In the future, we could very well be dining on breads and cakes made out of a protein powder like solein that is harnessed from air. — SOLEIN
What do you think you will be eating in 10 years’ time? Whether you realise it or not, the nature of the food we eat is transient and highly susceptible to changing times.
For example, according to data from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, in 1961, Asians ate less than 10kg of meat per person per year. By 2021, that figure had surpassed 30kg per person annually. In fact, recent data even shows that in countries like Korea, meat consumption has surpassed rice!
The global population has also continued to swell, as has greenhouse gas emissions and this in turn poses a larger question: how to feed people in a world that is becoming ecologically very different from the one we used to inhabit a mere 20 years ago?
In Singapore, creative data consultancy agency Synthesis recently released its 10-year forecast of what we will be eating in the future in a report called Menu 2034: The Future of Food.
The report was put together with the aid of Synthesis’ 40 data scientists, engineers, futurists and creatives who looked at 100,000 simulations and 46 drivers of change to come up with possible scenarios for what food could look like in a decade.
Fordham says people are typically slow to react which is why the resilient adaptation model is far more likely in 10 years and will see mankind eating food predominantly engineered by science and technology. — SYNTHESIS
The report’s focus is on two key critical certainties: rising greenhouse gas emissions and soaring global populations.
“We’re really working to help future-proof businesses by making sense of the world’s data. So our team are building up and sort of predicting and modeling potential future worlds.
“So it’s about making sense of lots of different data like greenhouse gas emissions or population growth, aging populations and what that looks like, trade agreements, investments, patents being filed, consumers, searches, stuff like that. We layer all of this stuff together to try and imagine what the world will look like 10 years from now.
“And I think this is a really interesting thing, we know that the world that we operate in, in 10 years’ time – will be very different from the world today.
“For food businesses, how prepared are they? So they need to be thinking now what the world looks like in 10 years’ time, which is the emphasis to doing it,” says Lee Fordham, the founder of Synthesis.
Liberica coffee only accounts for 1% of coffee production but is far more climate-resistant than Arabica coffee. It currently is grown in Johor. — MY LIBERICA/Instagram
In Malaysia for instance, Fordham says the population is on track to grow nearly 20% in the next 10 years, so even on the local front, feeding Malaysians will be very narrowly focused on stretching resources to satiate the soaring numbers of people.
So just what does the future of food look like in 10 years? According to the Synthesis report, it boils down to two likely scenarios: radical transformation and resilient adaptation.
Scenario 1: Radical transformation
The first of two scenarios predicted in the Menu 2034 report is radical transformation. In this envisioned future, people have figured out that climate change is a thing of the present; not the future, which is why they started taking action back in 2024.
Adopting a plant-based diet can help mitigate the effects of climate change. — NC FARM BUREAU MARK/Pexels
By understanding the urgencies and exigencies of climate change and responding quickly to this new reality in the intervening ten years, the world’s food resources are not being stretched to breaking point in 2034. Instead, a new future has been paved.
The radical transformation future envisions people veering sharply towards a more plant-based diet and “proactively protecting and savouring nature” which also entails a return to native ingredients, regenerative farming practices and drastically cutting food waste.
According to the report, the downside is that the likelihood of this happening is currently only 37.4%. Lee puts this down to a general lack of forethought or planning that people have about the future in general.
“That’s not a super surprising outcome for us as futurists. I think what we know is it’s super hard to change, and change across different levels – right from government, businesses and at consumer level, because there’s typically some big gaps that exist.
“Like, for example, people know that the future will be different. But there’s so many fires that we’re fighting today, how can we possibly start thinking about tomorrow?
“We’re typically a bit more apathetical or slow to think about the future. The Paris Agreement (an international treaty on climate change) was made in 2015 and aimed to get temperatures down and we have been slow to make the changes that were outlined in it and we continue to be slow to make those changes.
In the radical transformation scenario, nothing goes to waste. Nearly 85% of coconuts harvested by weight go to waste now, but the coconut copra (dried white part) is actually the most nutritious. — BOGDANKRUPIN/Pexels
“For example, it’s really difficult to get people to move from quite a monocrop diet that we eat today to eating – particularly in this region – native crops that are really abundant and easy to grow in this climate. The solutions I would say are out there, and that’s what we try and highlight in the report – the solutions are out there and they can be delicious,” says Fordham.
Part of the solutions that are involved in the radical transformation scenario is a shift towards plant-based whole foods enriched with shellfish and insects (like crickets and grasshoppers). This future also involves a conscious effort to upcycle ingredients, making use of odds and ends, peels and other parts of fruits and vegetables that are typically discarded.
Consumers in this scenario are ethically conscious and look at purchasing green products, while businesses in this era will adopt zero-waste production. Part of the report also looks at future-forward menus designed by culinary mavens like Oliver Truesdale-Jutras, a chef who is also the founding member of Singapore’s F&B Sustainability Council.
If we all start responding to the urgency of climate change, we will be more mindful of food waste. Banana peels for example are very nutritious and can be utilised to make other meals. — SHVETS PRODUCTION/Pexels
In the ethical restaurants of the future, menus could include ingredients like coconut copra, which is packed with nutrients, regeneratively-grown greens and sustainably-farmed shrimp alongside native ingredients like bambangan, an indigenous Borneo mango.
Other menus, like the one designed by plant-based meat company Karana founder Blair Chrichton includes meals fashioned out of food waste like a banana peel fudge and coffee made from Liberica beans sourced from Kulai, Johor (under the family-owned homegrown MyLiberica brand). Interestingly, Liberica beans account for only 1% of coffee beans but are far more climate-resistant than Arabica beans.
