New New Food: Food is Kind of Fucked.

Let's figure it out together.

Food is kind of Fucked. 

It has taken me many years to figure out how to share my writing on food. In part the lived experience of working as a food futurist and studying the ecosystem of food end to end, and in part figuring out the correct tone with which to communicate these ideas, the structure that makes the most sense, the right balance of science and technology mixed in with humanity, history, and narrative. And then it came to me, that I just needed to write as though we were about to sit down and have a conversation. New New Food is you and I sitting down over a tea or a beer and figuring out the world of food together. It doesn’t quite make sense and the whole thing is changing rapidly in obvious and hidden ways. And yet it is incredibly simple, most food presumably begins with a seed in the ground, some water, some time, and then we are good to go. Somehow we’ve complicated this process, perhaps even corrupted this process, we started confusing ideas and combining concepts such as feeding the world while making profits, integrating new technologies, future-proofing supply chains, and mitigating climate change. To be honest at this point it’s a wonder we even remember why we’re making food in the first place (in case you’ve forgotten as well it’s to provide the energy and nutrients we need to function as humans ;).  I genuinely believe it’s important that we each take a position. I’m not saying that we resist change, all I’m saying is that food is fundamental to the human experience, it is fundamental to the economy, it is fundamental to connection, and really it is fundamental to our survival as a species. So yea, we all probably have some responsibility to have a say in what the tomorrow of eating looks like. Because the tomorrow of eating will shape the tomorrow of living.

I am not neutral on the subject of food, in fact, I’m incredibly biased. I think we have good food. For instance, those things called carrots are pretty great. The thing about the future of food that we keep overlooking is that it is already here. Science and technology aren’t going to save us, they aren’t going to create our new new food on their own, rather the ways we engage with food, the ways we interact with food, the ways we experience food on a day to day basis are the ways for us to find our future. Science and technology are meant to support us on that journey, and to give us the ability to work with the earth and the environment to responsibly steward and collaborate with nature. If we look back through history, it becomes incredibly clear that everything we know about food today comes from the dance between food and technology.

New New Food is an exploration, it’s a question, it’s a commentary, and it’s a portal into deepening our connection to the stuff we are made of. Stories will include anecdotes from my carer working with food enterprises large and small, we will look into the art and design of food experience, the science, technology, and biology of food, the politics, history, and sociology of food, and of course open up to the great thought leaders of our time. And we will do this all as humans. Humans who create one another through the food we feed one another. Humans who are made from the earth, humans whose skin, hair, and nails are made with every bowl of soup, every steak, and every salad we have eaten.

There are so many incredible minds who have formulated what we think about food today. Vandana Shiva, Wendell Barry, Alice Waters, Michael Pollan, Marion Nestle, it’s frightening to enter a discourse that has had so many of my heroes come through. However I believe that my take is different, I come to you as a human first, for whom many things are true, I’m a scientist, and engineer, and artist, a writer, a poet, a traveller, a lover, a cook, a gardener, a farmer, a mover. Sometimes I smoke cigarettes, I eat red meat, and on occasion, I have taken psychedelics to help remove the ego in understanding the universe. Now here we are. You and I. Ready to embark on this journey. Together. Oof. Deep breath. Pause when you need to. Here we go.

---