## A reflection on the potential end of food, as brought upon by meal replacements
#### By Alice Strete
# Introduction
The way we eat and think of food today is bound to change in the future. The increasing demand for food, especially meat and dairy, combined with the increasingly damaging effects of climate change on agriculture (Cho, 2018), will push the food industry in new directions, and consumers to reconsider their choices. Within this context, technology companies, the new actors on the food industry stage, are putting forward a solution which disregards food as being archaic and inefficient, and the practices around food production and preparation as time-wasters. Their solution, materialized in products dubbed as 'complete foods', is backed up by huge financial support from venture capital, and regarded as the future of food. **attempt to fix food**
The way we eat and think of food today is bound to change in the future. The increasing demand for food, especially meat and dairy, combined with the increasingly damaging effects of climate change on agriculture (Cho, 2018), has the potential to push the food industry in new directions, and consumers to reconsider their choices. Within this context, technology companies, the new actors on the food industry stage, are putting forward a solution which disregards food as being archaic and inefficient, and the practices around food production and preparation as time-wasters. Their solution, materialized in products dubbed as 'complete foods' or 'meal replacements', which allegedly contain all the essential nutrients for the human body, is backed up by huge financial support from venture capital, and regarded as the future of food. However, this interpretation of food does not reflect its historical importance. The cultural role of food, gender representation, or collective values associated with sharing food, are largely disregarded. Instead, the emphasis is on the continuous quest to improve food products, within the value system of techno-solutionism [^1]. In his book *To Save Everything, Click Here*, Evgeny Morozov critically describes this value system, explaining that "this never-ending quest to ameliorate [...] is shortsighted and only perfunctorily interested in the activity for which improvement is sought" (Morozov, 2013). This critique applies to the development of meal replacements, the materialization of techno-solutionism in food, which continue to be promoted as an universal response to anything from time management, nutritional dilemmas, food waste and sustainability.
The scope of this thesis refers to a phenomenon occurring in what is considered as culturally Western countries, within a culture that falls under the sphere of influence of the startup world, driven by entrepreneurial values and libertarian views, a privileged demographic with access both to technology innovations and resources to make certain lifestyle decisions. It does not, however, apply to the bulk of the world's population which does not share these characteristics. What is more, an analysis of the complexities of the food industry and the global perceptions on food are also beyond the reach of this work.
With this scope in mind, and within the context of current technological innovations, the research developed within this thesis is based on the following statement: there are indications that food, cooking and the values associated with them are being pushed on a path towards becoming obsolete.
The scope of this work refers to the meal replacement phenomenon occurring in Western countries, within a culture that falls under the sphere of influence of the startup world, driven by entrepreneurial values and libertarian views. Throughout my work, I refer to a demographic with access to both technology innovations and resources to make conscious lifestyle decisions. This essay does not, however, apply to the bulk of the world's population which does not share these characteristics. What is more, an analysis of the complexities of the food industry and the global perceptions on food are also beyond the reach of this work. With this scope in mind, and within the context of current technological innovations that attempt to *fix food*, the research developed within this thesis identifies and critically analyzes indicators that food, cooking and the values associated with them are being pushed on a path towards becoming obsolete.
Silicon Valley's interpretation of food does not reflect the importance people place on it. The focus within this culture is on profit-driven innovation, while the cultural role of food, gender representation, or collective values associated with sharing food, are largely disregarded. Instead, the emphasis is on the continuous quest to improve food products, within the value system of techno-solutionism, which revolves around striving for perfection, maximum efficiency, and zero ambiguity, all unrepresentative of food culture. Evgeny Morozov, in his book *To Save Everything, Click Here* critically describes this value system, explaining that "this never-ending quest to ameliorate [...] is shortsighted and only perfunctorily interested in the activity for which improvement is sought" (Morozov, 2013). Considering these aspects, food will become increasingly commodified and products such as meal replacements, the materialization of techno-solutionism in food, will continue to be pushed by venture capital-funded corporations as an universal response to anything from time management, nutritional dilemmas, food waste and sustainability.
