As a total counterpoint.......

[Toddy]

From World Wide Words this morning.....

"Food for thought On 7 June, New Scientist introduced me to a intriguing new way of making food: note-by-note cooking. It’s a lineal descendant of the well-established molecular gastronomy, in which chefs use a wide variety of specialist techniques to produce exotic and weird transformations in ingredients. The new method does away with traditional sources of food altogether by using chemical reactions to produce dishes from their constituent chemical sources, garnished with flavouring substances such as furanthiol, borneol, verbenone, and methional. In part, the idea is to make dishes that can’t be created from traditional ingredients. It may one day be possible to create products from plants that are indistinguishable from meat; this will help to resolve ecological and ethical problems associated with current agricultural methods. At the moment, note-by-note cooking is an experiment, though its originators, including the pioneer of molecular gastronomy, French chemist Hervé This, are entirely serious. If followed through, it might make that staple of Star Trek, the food replicator, into a practical device."

No seasonality; no growing sense of ripening, no harvest flurry and no need for the careful husbandry and storage.

I'm vegetarian; I don't want to eat something pretending to be meat, and I'm pretty sure most meat eaters don't either, and I want real fruit, real vegetables, real seeds and grains and nuts.

I suppose the technology would be useful in some situations, but it's really the thin end of a very large and big business benefiting, wedge.

atb,
M

 

[Toddy]

http://www.newscientist.com/article...ised-to-shake-up-food-chain.html#.U8D8PSjaZjM

http://www.flavourjournal.com/content/2/1/1

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/physics/synthetic-food-better-cooking-through-chemistry/

 

[Corso]

its meal in a pill all over again...

 

[Andy BB]

Why the angst? The rich by world standards - which include virtually all of us - will still be able to grow veggies/fruit on land they can access, if they so desire.

And many vegetarians will no doubt be in raptures that they can eat "bacon butties" that haven't harmed any animals!

Of course, one side-effect will be the devastation of the British countryside. No more gambolling lambs in spring, no more sheep on the hills, no more cows and pigs filling the fields. Instead, thousands and thousands of fields of soya and rape to create biofuels, irrevocably changing the environment to the detriment of thousands of species. Which is, after all, the vegetarian's main aim I suppose

 

[Goatboy]

I read a related article about it else where Mary and my parting thought about it was yeah taste is very important but there's also how it looks on the plate, how it smells, how it feels in the mouth and eats. Food is a sensual thing, think of the anticipation you get when you hear onions slowly sizzling in a pan! I'm all for trying things out but sometimes it just doesn't appeal. It's like the "foams" that many chefs put onto food now, they may give a lovely taste but they personally but me of as it looks like someone has cleared their throat and spat on your food. Not very appetising.

 

[British Red]

Horribly muggy and sweaty here

 

[TeeDee]

Horribly muggy and sweaty here

Right thread Red??

 

[British Red]

Ooops - no - two windows open

 

[Toddy]

......... irrevocably changing the environment to the detriment of thousands of species. Which is, after all, the vegetarian's main aim I suppose

I suspect you don't know many vegetarians On the whole we're entirely pro diversification, but anti mass food animal production....or monocultures of soya, palm oil, etc.,
It's the drive for beef that's destroying the Amazonian forests or Botswana's ecosystem, it's the drive for sheep and goats that's at the heart of desertification of the sahara and the damage to Australia.

cheers,
M

 

[Macaroon]

Why the angst? The rich by world standards - which include virtually all of us - will still be able to grow veggies/fruit on land they can access, if they so desire.

And many vegetarians will no doubt be in raptures that they can eat "bacon butties" that haven't harmed any animals!

Of course, one side-effect will be the devastation of the British countryside. No more gambolling lambs in spring, no more sheep on the hills, no more cows and pigs filling the fields. Instead, thousands and thousands of fields of soya and rape to create biofuels, irrevocably changing the environment to the detriment of thousands of species. Which is, after all, the vegetarian's main aim I suppose

We're on the way to your scenario already; almost every bit of ground used to have stock of some description on it not so long ago, now you only see cattle and sheep on pasture of 20 acres or more, and the cattle will only be out for about three months of the year. They spend the rest of the time in huge units so as not to expend energy and thus fatten quickly and to let the grass come for forage crops. Hardly any cattle see or hear humans these days and don't get handled in any way, they mostly see humans as a part of a tractor that comes to feed 'em or move 'em......That's why there are more and more stories of people being killed and injured by cattle when walking in the fields with or without dogs; the cattle don't know what they are and crowd 'em.................

