食物的未来已经在这里了

The Food of the Future is Already Here

食物像艺术一样，通过富有创造性和技术性的工具来说话。但在未来等着我们的是什么呢？我们将来吃的食物是什么样子，又以什么方式烹饪和品尝？追求营养价值的食物有哪些前沿成果？

看着一盘分子料理，我们可以想象：食物的未来已经在这里了。作为创新的先锋，分子料理研究食物在烹调过程中所发生的物理和化学变化。分子料理的现代风格提前向我们宣告了食物外形的未来：“少即是多”和干爽简约的审美追求，使食物变得细腻、轻盈。原材料逐渐消失，或者至少变得难以辨认，让位于创造性的手法和抽象化的想法。解构、消失的原材料能够唤起强烈的感官回味，而非物质化所赋予食物的远不止于此。

一种将改变我们厨房烹饪方式的巨大技术变革在等着我们。烹饪时的陈设品和烹饪工具的设计是一个正在快速发展的领域，它将在接下来的几年内呈现一些新的革命性形式。日常烹饪将只有少量的几个动作，机器将提供劳动力，高端的烹饪工具将派上用场。

同时，环境越来越要求谨慎使用可回收材料和环境友好材料。思考最近一届以食物为主题的世界博览会，研究地球气候变化所带来的影响，打开了在不同视角下观察未来食物的新视野。温室效应，伴随着它导致的后果，例如全球变暖和二氧化碳增多，将在接下来的几十年给地球带来一些深刻的改变，对我们的饮食习惯有明显的影响。联合国一些科学家认为，如果气温将在接下来的几十年内提高3度以上，食物的产量将不可避免地下降。一些养殖业的饲料在生产过程中所需要的作物产量的下降，例如小麦和玉米产量的急剧下降，将导致肉的产量下降，价格提高。很多现在容易获得的食物将变得稀有，例如菜豆、樱桃、桃子、李子和其它一些有核水果。咖啡、巧克力和葡萄酒的生产将受到新气候条件的制约。

海里的情况比陆地上更糟：联合国科学家预计，最多数量的鱼类所栖息的海洋中，有10%~15%将受到水温升高的冲击。这种水温升高将扰乱生态系统：已经有一些物种处在危险之中，例如三文鱼和隐藏在北极的鳕鱼群。此外，龙虾、对虾、蟹的外壳将变得更脆弱。因此，科学家们对于2050年的预测相当振聋发聩。许多目前大量消费的食物将变得稀有、完全不为人所知。尤其对西方的消费者而言，下列食物将成为他们新的饮食习惯：合成肉、昆虫、海藻和水母——一些对环境影响极其微小、富含蛋白质和维生素的食物将变成我们的日常食物。我们将迎来食物崭新的未来。

未来食物在医药界的前沿成果：服务于人类的健康和舒适的生物学、营养学和美食学。几个世纪以来，我们知道了食物和健康之间的紧密联系：希波克拉底就曾经激励我们利用食物来保护身体，还有德国的女子修道院院长希德嘉·冯·宾根，自然医药学的研究学者，在一些中世纪的手稿中已经记录了一些植物和蔬菜的自然医疗特性。现今，借助生物学家和营养学家的进一步研究，我们已经确切知道，食疗能够用于一些疾病，并简化疗程——例如抑郁症、恐慌症和焦虑症。还有一些自身免疫系统的疾病，例如多发性硬化症或者稀有的代谢疾病，也能用特殊的食谱——搭配一些特定的食物，使用特定的烹饪方式——帮助消炎。这是这种病理学的基础。

地中海式饮食由联合国教科文组织在2010年收录于人类非物质文化遗产名录。这种地中海地区的典型饮食结构，基本食物是谷物、蔬菜水果、橄榄油、肉、鱼和奶制品。美国生理学家安塞尔·凯斯表示，这种饮食结构有利于健康长寿。

“抗衰老药物”是应用于医学的食物的前沿成果。它是对病人基因组研究的一部分，通过对健康状况和社会、工作、家庭和心理背景的全面筛查，提供了一种更适合于改善健康状况和保障健康长寿的食谱。

Food, just like art, is a type of language which expresses itself by technical and creative means. But how will food look like in the future? How will we be producing and consuming it? And how will they be the new frontiers for food and health?

