Comment by cwp | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cwp | Hacker News Reader

Sounds good - something very like animal proteins without raising entire animals to produce them.

Beyond that though, I'm really interested in foods that could be created that don't mimic existing foods derived from animals or plants. You could imagine a nutritionist defining requirements - combinations of proteins, fats and carbohydrates, various micronutrients. Now add the aesthetics of taste, texture, consistency etc. Some of these would be "ready to eat," either hot or cold, but others could be raw materials for traditional cooking: shred a block of this solid stuff, fry it in that liquid oily stuff, and drizzle some thick spicy stuff on it. Marketers to invent names, of course. Maybe we even get food tailored to us individually, based on specific nutritional needs, fitness goals, religious restrictions or palate.

This doesn't sound appetizing, so I think it would be a gradual process, where new products come out that aren't quite like natural foods, but are still acceptably tasty, and cheaper or more nutritious. Gradually we get things that are quite different. It would take a while, but I suspect in a few hundred years we'll have things that are unimaginable today but as accepted as cheese, beer or sausage. And with much, much lower impact on the biosphere.

> Beyond that though, I'm really interested in foods that could be created that don't mimic existing foods derived from animals or plants.

That's literally what processed food is. Nothing from a Twinkie to cheese (one of the oldest processed foods) resembles anything that comes from animals or plants.

Humanity has been doing this for all of recorded history.

Often the processing came of necessity: many of our culinary traditions are simply things that evolved such that we could preserve food pre-refrigeration. The problem is that we still don't seem to be very good at making healthy processed foods, and once you stray away from basic foods, there's strong market pressures to optimize for taste (and, let's be honest, borderline addictiveness) above nutrition.

The work toward this kind of 'ready to eat' food has already started, with companies selling things like https://mealsquares.com/ or https://jimmyjoy.com/.

The zeitgeist seems to be about going back to more natural food though, at least in my circles.

The underlying fear is that what is sold as 'nutritionally complete' food is actually incomplete, but that we don't know enough about nutrition yet to notice it : so the best strategy is to keep a tried and true diet, like a Mediterranean diet.

Yeah, that is a completely well-founded fear and undoubtedly true in the short term. Living on nothing but meal squares or Soylent would be a bad idea. But I don't imagine anyone would have to do that. Nor do I imagine that synthetic food would have to be nutritionally complete; it'd just be designed with a specific purpose rather than being the byproduct of some organism's survival strategy.

> I'm really interested in foods that could be created that don't mimic existing foods derived from animals or plants. You could imagine a nutritionist defining requirements - combinations of proteins, fats and carbohydrates, various micronutrients.

This is what milk is, really. It's specifically designed to be the exact balance of nutrients needed -- by an infant. (And in this case, an infant cow.) It'll be hard to beat what we already have.

True. But we aren't infant cows. We have different and more varied needs. So I guess I'm wondering what milk would be like if we designed it for weaned humans, in various circumstances.

Soylent, Huel etc... admittedly they're made out of various plants rather than growing their proteins etc. in a vat.

True that we aren't infant cows, but we're very close. There aren't many nutrients that we need but they don't, or vice versa (vitamin C is an exception) -- the bigger difference would be in relative amounts. You can live quite happily for a long, long time on a diet of bread and cow milk.

I saw one commentator below mention quorn, but I think it depends on how this was done, presented and marketed.

Some top chefs do something approaching this - not quite at the molecular level in the way mentioned here, in a lab (although it's called molecular gastronomy), but nevertheless experimenting with different combinations and techniques. Artisanal experimentation vs industrial production.

>don't mimic existing foods derived from animals or plants

But all good tastes we know and enjoy are from animals or plants. You have to mimic existing foods for people to like (and buy) it.

Well, sure, all good tastes come from animals or plants because that's the only stuff we can eat. It doesn't mean that no other good tastes are possible.

With every sentence I read, I kept saying "quorn. quorn. quorn." and it just kept applying more and more.

The problem with Quorn [0] is that it's only just acceptably tasty. People looking for price will just buy rice and beans and oatmeal, and people looking for taste will buy meat or tastier, more modern meat substitutes (think Impossible).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quorn

As someone who was brought up vegetarian but later ate meat occasionally, I personally prefer the taste and texture of Quorn pieces, mince and sausages. I’ve never tried the stuff that tries to more directly imitate meat though. More generally I find the rise of vegan foods that try to emulate the taste and texture of meat quite disappointing, but they’ve pushed good vegetarian food out of many menus.

Yeah. I wasn't familiar with Quorn, but it does sound like what I'm talking about. You don't think we'll ever be able to improve on Quorn?

(I personally find Quorn OK, but I'm not a fussy eater.)

I am hesitant to say it will never happen. On the other hand, Quorn has been on the market for a surprisingly long time, and AFAIK has not made any leaps in quality, so I don't know if it ever will.

It'll be interesting what molecular gastronomy looks like after the first few iterations of AlphaEats

Beyond that though, I'm really interested in foods that could be created that don't mimic existing foods

Isn't this exactly what Soylent is/was?

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