When was the last time you saw pigs out on pastures with arks? You certainly don't see it for miles around here apart from very few very specialist producers whose meat is way out of most people's price range. Almost all of the small pasture that used to be really productive is now horse-sick land divided up with badly erected barbed wire fencing where nobody is seen for days at a time and the equines look dead of spirit and dull of eye.

There are countless thousands of acres of monoculture already, from rapeseed et. al. to enormous tracts of douglas fir, and all this in the places where not so long ago people would have brought the pigs to in the Autumn to feast on the acorns etc. Up until a decade or so ago I could get milk daily from where it had been produced, could eat pork which was orchard and woodland finished, could get fresh Wye salmon a couple of times a year, elvers annually and eels all the time, and butter and cheese of various sorts; home made cider, wine and all the multitude of things that were made with the natural wild harvest of fruit and nuts.................It's almost gone, and it's a much poorer world for it!

 

[Andy BB]

I suspect you don't know many vegetarians On the whole we're entirely pro diversification, but anti mass food animal production....or monocultures of soya, palm oil, etc.,
It's the drive for beef that's destroying the Amazonian forests or Botswana's ecosystem, it's the drive for sheep and goats that's at the heart of desertification of the sahara and the damage to Australia.

cheers,
M

Actually, one of my daughters is a veggie, and over the years I've met hundreds - possibly thousands - more (including those like another daughter who was a veggie for a while until the bacon butty wooed her away from the dark side!

As for the rest, its nice but naive. Do away with all the "food" animals and expect the farming community to continue with their current diversity (for example, huge increase in the reintroduction of rare breed sheep, pigs, cows and things like wild boar) ? Never going to happen. As the food animals disappear (along with their manure), more crops will be planted, only now fertilised artificially along with more and more pesticides, , with all the associated run-off of agrochemicals into the rivers and seas. Good for algae blooms, but not much else.

As far as Brazil is concerned, its not the beef ranches that are growing apace, its the deforestation to plant biofuel crops thats the problem nowadays, along with ongoing illegal(ish) timber logging.

I will agree with you on the subject of goats though. Terrible destroyers of the environment. Trouble is, there has been a huge increase in th bloody things, courtesy of totally misconceived charitable organisations who are funding the giving of them to certain poor communities without understanding the consequences.

 

[Toddy]

It was the dig at vegetarians Dave, not a disagreement about mono cultures.......and I so agree about the goats.
Bacon butties, sorry, but dead pig bun is just

Macaroon, that's a brilliant post, and that's real food

Everything comes packaged now
I am minded of the quote of a teenager...."oh, look, someone's dropped lettuce on the ground, and it's all in rows!"

M

 

[rik_uk3]

YUMMY



Classic film http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conquest_of_Space

 

[santaman2000]

...... If followed through, it might make that staple of Star Trek, the food replicator, into a practical device."

No seasonality; no growing sense of ripening, no harvest flurry and no need for the careful husbandry and storage.....

Not really the way the "replicator" worked though. That was nothing more than a specialized "transporter." The supposed fictional theory was to take real food and de-materialize it (not just break down chemical constituents) and store it as energy until ready to re-materialize it.

I'm not really sure which idea is less likely to actually come true. In theory both are possible, but in practice we're way, way, way off.

What's a very real and imminent probability for meat eaters though is cloning. The technology is already here. For centuries we've used selective breeding to create certain "breed" of cattle we particularly preferred and still, one animal (within any given breed) would be slightly different from the next. Now every single one will be identical to the breed standard.

 

[crosslandkelly]

One advantage though, it would make lightweight hiking, camping bushcrafting easier.

 

[santaman2000]

.......I will agree with you on the subject of goats though. Terrible destroyers of the environment. Trouble is, there has been a huge increase in th bloody things, courtesy of totally misconceived charitable organisations who are funding the giving of them to certain poor communities without understanding the consequences.

Almost (but not quite) as destructive as feral hogs. That said, wild goats are native to far larger range than hogs are/were.

 

[spiritwalker]

never wanted to walk up to a machine and ...
todays special is trout al a creme..
fish!
todays special is trout al a creme..
fish!
todays special is trout al a creme..
fish
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkjbMoj0JY4&feature=kp

 

[santaman2000]

never wanted to walk up to a machine and ...
todays special is trout al a creme..
fish!
todays special is trout al a creme..
fish!
todays special is trout al a creme..
fish!

Kinda like talking to the speaker at the drive thru window?

 

[spiritwalker]

edited post to include video link have a click

 

[Toddy]

Y'know I'm allergic to fish ? other folks are allergic to peanuts, tomatoes, oranges, and so on....I wonder if the note by note stuff is an allergen inclusive thing ?

M