Synthesis’ predictions show that if the world adopts the radical transformation model, greenhouse gas emissions in 2050 will be 0.6% less than it is now. The cost of inaction? A 30% to 40% rise in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
Scenario 2: Resilient adaptation
The second scenario in terms of the future of food in 2034 is the resilient adaptation model, which according to the Synthesis report is 62% likely to happen. Essentially, this is the future we are likely to be living in 10 years’ time.
Jellyfish is a climate-resilient source of seafood that is likely to thrive in the future. Chefs are now looking at ways to turn it into meals like noodles. — PAWEL KALSINKSKI/Pexels
“We are much more likely to be on the path of a resilient adaptation, reacting to the new constraints that we have instead of a radical transformation, just because actually prompting those changes is so difficult.
“The other thing to say about a resilient adaptation and why it’s much more likely, particularly when we think about population growth and where population growth is going to come from, actually much of that population growth is going to come from the world’s poorest countries, where the standards of living are set to rise the most dramatically.
“And we know historically that whenever standards of living rise, the demand for resource-intensive products like meat and dairy goes up so that’s the other reason that we’re more likely to be on a path of resilient adaptation,” says Fordham.
So what does the resilient adaptation path look like and how did we get there? Well, this envisioned 2034 food projections are based on the continued apathy and lack of heed to climate change. Basically, we are living with the consequences of the choices we made in 2024.
Solein is a protein made out of air that is then turned into a fine protein powder which can be used to make even bread. Pictured here is a solein bread! — SOLEIN
In this future, harvesting from nature has become increasingly harder, given harsher weather patterns and consequently naturally-sourced foods are now the domain of the rich.
Part of this new future involves turning to science and technology to feed our bodies, whether that is through cell-cultivated meat or climate-resistant monocrops. Ultimately, agri-tech will be a way forward as will be climate-hardy food sources like jellyfish, which are one of the hardiest aquatic creatures in the sea.
“In the resilient pathway, what we project is that this will really be a reaction to climate consequences. So I think jellyfish is a really interesting example in that space because we have a blooming population of jellyfish in the waters today. And a small part of the reason for that is the temperatures of ocean waters are rising and jellyfish can actually survive in temperatures going up and down. They’re just a bit more resilient.
“But also we’re overfishing tuna fish and swordfish and they were the natural predators of jellyfish. And so, for reasons like that and other reasons, like jellyfish are blooming and they are highly nutritious and have a much higher protein value. There are also 3,000 different species of them and most aren’t poisonous.
“So the thought around eating insects and jellyfish, mycelium – all of those things are like things that we don’t necessarily eat today, but will become even more abundant, and abundant as a climate consequence.
Truesdale-Jutras says each meal put together in the scenario of resilient adaptation in the future is testament to people’s delayed response to climate change. — Photos: SYNTHESIS
“I guess in the resilient adaptation choice, we have less agency. We’re just going to sort of be forced into a situation where we need to feed this growing population. We need nutrition. These are areas where there’s lots of nutrition. So we project that it will come from what is available and from fuller utilization,” says Fordham.
Critical changes will also be seen in how technological advancements are used to extend the life span of bio-engineered foods so that these foods can survive the climates of the future. There will also be the introduction of nutrients from sources that are now considered unconventional but may be common in the future like solein (protein that comes from air) and air-captured carbon.
“So any crop – you can see like up to 50% nutrition lost over the last 50 years. So you either have to eat double as much of a crop that you eat a day to get the same nutritional density, even though crop output is projected to go down even further or I would argue – we need to diversify our diets much more,” he says.
What is evident is that in this scenario traditional agriculture has failed and people must make do and innovate with what they have. Chefs and home cooks will also have to economise and reinvent the wheel in their meals.
Truesdale-Jutras’s resilient adaptation menu looks at synthetic food sources like cell-cultivated prawns and making use of what is left of traditional foods like pork, which have now become a rarity. As a result, future menus could include pigs’ ears and other formerly secondary cuts or parts which will become prized in the future, because it is so hard to find or get.
In the resilient adaptation model, humankind has to rely on science and technology in order to eat. Part of the imagined future involves the idea that there may exist smart fridges that can extend the shelf life of ingredients and even ferment produce. — HEYHO/Pexels
Chefs like Matt Orlando (the former head chef at Noma) who now heads Endless Foods (a company that looks at undervalued food resources) meanwhile says the menu of the future will reflect the realities of the future.
For example, Orlando says because of a lack of nutrients in the food consumed in the future, people are likely to be popping supplements before and after meals, which is why something like a spirulina sauce (which really doesn’t sound very appealing now) could be very trendy in 10 years.
Other parts of a future menu could include future-forward components like a cocoa-free chocolate turned into a pudding and bean-free coffees from brands like Prefer (which ferments bread, barley and soy to make coffee-less coffee). This is in line with the fact that demand for coffee is predicted to triple while yield is expected to decline by 50%.
The report also forecasts new things that will emerge during this era like technology that converts carbon emissions into edible carbs, proteins and fibre as well as smart fridges that can extend the shelf life of food and even start fermentation on its own!
The resilient adaptation future is one where we live with the consequences of our lack of action and when we adopt it (since this seems more likely than ‘if’ we adopt it), there will still be a price to pay. Because the statistics show that by adopting this model, in 2050, there will be a 20% increase in greenhouse gas emissions.
Forward-thinking food businesses like Singapore’s Prefer have crafted coffees made using fermented barley, soy and bread to combat the fact that coffee production is set to decline by 50% in the future. — PREFER/Instagram
“You’re two times more likely to be living in a world of consequences where we adapt to constraints with technology and science and creating novel foods.
“Like solein is super interesting, because all it needs is sunlight to be able to grow into a protein-based flour that can be put into any foods.
“So if we are faster to act and open to having a much more abundant, more diverse diet, then in this world of radical transformation – there’s also many solutions that exist,” says Fordham.