This essay is divided into three main parts. Within the first chapter, I look at how cooking, a task traditionally imposed on women, ever since the rise of agricultural societies, and until today (Smith, 1997), has been perceived throughout history. I follow the search for innovative solutions to improve the experience of eating and cooking, from the first iterations of food compressed inside a pill, an idea developed by both suffragettes and science-fiction enthusiasts, to various tools and services developed in recent years to make the labour easier and more efficient. The second part traces the path of food within technology culture, from food metaphors in computer science to techno-solutionist approaches to nutritionism, manifested through meal replacements. Finally, the third part focuses on potential directions in which food culture might develop, alongside with futurist prediction on humanity.
**my view and what the name means** I became fascinated with this topic once I came across supporters of these views within contexts that were meant to bring a critical perspective on futurist foods. Being someone who is deeply passionate about food, both flavour and culture, I was determined to track down and trace the development of these ideas, in an attempt to put forward a critical analysis to the notion that food needs reinventing, and the methods which are being employed in this direction. While, of course, it is imperative to rethink current ways of food production and consumption, from the harmful effects of industrial agriculture on the climate and food waste, to the damage processed meals are causing our bodies, I believe the answers to these issues don't lie in the hyper-processed complete foods, nor in the gadgets and services that have consumers completely dependent on corporations for every meal, all while claiming to solve the problems listed above. **conclusion**
The title of this work comes from a brochure developed by a popular brand of meal replacements. It is part of a disclaimer provided by the manufacturers, which describes the recommended way to include their product into one's diet. In order for the body to not regard this process as a shock to the system, a gradual introduction is recommended. Otherwise, the replacement of solid meals with liquid might cause the body to resist this process, and express its needs in an audible form. For me, this disclaimer can be applied on a larger scale, when referring to the reinterpretation of the role of food within the technology culture associated with Silicon Valley. How does the human body keep up with technological innovations, and how does it resist when faced with such challenges?
Cooking is a task traditionally imposed on women, ever since the rise of agricultural societies, and continuing until today (Smith, 1997). The search for innovative solutions to improve the experience of eating and cooking has often been expressed throughout history, from the first iterations of food compressed inside a pill, an idea developed by both suffragettes and science-fiction enthusiasts, to various tools to make cooking easier and more efficient. Today, technology companies producing meal replacements claim to bring innovative solutions for the current zeitgeist, as well as a glimpse inside the future of food. At the same time, they completely disregard previous struggles that have led to these issues being discussed in the first place. Replacing the traditional role of women within the household with applications funded by venture capitalists does not contribute to reflecting on the value of these tasks, but instead further deems them as unworthy of one's time, within the framework of the post-mom economy.
I became fascinated with this topic while investigating the way in which food has become part of technology discourse today. As someone who is deeply passionate about food, both flavour and culture, I was determined to document and trace the development of these ideas, in order to form a critical analysis of the notion that food needs reinventing, as well as the methods which are being employed in this direction. While I believe it is imperative to rethink current ways of food production and consumption, from the harmful effects of industrial agriculture on the climate and food waste, to the damage of processed food on our bodies, I argue that the answers to these issues don't lie in the hyper-processed complete foods, nor in the gadgets and services that have consumers completely dependent on corporations for every meal, all while claiming to solve the problems listed above.
To understand the way the the role of food is being transformed by technology companies, I follow a path through the history of cooking and gender roles in food preparation, the role technology has in food culture and the way Silicon Valley, an important actor in the world of technology, is appropriating food traditions and knowledge in creating new consumer products for the privileged. My research was inspired by the book *In the Age of the Smart Machine* by Shoshana Zuboff. In it, she described her privileged position to experience and investigate the world of labour on the verge of it being revolutionized by computerization (Zuboff, 1988). She looks at the changing relationship of workers to their own bodies, the abstraction of their work and the way this dramatic change influenced the relationships between individuals. It is fascinating to look at the meal replacement phenomenon, and the repositioning of food within society as potentially similar, while wondering what the future of food could look like in the context of ever increasing abstraction and commodification of food and the labour of cooking.