 The food of the future is already here, and we can already observe it on a plate of molecular gastronomy. Avant-garde of the new creativity, molecular gastronomy is the study of the physical and chemical processes that occur while cooking. A modern style of cooking which may be predictors of what will be the food of the future: the ambition of a new aesthetics that reduces and dries, towards the ethereal and the weightless. The raw materials will be less and less recognizable, to almost disappear, to make way for the creative gesture, for the abstract idea, all the way up to a complete dematerialisation of the ingredients and to the transformation of food in little more than gestures with a power of visual imagery.

A technological revolution is approaching, and it is bound to change our way to stay in the kitchen. Design applied to furniture and cooking devices is now a rapidly growing field and it is likely to generate breakthroughs over the years to come. Our daily cooking will be reduced to the gestures of activating mechanical arms and sophisticated kitchen tools.

And in the meantime, the need for environmental protection will require an increasing awareness in the employment of environmentally friendly and recyclable materials. Expo 2015 in Milan has been a chance for the raise of some reflections on the effects of climate change on our Planet. On this occasion new horizons have been opened up, through which observe nutrition from a fresh perspective from now on. The greenhouse effect and its consequences, such as global warming and increasing Co2, are bound to bring about some profound changes on our Planet, with obvious serious implications for our eating habits. According to UN scientists if the world's temperature rises by three degrees in the coming decades crop yields will unavoidably decline. The drop in the harvest, including the maize which is currently used as feed for farm animals, will result in a decrease in meat and in an increase in prices. Many of the products easily available today will become increasingly scarce, for example beans, cherries, peaches, plums and other types of stone fruit. The coffee production, along with chocolate and wine will be subject to the influence of the new climate conditions.
Things are not going any better for the sea: UN scientists have calculated that the 10-15 percent of the oceans that today host the majority of fishes will be negatively affected from the global warming. This is going to upset the entire ecosystem: salmon and codfish are already endangered species. But the shells of lobsters, shrimps and crabs are going to become weaker day after day. Therefore, forecasts for 2050 are fairly alarming. Many of the products easily available today will become increasingly scarce and foods that now are stranger to us, especially to the Western, will enter our homes and our habits: synthetic meat, insects, seaweeds, jellyfishes, foods with low environmental impact and rich in proteins and vitamins, which are going to enter our everyday diet. Let’s get ready to a different gastronomic future.

Medicine is future foods’ new frontier: biology and nutrition science will serve health and wellbeing. For centuries we have been aware of the close relationship between food and health: he was Hippocrates himself to stress the importance of food for staying healthy, not to mentionthe German Benedictine abbess, Hildegard von Bingen, considered to be the founder of scientific natural history in Germany, who back in the Middle Age wrote about the healing properties of plants and vegetables. Today we know as a matter of certainty, thanks to the work of biologists and nutritionists that the healing process of some disorders like depression, panic attack and anxiety disorder can be facilitated by food. Also some autoimmune diseases, like multiple sclerosis and metabolic disease can be treated by means of a specific diet, by combining foods in a certain way and employing targeted cooking methods aiming at activating anti-inflammatory processes.

Mediterranean diet, which from 2010 entered into the UNESCO list of Intangible Cultural Heritage, is based on the consumption of cereals, fruit, vegetables, olive oil, meat, fish and dairy products, typical of the areas around the Mediterranean. According to the US physiologist Ancel Keys, Mediterranean diet affects health and brings longevity.
Anti-aging medicine which stresses the importance of food as a medicine, by starting from the study of patient’s genome, carries out a complete screening which includes information about patient health, social context and working environment, in order to arrange the most suitable diet aimed at improving his/her health conditions and to guarantee longevity and wellness.