When it comes to technology, people tend to have tunnel vision. They focus on the potential of technology as applied in new areas – like flying cars and quantum computers – without looking at how we might use it in old industries too. More often than not, this is where the most significant revolutions happen.
Check out these crazy food production technologies that are changing the world.
3D-Printed Pizzas
3D printing a pizza is something that only a handful of bespoke machines in the world can do right now, but that won’t be the case for long. Already we see the price of additive manufacturing technologies falling off a cliff, and that trend is set to continue. In the future, it’s unlikely that there will be a pizza shop in the land that doesn’t offer some kind of bespoke 3D-printed pizza creation service to punters.
Drone Takeaway Deliveries
Wouldn’t it be nice if you could call up Uber eats and get them to deliver your food using a drone, bypassing the need to send a human driver across town? Well, we aren’t far from the point where that kind of technology will be possible. The company says that it is already experimenting with literal drone drop-ship technology that will allow diners to receive their food in a matter of minutes after placing their order, instead of the current half-hour-plus it takes right now.
Robot Farms
The idea of fully-autonomous robot farms seems a little scary, but it is coming. You can see the equipment here that already partially automates the process, but the technology still has further to run. Companies in Silicon Valley, for instance, suggest that one day, we might grow all our crops indoors in hydroponic modules, powered by solar panels. The idea is to use less labor and water – two things that farming has been trying to do for over 1,000 years.
Portable Food Expiration Scanners
Our bodies evolved to tell us when we shouldn’t eat a particular item of food. It smells, looks, and tastes terrible when it is rotten. However, our biological machinery isn’t as precise as many of us would like. It is still difficult for the average person to detect a high level of endotoxins in a particular item of food that might damage health.
People, however, are becoming more concerned with food waste. They know that if they throw away food, they are contributing to greenhouse gas emissions and waste precious resources – something that we don’t want to do.
Fraunhofer – a German electronics company – has come up with a kind of Star Trek tricorder you point at food, and it will tell you whether it has gone off or not. This tech will prove super helpful for people who want to scan items in their pantries to detect whether they have gone off or not.
DNA Diets
Finally, we may see the rise of so-called “DNA diets” where the foods that you put in your mouth is dictated by analysis of your genetic makeup. DNA testing kits could scan your DNA and then tell you what you should eat based on that.
Categories: Interesting Stuff