To understand the way the the role of food is being transformed by technology companies, I follow a path through the history of cooking and gender roles in food preparation, the role technology has in food culture and the way Silicon Valley, an important actor in the world of technology, is appropriating food traditions and knowledge in creating new consumer products for the privileged. My research is inspired by the book *In the Age of the Smart Machine* by Shoshana Zuboff. In it, she described her privileged position to experience and investigate the world of labour on the verge of it being revolutionized by computerization (Zuboff, 1988). She looks at the changing relationship of workers to their own bodies, the abstraction of their work and the way this dramatic change influenced the relationships between individuals. It is fascinating to look at the meal replacement phenomenon, and the repositioning of food within society as potentially similar, while wondering what the future of food could look like in the context of ever increasing abstraction and commodification of food and the labour of cooking.
[^1]: techno-solutionism = the belief that every problem has a solution based in technology (Macmillan Dictionary, 2014)
# Chapter 1 - The Gender on Your Plate
@ -27,6 +29,7 @@ Women have been pushed towards domestic work ever since the evolution from more
Discussing the gender politics of cooking, Pollan wonders: "Was home cooking denigrated because the work was mostly done by women, or did women get stuck doing most of the cooking because our culture denigrated the work?"(Pollan, 2014). Men often had a privileged position when it comes to their cooking practice - mostly with meat, outdoors, seen as entertainment, celebrated as a display of skills, while women's cooking happened behind the closed kitchen doors. Today, most of the world-renowned chefs, the ones who win countless awards and get their own TV shows are men.
Fig. 1
However, the more time we spend watching chefs cook meals we'll never get to eat, the less time we spend cooking for ourselves. In the past decades, studies have shown that cooking time has declined (Pollan, 2014; Ferdman, 2015). Less cooking in the average household means, one the one side, less housework reserved for women. It also means that corporations have made great profits from providing the food we eat on a daily basis, which comes with several downfalls. Food made by a corporation has many more chemical ingredients, that people very rarely use in their kitchens (Pollan, 2014). Eating packaged foods has increased the distance between what raw ingredients are and where they come from, and the food we actually consume. "Food becomes just another commodity, an abstraction. And as soon as that happens we become easy prey for corporations selling synthetic versions of the real thing - what I call edible foodlike substances."(Pollan, 2014).
@ -38,6 +41,7 @@ The phrase *a woman's place is in the kitchen*, or in the home, has been traced
A brilliant example of the portrayal of women in the kitchen, from a woman's perspective this time, is Martha Rosler's *Semiotics of the Kitchen*. In this performance piece, set in a typical kitchen, Martha Rosler manipulates kitchen tools with sudden, violent gestures, sometimes even performing useless tasks such as pretending to throw the contents of a spoon over her shoulder. Her piece is meant to express the frustration of women being stuck doing domestic labour, which is taken for granted. It is also a parody of the cooking shows of the time, particularly the one hosted by an always cheerful Julia Child. In her mock culinary show, she is no longer a cheerful performer, but uses the tools that have been assigned to her as an expression of anger and frustration: "when the woman speaks, she names her own oppression" (Rosler, 1975). Her piece shows that gender roles enforced traditionally within the household can be oppressive, especially when the labour of women is devalued and regarded as trivial.
Fig. 2
As both men and women have been finding their place within the workforce, sharing the workload within the home has increased slightly. However, even in homes where both partners work full-time, the majority of chores and administrative tasks still fall on the woman's shoulders, either mentally, or in practice. The extra workload that consists of planning and organisation and leads to the execution of the tasks has been coined by feminists as *the mental load* (Emma, 2017). Household management is yet another invisible task done by women, a time-consuming work nonetheless, which adds up to the time already spent doing house chores.
@ -50,6 +54,7 @@ Regarding food as a tool of oppression has opened the way for many solutions, so
When the amount of chores one has to do as an adult takes up a considerable amount of time, it doesn't surprise me that most predictions about the future imagine ways in which technology will change the way we do things now. Early retrofuturist ideas depict future humans in flying cars, interacting with robots, or with superhuman abilities. They no longer waste time on daily tasks, since most things can be achieved with the press of a button. One aspect that keeps coming back, though, is the issue of food. No matter how advanced future humans will be, they will always have to eat, and the food has to be prepared by someone or something.
