Wednesday 7th August

The main reason I am writing on this subject today, is that as usual truth is stranger than fiction.  I am writing a new book, and it is about a dystopian near future.  One of the features is that largely because of climate change a large proportion of people eat ‘synth-food’.  A bit of a clumsy name, and one that may need revision, perhaps.  It sounds outrageous – the human race, eating synthetic food, doesn’t it?

And of course it isn’t a new idea.  There was a film called Soylent Green’, where the future population ate slabs of ‘Soylent’, a completely manufactured food.

But of course, reality has beaten me to it.  The boffin burger has arrived.  Grown from cow muscle cells; in its raw state it looks distinctly unappetizing, and has had to be flavoured and coloured to even resemble meat.  The verdict was that it tasted vaguely of beef.  But beef it mostly undoubtedly was.

And now for the hard part – do we approve.  On one level as a ‘sort-of’ vegetarian, in that I eat more far more vegetarian meals than I do meat ones, I couldn’t really care less.  I don’t imagine I will be rushing out to buy a synthetic burger, and the technology will have to improve if they are going to make it competitive.  In its stated aim of alleviating world hunger, who can complain.  And environmentally it should stop all those cows wandering around where crops can be grown, and farting methane into the atmosphere too.

But the point of synth-food in my book, and in ‘Soylent Green’ too incidentally, is that the creation of synthetic food will bring about another great divide in the world.  Already there is a section of society who eat fresh organic, hand-reared, well sourced food – and another that eats processed ‘junk’ food.  Will this potentially wonderful invention mean a widening so that those with money can eat real food, and those without will have a diet of ‘synth’.

I tend to think that once Capitalism gets its hands on this technology, this might be the case. Already food technology is frighteningly clever; give it another fifty years and who knows.