The Future of Food
What to expect in 2050
Written by Ilke Boran & Dr Rachel Shaw.
Imagine this. You wake up to a news bulletin announcing a new Government scheme, it subsidises local farmers as they transition from livestock rearing to microbe farming. Later, you visit the supermarket and spot a store-specific range of affordable cheeses – made not from cow’s milk, but by fermentation. You dine out with friends that evening at a new alternate-protein restaurant you’ve been excited to eat at for months. Your colleagues have all raved about the food there. Apparently, the dishes are made from proteins custom designed by the kitchen’s Michelin-starred culinary scientist. She uses the latest technologies to make new proteins that maximise both flavour and nutrition, creating unique meals you can only taste in that restaurant.
The year is 2050, and everything you used to know about food has changed forever.
Fermented proteins. Sounds strange, doesn’t it? Foods, cosmetics, biomaterials and more, all made by microorganisms like yeast in a vat. Unusual as it may be, this biological revolution has become increasingly commonplace over the years. By 2050, it’s now integrated in every aspect of your life, whether you realise it or not.
From plastic-degrading enzymes you feed into your at-home waste-disposal systems (just like how you put detergents into your washing machine!) to the durable biomaterials your clothes are made from (which are easily degradable too for once your outfits have fallen out of fashion!), there’s no end to the improvements you’ve seen in your life over recent years from these biomanufacturing breakthroughs.
At school, your children are learning how to edit the DNA of microbes. They chatter excitingly when you pick them up about how they’re turning regular old baker’s yeast into a powerhouse of protein production. They learn in history class about how proteins like those in egg and dairy used to be produced in battery farms and mega dairies, and when they go on school trips to farms, it’s to see how food and other products are now produced through brewing – a far more ethical and affordable process than methods of the past. Traditional farms are now museums, and our impact on global warming, methane emissions and climate change has drastically lessened as a result.
Thanks to yeast, we’re undoing the bioecological damage caused by agricultural practices of the past. You’ve even started putting behind you that anxiety-inducing state of terror you found yourself trapped in for most of the 2020s. The promised means of waste and pollution mitigation have finally begun to be realised, and negative outlooks for the environment no longer dominate news headlines.
It feels good to live once again in a world of progress and opportunity. With boundless excitement, you look forward to what the next decade of biological advancements may bring, never knowing which new innovation will change your life for good.
Though this may seem like a distant dream to us here in the present, this glimpse into our none-too-distant future is what today’s startups are helping make possible. While there are many hurdles in their way, from regulatory battles over the rights to market proteins, to the need to improve the fermentation systems we currently have available. No matter the challenges, the progress being made is beyond exciting.
Here at Eden Bio, we’re determined to make this future a reality. By using machine learning to improve all aspects of the fermentation process, we’re innovating at every level, helping create the world we don’t just envision, but that we so desperately need. If you’re interested in finding out more, then get in contact, and see how we can make this future possible together.