One of the first mentions of a solution to the division of labour in the kitchen came in a dystopian novella written in the late 19th century. The author was a conservative woman called Anna Bowman Dodd, an avid critic of the women's emancipation movement. In *The Republic of the Future*, she imagines a transformed New York in the year 2050, governed by socialists and feminists, seen through the eyes of a Swedish aristocrat called Wolfgang. The man writes home to his friend and describes the life of future New Yorkers as joyless and bland. He blames the situation on a couple of developments such as equality between sexes, reduced labor hours and abolishing of class society.
@ -63,6 +68,8 @@ Soon after, another futurist food reference was introduced. This came in Mary Le
The purpose of this futurist food was to liberate women from their household chores, and decrease inequality between both genders and social classes. It was also meant to provide a more sustainable food source, that would replace meat, and would make the lives of agricultural workers easier. In this imagined future, the labour of producing and preparing food is taken over by professionals, elevated to a scientific level, but still hidden from the eyes of the consumers.
Representations of food in the future are typically bleak. Regardless of it being a dystopian or utopian future, a drastic change in the way people consume food is called for. But one aspect of future food that is recurrent is the fact that food production is always obscured. There is no telling where the food behind the Food-a-Rac-a-Cycle in The Jetsons came from, nor what are the ingredients of the various meal-in-a-pill representations. However, when the origin of food is revealed, as with the examples in the movies *Soylent Green* and *The Snowpiercer*, it is usually a gruesome reality that is better to be obscured. This is yet another example of the work done inside kitchens of the past or the future being too confronting to be brought to light. The details of the actual cooking are either too boring or too disgusting to be revealed, when the only goal of food, as in the previous examples, is to fuel the human body.
Fig. 4 and 5
@ -76,10 +83,12 @@ In the *post-mom' economy* (Maney, 2015), there are services like Uber to drive
The main goal of these services it to convince users to separate important decisions from meaningless ones, and focus their time on paid labour. Deciding how to dress and what to eat can be outsourced to a corporation, which uses this as its selling point. This form of convenient consumption limits the need to think about your choices, and becomes an automated form of comfort. Within this mindset, cooking is being presented as a chore rather than an activity that can be done as leisure. Entrepreneurs are encouraged, or rather pressured, to find solutions to problems they are facing themselves, and monetize every aspect of life. For many, the problem they face is becoming an adult with too much money to spend, and too little time outside of work. Keeping a high level of performance at work at all times does not allow much time and mind space for dealing with the practicalities of adult life, especially when they are framed as low-value, time consuming activities, and the latest consumer products reflect this reality.
Fig. 6
The post-mom economy reflects embedded preconceptions on gender roles within the home. When the main provider of these services is not available, startups offer the option to replace her with a techno-solutionist product, that brings convenience for those who can afford it, while pushing others into low-wage gig work. Instead of reflecting on the value of maintaining a home and caregiving, or on the struggles of those who are pushed into these roles, the tasks are simply delegated to strangers. This further increases the infiltration of corporations into our lives under the pretense of earning more freedom (Pollan, 2014), while continuing to devalue what is regarded as *women's work*. Unless it is done for the purpose of entertainment, cooking is framed as an archaic chore, subjected to the specialization of labour, and awarded with a low wage.
Fig. 7
Technology has always had a massive importance in the world of food, and today we have numerous examples of new technologies that reflect our current socio-political climate. In the following chapter, I look at some of the ways in which the world of technology and the world of food are interconnected.
@ -90,13 +99,16 @@ Technology has always had a massive importance in the world of food, and today w
The transfer of food terminology in programming, on a smaller scale, and the innovations in food technology on a larger scale are instances of cultural appropriation.
[^2]:"The unacknowledged or inappropriate adoption of the customs, practices, ideas, etc. of one people or society by members of another and typically more dominant people or society." (Oxford dictionary)
[^2]: appropriation = unacknowledged or inappropriate adoption of the customs, practices, ideas, etc. of one people or society by members of another and typically more dominant people or society. (Oxford dictionary)
In the case of the current representations of food in society, a couple of examples where certain aspects of cultural appropriation are apparent are worthy of mention. In food technology, several products originally intended for women, or used traditionally by certain cultures, have been rebranded as innovations. One very famous example are weight loss meal replacement products such as Slimfast, turned into a product meant for busy, successful businessmen in the case of Soylent (Bowles, 2016). On the same note, cultural/spiritual traditions such as fasting (Tiku, 2016), doping with performance enhancement drugs (Bloomberg, 2016), or appropriated traditional recipes re-branded as proprietary innovations (Bulletproof, 2016) are all represented in Silicon Valley.
