Food For Thought

In our quest to feed the worlds ever-growing population in a sustainable way, whats on our plates in the future will look very different to the meals of today. Cath Bennett examines the future of food

- Cath Bennett

Would you prefer an entrée of deep- fried locusts, or shrimp cocktail made from algae? For your main, fried chicken using ‘clean meat’ derived from poultry cells, or a beef burger without the beef? And perhaps for dessert you’d like that old favourite pavlova… with meringue created out of lab-grown egg whites?

Sound appetising? In fact, although many of these options are either on the fringe or still in development, they’re likely to become commonplace in the next few years.

The combination of a need for sustainable food sources and a growing understanding of nutrition is already significantly changing what we eat. And there seems little doubt that in the future, our major providers of nourishment will be plants, pests and proteins reared in a petri dish.

DOWN TO EARTH

To those who’ve been raised with the meat-and three-veg mentality, it might seem inconceivable that humans – especially those in carnivorous New Zealand, where we’re among the biggest meat consumers in the world – could turn their backs on traditional beef and lamb. But experts are almost unanimous in the view that in order to feed the world’s growing population, which will be approaching 10 billion by 2050, we have no choice but to overhaul our methods of production if we want to avoid running out of food and descending into an ecological crisis.

Future of food strategist Dr Rosie Bosworth warns change needs to be both “profound” and imminent. “Even right now, the way we produce food is unsustainable, so there’s absolutely no way we can keep rolling out this model for a growing population,” she says. “We simply don’t have the resources – the land, the environment, the water, the simple mechanisms to cope.”