks.
{{quote|"It is every citizen's final duty to go into the tanks and become one with all the people." -- '''Chairman Sheng-ji Yang, "Ethics for Tomorrow" '''}}
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* In the bizarre 90's PC CD-ROM game [[Total Distortion]], you have a high-tech kitchen that can produce many kinds of custom sandwiches and drinks... that are made from a light-brown substance called Food Goo, sold by the rectangular prism by Taft Foods. As the game reverently sings after every meal, ''yummm-yummm!''
** There's a bit of irony to this: the game takes place in a bizarre alternate dimension, but the kitchen and Food Goo come from good, weird old Earth.
** It's a cheap but effective way to handle shipping costs, the sandwich and drink maker is a state of the art machine which can turn the base nutrients of the food go to something edible.
* In ''Reprobates'', each character on the island awakens each day with a full flask of water and a pack of crackers. The latter are evidently enough to nourish a person for the day, although some also gather edible items from the island itself.
* [[Space Colony]]: Your colonists main food source is a green 'soup' created from a bamboo like plant or the local trees. Thankfully it can also be turned into alcohol. Colonists who are feeling really fancy can eat genetically modified chickens, which increases their happiness level.
* In ''[[City of Villains]]'' the most common food for normal citizens in the supervillain-ruled Rogue Islands is something called NutriPaste.
== [[Visual Novels]] ==
* In the world of ''[[Bionic Heart]]'', almost everyone is a vegetarian in the future because the constant rain and lack of sunlight on a [[Single Biome Planet|Single Biome Earth]] makes it impossible to raise livestock and difficult to grow fresh crops. People typically eat a sort of flavored foam instead of real food.
== [[Web Comics]] ==
* In the webcomic ''[[Alien Dice]]'', the various alien species subsist on foods developed in labs. Their reaction to foods derived from plants and animals are mixed. Lexx vomits upon discovering the source of milk, saying that only animals should consume it. Riley, however, rather enjoys beer, though due to his [[Bizarre Alien Biology]] he can't get drunk.
* In ''[[Terinu]]'' avoiding "food cube" starship rations is a minor luxury for the crew of the ''Terona''.
* Animal products in ''[[Schlock Mercenary]]'' have been mostly replaced by bacterial cultures, some of the old-fashioned versions being [http://www.schlockmercenary.com/
{{quote|'''Karl Tagon''': [...] would you join us for dinner?
'''General {{spoiler|Bala-Amin}}''': Yes, but be warned: I'm a strict bactotarian [...]
'''Karl Tagon''': Outstanding. We have a collection of three-star vat cultures, our chef loves to impress guests [...] }}
== [[Western Animation]] ==
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** And everything is recycled, including sandwiches made from old discarded sandwiches.
▲== Real Life ==
▲* May become [[Truth in Television]] [[wikipedia:In vitro meat|in a few years]], to help reduce the environmental impact of meat and satisfy the [[Animal Wrongs
▲== Alternate Reality Games ==
▲* The ''[[Halo]]'' ARG ''[[I Love Bees]]'' features a scene at a restaurant, where a character gawks at how the menu has ''real'' tuna, instead of what is implied to be this. Further implications of human society relying on this includes a mention of how Customs Agents were bribed with four ''goats''.
{{reflist}}
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[[Category:Cyberpunk Tropes]]
[[Category:We Will Use An Index In The Future]]
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