Fig. 8
A similar paradigm can be identified when it comes to computer lingo. I have not been able to find the starting point of the food terminology being used in the programming world, but my first introduction to it was through the O'Reilly cookbook collection. It seems that programmers are quite fond of this analogy, something that can be seen, for instance, in the foreword for the O'Reilly Perl Cookbook, written by Larry Wall. While, in his opinion, "Cooking is the humblest of arts", both cooking and programming languages can be used "not merely (for) getting the job done, but doing so in a way that makes your journey through life a little more pleasant" (Wall in Christiansen & Torkington, 1998). One of the nicest things he has to say within this analogy is the hope that Perl recipes will be passed on to future generations, much like traditional recipes written by grandmothers in old, dusty handwritten cookbooks.
@ -104,19 +116,22 @@ While the previous example is bound to give all programmers a warm and fuzzy fee
"Hackers, makers, programmers, engineers, nerds, techies—what we’ll call <geeks> for the rest of the book (deal with it)—we’re a creative lot who don’t like to be told what to do. We’d rather be handed a box full of toys or random electronic components [...]. But something happens to some geeks when handed a boxful of spatulas, whisks, and sugar. Lockup. Fear. Foreign feelings associated with public speaking, or worse, coulrophobia."(Potter, 2010)
[^1]: coulrophobia = Extreme or irrational fear of clowns. (Oxford Dictionaries)
[^2]: coulrophobia = Extreme or irrational fear of clowns. (Oxford Dictionaries)
On the other hand, there is the tendency to explain programming and algorithms using cooking as an analogy. This oversimplification is nothing new in terms of pedagogic methods, but in this case it makes the assumption that everyone is accustomed, familiar and comfortable with cooking, which is often not the truth. In addition to this, the analogy misrepresents cooking as an overly simple succession of tasks. In his book *Algorithmic Adventures. From Knowledge to Magic*, J. Hromkovic attempts for an entire chapter to find similarities between all aspects of an algorithm and cooking. The definition of the algorithm is meant to bridge the gap: "an algorithm [...] provides simple and unambiguous advice on how to proceed step by step in order to reach our goal." (Hromovic, 2009). However, throughout the rest of the chapter, I found the analogies more and more forced, making the entire explanation more confusing than it was intended. In another example, the author of a blog post is quick to note that "Programmers are the master chefs of the computing world - except the recipes they invent don't just give us a nice meal, they change the way we live"(Curzon, 2017). His claim seems to be: the two are similar, but, of course, cooking is infinitely more trivial than programming, because the latter has life-changing capacities.
The previous examples identify a pattern of appropriation within the field of technology, computer science in particular. This pattern applies to terminology, used derogatorily, as well as cultural artefacts, and is reflected in the techno-solutionist ideology associated with Silicon Valley. As I argue in the following sections, this phenomenon becomes materialized in the hyper-processed, reductionist food products generated by contemporary technology corporations, the production of which greatly resembles software or hardware, rather than food.
Fig. 11
# Disconnecting the mind from the body
## Socio-political context for the development of meal replacements
The rise of products branded as innovative foods has largely happened in the last decade, originating from Silicon Valley. The latest innovations, such as meal replacements, make promises for an empowered self, with full control over what one puts in one's body. Companies place a lot of emphasis on a scientific approach to selecting ingredients for a particular product, and brand their products as technologically advanced food items. But the process of producing or sourcing the ingredients is almost never exposed, thus further obscuring the processes involved in food production. One notable example is the company Huel, which created a video on YouTube titled *How Huel Is Made*, but failed to actually show their process. Instead, the video described its packaging and delivery system, a fact that was quickly noted in the comments section as disingenuous.
