Future Food Is Artificial: Difference between revisions

{{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.

 

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.

 

 

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]].

 

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}}

 

== 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 ''[[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 ==

'''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 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 ''[[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.

 

== Tabletop Games ==

* [[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.

 

* 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''.

** And everything is recycled, including sandwiches made from old discarded sandwiches.

 

 

{{reflist}}