So I read this article yesterday about what sort of foods we’ll be eating in 25 years according to Yale University professor Dr. David Katz. It’s moderately interesting, but I had to take umbrage with a few points.
You are a moron, sir, and a heretic besides. You will pry the creamy milk chocolate from my cold, dead hands. Or anyway you’ll wipe off the residue because if I’m dying and I’ve got chocolate – milk chocolate, if you please – I’m doing to make damn sure it goes down before I do.
Dark chocolate indeed. It will never rule so long as I draw breath.
I’m not sure about the rest of it. Some of it sounds plausable. Some, not so much.
And kids will loooove broccoli thanks to BoogieBrox®, the portable dried broccoli snack in 4 supercharged flavors (Tangy Tofu, Molé Olé, Sesame Stir Fry, and Garlic Butter Buds).
Then we’ll find out the stuff causes cancer unless you eat it butt raw and plain.
In the year 2031, we will be able to eat an entire tv dinner in the form of a small pill while wearing our shiny silver jump suits and reading about the latest model of jetpack on the Interositer!
Of course, companies will just stop making cheap junkfood that sells very well because sometime between now and 2031 corn syrup laden crap will become unfashionable.* If I were the sort of person who felt like adding a rolleyes smiley to his posts during Monday afternoons, I’d add one here.
Either that or the consuming public will have an epiphany and listen to scientists.
Since humanity gets smarter al teh time, allwe have to do is compare average American health & diet in 1980 with today, and extrapolate forwards.
Clearly we’re eating MUCH healthier than we did in 1980. Why diabetes, obesity, and cardiovascular disease have practically disappeared in the last 25 years due to our much-improved diet & exercise habits. Given another 25 years, I’m certain we’ll get these diseases down to zero.
Yeah, riiight.
IMHO, either we’ll be eating whatever we can scrape up because the ecology and economy have collapsed ( including each other if it gets that bad ), or we’ll be eating enormous amounts of ( probably often artificially produced ) fatty and sugary foods, because we’ll give ourselves the genetic therapy necessary to eat however we like without harm.
I don’t see any real difference between the content of that article and, say, the exuberant 1940-50s futurist speculations that we would all be driving flying atomic cars home to our wives, who would just have finished cooking in the robotic kitchen of tomorrow and would have changed into a disposable evening gown made from paper and celluloid. This kind of prognostication becomes obviously, embarrassingly stupidly inaccurate almost as soon as it is printed.
Funny, but bits of that article had me thinking that exact thing. I tried telling myself, “But … he’s a professor! With a doctorate! From Yale!” But then I remembered Bush went to Yale, too.
I mean, I can see a movement towards healthier foods, with moratoriums on trans fats and high cholesterol foods and crap like that which is demonstrably and unilaterally bad for you, and I can even see to some degree (but only that which is profitable to the companies for doing so given current public opinion) better health labeling on food packages, but by and large, most of the rest of it is idealistic masturbation; nice to engage in, but ultimately fruitless.
One thing we know for certain is that by 2031, surely, the Mormons will no longer have to cook their food. After all, Joseph Smith, their prophet of God and the greatest prophet ever to have lived, prophesied that soon (within five years), Mormons will no longer have to cook.*
Of course, the great one issued that prophecy in 1844, but who’s counting?
I think that one has been around for a while - I remember reading something very much like that in my dad’s old National Geographic magazines dating back to the sixties or so (back in the day when NG carried lots more science articles).
As long as we’re prognosticating, allow me to add my predictions, which have been arrived at through highly scientological methods involving a combination of meditation, pharmaceuticals, and bashing my head on a titanium wall that faces true north:
PETA will have won. As a result, Tofurkey will gain an extreme rise in popularity, and will be joined by Tofish, Beefu, Tork, and an assortment of analogous vat-grown cloned meats which may or may not end up the subject of protests led by Charlton Heston. (Yes, he will still be alive, thanks to advancements in gene therapy that will prolong the lives of the fabulously wealthy until long after everyone else wants them dead already)
True to human nature, the problems of obesity and poor health from bad diets will be eliminated not by attacking the underlying problem, but by offering advanced solutions that treat the symptoms. Liposuction and gastric bypass surgery will become obsolete thanks to advancements in radiation therapy that will literally melt the fat beneath the epidermis. The treatment will take about half an hour and will be followed by a small incision just under one of the buttocks to drain the now-liquefied adipose tissue, which will then be saved for use in future episodes of Fear Factor. There is no adequate explanation for the continued existence of Fear Factor, however.
Genetically altered fruits and vegetables will contain every vitamin and mineral the human body could ever possibly want, as well as trace amounts of 245T and Strontium-90, which will be discovered as an excellent preservative and possess the ability to maintain clear nasal passages, whiter teeth and shinier hair. They will also be available in Salt & Vinegar, Ranch, and Sour Cream & Onion flavours.
Having ultimately failed to fully condemn deviant sexual behaviour in humans, the religious right will attempt to ban all hermaphroditic animals. Among other things, this will threaten the existence of escargot, despite the fact that all escargot will be made of soy protein anyway. Despite this argument, the right will argue that it is the appearance of sexual impropriety that is at issue.
Brussel sprouts will continue to exist unaltered. No one involved will be able to explain themselves, and they will go on to symbolize the final, clinching proof against the existence of God.
Wheat, barley, alfalfa, canola, potatoes, and beans will be grown in northern Manitoba, the Northwest Territories, and Nunavut, which is good because nothing of much value will be able to be grown anywhere else.