Fig. 12
The celebration of not having time to tend to your bodily needs properly, and at the same time putting so much emphasis on giving the body personalized nutrition in the most pleasureless way is, of course, a paradoxical incongruity. At the same time, the idea that you are solely responsible for your well-being, and that you can control your health and efficiency with the right consumer habits is another heavily promoted concept. Trying to reconcile and adopt all these suggestions for how one should live their life is almost impossible, and leads to burnout. However, startups in Silicon Valley and all over the world are more than ready to provide products to any imaginable issue that can be identified, in order to achieve their prescribed quality of life. This is problematic in many ways, because it completely ignores other factors that influence our lives, such as social class, income, education, access etc, while promoting efficiency and production as the main goals to be achieved by humans.
@ -125,7 +140,9 @@ The celebration of not having time to tend to your bodily needs properly, and at
Technology startups did not invent meal replacements, nor fortified foods. These products came on the market for various reasons historically, most importantly to deal with nutrient deficiencies. However, companies which produce meal replacements frame these products as ways to *disrupt mealtimes*. As expressed by Huel's community manager, "We wanted to strip it back to what the actual purpose of food is to provide nutrition (...) People are very focused on taste now – does it taste good? That is not the primary purpose of food"(Turk, 2018). Nutritionism and the food industry in general have, for decades, capitalized on people's fears and confusion related to food. They created the problem, and then promoted a product to allegedly solve it.
Today, companies which produce and sell meal replacements and other innovative food products put forward a number of health claims, including complete nutrition, better concentration, disease prevention, etc. But the lack of unaffiliated long-term scientific studies, and the association with nutritionists that sit on the board of directors are bound to raise suspicion. The fact that the food industry is able to make such claims can be traced back to the 90s, when the United States Congress passed a couple of laws, FDAMA (Food and Drug Administration Modernization Act) and DSHEA (Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act), which gave more freedom to the food and supplements industries to introduce new substances into their products without much pushback from the Food and Drug Administration (Nestle, 2013).
Looking at food as simply fuel for the body means completely disregarding the entire culture that has grown around food in every part of society. This phenomenon is described by Marion Nestle as reductionism, which, in this context, refers to reducing food to containers of nutrients. "Techno-foods offer a reductionist approach to choosing a healthful diet"(ibid) which only encourages food producers to come up with more and more products to sell to those who find this view appealing, or are confused regarding what foods are good for them. The above examples reveal that there there is a structural issue that has led to ultra-processed food products to appear on the market, under various health claims. This phenomenon is further exploited in the representation of what we perceive to be real food as an antiquated, and the push to promote processed products with a much higher market value, such as meal replacements.
@ -134,12 +151,14 @@ Looking at food as simply fuel for the body means completely disregarding the en
The way we transform nature for our personal purposes changes the way we relate to the world around us. This reductionist approach to food, as mentioned before, has led to the development of a new interpretation of food as fuel for the body. In this view, the cultural and social role of eating is trivialized, transforming one of the most significant aspects of society into a nuisance, an antiquated and inefficient way to maintain human life.
Fig. 14
One telling example from today are complete foods, or meal replacements. Most commonly in the form of a powder meant to be mixed with water, these products allegedly contain all necessary nutrients, and can thus replace normal meals. Meal replacements target young professionals who can't find the time, or desire, to prepare and consume a traditional meal throughout the day, a situation many can relate to. By consuming a shake for breakfast and lunch, one does not have to sacrifice time, or nutritional value, in order to be able to keep going about their daily work. The companies producing these products, largely startups owned by technology entrepreneurs, promote them as solutions to a large variety of problems: lack of time, inconvenience of cooking, *food voids*, which is all the times one doesn't have direct access to a meal when hungry, world hunger, climate change, etc.
In my research of meal replacements I looked at the development of the brand Soylent, the first one of its kind. The product was developed in Silicon Valley by a couple of computer scientists. They were all young white males with no cooking experience, who were surviving on frozen fast food, and were frustrated by the quality of their meals and the time it took away from their day (Widdicombe, 2014). Taking the approach of an engineer in a social vacuum, they came to the conclusion that traditional nutrition is very inefficient. The best way to go about this, according to them, is by reducing food to its most basic elements. This comes across as the ultimate life hack, as it allows them to further release themselves from their bodily needs and exist purely for the purpose of being efficient in their search for profit. In this way, food preparation and consumption necessary on a daily basis is reduced to a minimum, and food is reinterpreted purely as fuel for the body.
After Soylent's astonishing success, and due to the fact that their product didn't meet international food regulation standards for shipping, many similar products appeared on the international market. Meal replacement brands are often promoted similarly to software or hardware, rather than food. They have different iterations, such as Soylent 1.0, 1.1, and so on, prominent lot numbers, and improvements are described as "fixing bugs" (Widdicombe, 2014). Framing them as products of technology pushes them further away from traditional food products, and further abstracts the role of food in our life.
@ -166,6 +185,7 @@ Google has started a whole new secretive company, Calico, dedicated entirely to
Since, according to transhumanism, the current state of the human body is at an early phase of development, there is still a lot of space for evolution. People who identify themselves as biohackers are experimenting with various ways of enhancing their awareness and brain function, as well as incorporating food innovations into their diets. For some, such as Mathijs Diederiks, from the YouTube channel futurefood, it is clear that traditional foods and ways of consuming them are part of an archaic diet. He described his view on futurist foods and their role in our lives in an interview, when asked about the portrayal of cooking and eating as a hassle:
Fig. 17
"M.D.: It makes total sense if you look at the current zeitgeist where everything is about optimization [...]. It echoes into everything we do. [...] That constant flux of presenting yourself, staying up to date, maintaining that ongoing energy, food has to find its place within that speed. That's what's happening in our society, everything is sped up. As humans, we haven't evolved in the last 15-20 years, we are still slow in terms of digestion... so I completely understand why these products are popular." (Strete and Diederiks, 2018)
@ -187,6 +207,8 @@ But the real problem she identifies is pleasure, or the lack thereof. She asks:
An alternative to Silicon Valley's view of food hacking comes from a European group of hackers, who collaborate under the name Food Hacking Base. Their work focuses on food sustainability by using traditional preservation and food production methods to enhance the value of food, and to provide people with the necessary skills and understanding to reach a good level of self-sustainability.
In December 2018, I participated in the 35C3 conference in Leipzig to see their work. I was interested in their claim of combining traditional food making techniques with current advances in technology.
From a kitchen open to everyone, they held workshops in various techniques, from kefir and tempeh making to probiotic drinks and beekeeping. They also added their hardware knowledge into the mix, by building their own devices, such as incubators for ferments. Their approach of providing people with skills and simple solutions like increasing the nutritional value of food and using few resources to produce sustainable food, as well as their collaborative, DIWO approach to cooking is quite valuable, and a beautiful alternative to mainstream techno-solutionism.
@ -195,17 +217,13 @@ Today more than ever, with only over a decade to limit the disastrous effects of
# Conclusion
My research on meal replacements represents a critical analysis of a slice of society, a specific culture which values entrepreneurial success and techno-solutionist ideas, viewed through the lens of food.
Technology has been crucial in making food easier to produce and distribute, but has also facilitated the production of an immense amount of processed foods. The food industry is thriving on the ambiguous nutritional information disseminated across the world, enabling the promotion of artificial foods as nutritionally superior. Meal replacements, the apex of processed foods available today, come from the highly competitive culture of mainstream, commercial technology from Silicon Valley. Within this culture, an entrepreneurial lifestyle in which making profit and being successful on all plans is promoted, which means significantly less time spent on mealtime breaks and cooking. It promotes specialization as a main principle, and nutritional reductionism as key.
Throughout this work, I looked at the development and implications of a phenomenon occurring within a specific culture, viewed through the lens of food. I emphasized the ways in which, within the contemporary Western technology culture, the role food and cooking have played for centuries is presented as archaic and inefficient, and highlighted the attempts to replace them with techno-solutionist implementations. Considering current iterations of meal replacement products, I identified several aspects which signal a move towards the obsolescence of food and cooking, and highlighted ways in which they devalue the cultural role of food, promote traditional gender roles, continue the pattern of appropriation within the technology industry and increase the inequality gap. Driven by Zuboff's research into the abstraction of labour through computerisation, I stressed the importance to reflect on the implications - social, political, environmental and cultural of the increasingly processed and reductionist forms of food promoted by Silicon Valley.
The role food and cooking have played for centuries is seen as archaic and detrimental in the plan towards physical and mental enhancement, as practiced by biohackers and transhumanists. Meal replacements have little to no connection to traditional food, and take the role of fuel, rather than a pleasant source of nourishment and part of a cultural heritage. They represent a futurist dream of automation, ideologically underpinned by the secular religion of techno-solutionism, but some of the problems they claim to solve are just as manufactured. Moreover, when it comes to real problems such as food access and climate change, the solutions put forward do not grasp the entirety of the situation.
Meal replacements have little to no connection to traditional food, and take the role of fuel, rather than a pleasant source of nourishment and a part of a cultural heritage. They represent a futurist dream of automation, ideologically underpinned by the secular religion of techno-solutionism, with complete disregard to the values associated with the sharing of food and its inherent culture. Technology corporations claim that their products represent a solution to problems their potential consumers face, but the issues they claim to solve are just as artificially manufactured as the products themselves.
In my research, I looked at potentially fundamental changes in the role of food, driven by societal and environmental pressures, as well as technological advances. Considering current forms of meal replacement products, I argued that they represent a stepping stone towards an increased abstraction of natural human habits and a techno-solutionist way of dealing with physical needs. Driven by Zuboff's research into the abstraction of labour through computerisation, I stressed the importance to reflect on the implications - social, political, environmental and cultural of the increasingly processed and reductionist forms of food promoted by Silicon Valley.
Taking a critical approach towards the various attempts towards the reinterpretation, and eventual obsolescence of food and the labour of cooking, I believe it is unlikely that such a shift will occur on a large scale. The relationship between humans and the food they eat, both physical and emotional, has deeply rooted connections in the fundamental principles of humanity, which do not align with a programmatic, highly individualistic take on food. Drawing from my personal experience of diving into the intriguing and artificial world of meal replacements, I can only hope such a dystopian future in which meal replacements are valued over real food will never happen.
With accelerating levels of technological development, and increasingly destructive effects of climate change, the way we relate to the world is bound to change. In the next decades, these factors and others will greatly affect global food production. Some of the foods we are now used to eating will become harder to find and more expensive. Food is already becoming an even larger field of technological exploration and exploitation, with new ways of growing, producing, processing and distributing food being developed. Our options and preferences towards food will be even greatly influenced by technology companies, their products meaning to help us cope with these new circumstances, claiming to contribute to a better self in a better world, while catering only to the needs of the upper classes.
Increased life expectancy and health, something that Silicon Valley works hard towards, arguably only increases the need for nourishment. Our bodies will still need nutrition from good food. The importance of communities and organisations that dedicate their work towards a more fair distribution of food, skills and knowledge will grow, faced with increasing levels of inequality. At the end of the day, we will have to take matters into our own hands and learn how to prepare and preserve our food, and how to share the labour and the meals more equally amongst ourselves and with others.
However, with accelerating levels of technological development, and increasingly destructive effects of climate change, the way we relate to the world is likely to change. In the next decades, these factors and others will greatly affect global food production. Some of the foods we are now used to eating will become harder to find and more expensive (Cho, 2018). Our options and preferences towards food will be even greatly influenced by technology companies, their products meaning to help us cope with these new circumstances, claiming to contribute to a better self in a better world, while catering only to the needs of the privileged. The importance of communities and organisations that dedicate their work towards a more fair distribution of food, skills and knowledge will grow, faced with increasing levels of inequality. At the end of the day, we will have to take matters into our own hands and learn how to prepare and preserve our food, and how to share the labour and the meals more equally amongst ourselves and with others. The skill of fermentation might prove itself to be more valuable than shaking a plastic tumbler of powdered nutrients.
# Appendix
@ -297,6 +315,8 @@ Smith, S. (1997). Engels and the Origin of Women's Oppression. In: *Internationa
Strete, A. and Diederiks, M. (2018). Interview with futurefood.io
Tiku, N. (2016). Startup Workers Say No to Free Food, Hell Yeah to Intermittent Fasting. *Buzzfeed News*, [online] Available at: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nitashatiku/intermittent-fasting [Accessed 05.12.2018]
alicestrt
5 years ago