Now people often talk about “artificial food”. Although this term does not mean obtaining food by chemical reactions. It is about giving natural protein products, such as proteins from oilseeds, legumes and cereals, the taste and look of traditional products, including delicacies.
For example, in France, vegetable meat has long been produced from vegetable raw materials. The technology for its production is to isolate proteins from soybeans and form fibers from them, from which layers can then be made, similar in structure to meat. After the addition of fats and meat-flavoring components, these products can be used as substitutes for animal meat in the human diet.
In our country, at the Institute of Organoelement Compounds. A.N. Nesmeyanova has long dealt with the problems of taste and smell of food. At present, any smell can be synthesized here: onion, garlic, banana, pineapple, ham, meat broth, etc. Artificial products have been created at this Institute that can make a menu for a good dinner: black caviar, salmon, various aspic dishes, chicken soup, meat and fish broth, marmalade of various varieties, juices.
In the USA, for example, analogues of dairy pastes, desserts, cheeses, cottage cheese, fermented milk products are very popular. For whitening coffee, analogues of cream are widely used, as well as an ice cream substitute - “mellorin”, obtained on the basis of vegetable oils. An approximate whitening cream composition is: 0.8-1% soybean protein, 10% hydrogenated vegetable oil, 15% sugar syrup, about 1% food surfactants, some salts, and about 75% water.
“Artificial food” is cheaper, cooked or ready to eat. Its production allows solving the problems of some scarce products. Try to understand the essence of the chemical and biochemical processes occurring in the body with those substances that enter it with food; study information about the composition of each product, about the ratio of the main components. Especially choose the optimal diet.
And finally, pay attention to food packaging labels. It lists which nutritional supplements the foods you purchased contain.
Food additives contribute to the preservation of the product (preservatives), give it flavor (flavorings), the desired color (for example, the appetizing red color of ham and boiled sausages gives such an unfortunate sodium nitrate), etc. Some of them are produced from natural products - vegetables and fruits, sugar, vinegar, alcohol. But many food additives are the result of the work of chemists and are made from synthetic substances.
On imported food products, such additives are marked with a three-digit number. You need to know what specific information the marking-index carries:
E 100-E 182 - dyes
E 200-E 299 - preservatives. Substances such as salt, sugar, vinegar are not included in this labeling group. Information about these preservatives is recorded on labels without alphanumeric indexing, separately.
E 300-E 399 - substances that slow down the processes of fermentation and oxidation in food (for example, rancidity of butter).
E 400-E 499 - stabilizers. These additives provide food products with a long-term preservation of the consistency inherent in each of them: the consistency of the famous “Bird's Milk” cake, marmalades, jelly, marshmallows, yogurts, etc., known to you.
E 500-E 599 emulsifiers. These substances make it possible to maintain the uniform distribution of the dispersed phase in the medium, to maintain, for example, such emulsions as nectars, vegetable oils, beer, and others in a homogeneous system, and to prevent the formation of sediments in them.
E 600-E 699 - flavorings, i.e. compounds that enhance the taste of food products (drinks, creams, sweets, dry juices)
E 900-E 999 - anti-flaming agents that do not allow flour, granulated sugar, salt, soda, citric acid, dough baking powder to cake, as well as substances that prevent the formation of foam in drinks.
Date of publication or update 08/14/2017
Since ancient times, man has been occupied with the problem of nutrition. Hunger has always been a frequent guest of the inhabitants of our planet. And now the problem of nutrition has not yet found a complete solution. The United Nations, the World Health Organization, the International Food Organization at the UN (FAO) note that currently 60-80 percent of the world's population (mainly in developing countries) suffers from a lack of food. In the FAO report "The State of Food Production and Agriculture in 1966" it was pointed out that with an annual increase in world population of 70 million people, there was no simultaneous increase in food production. On the contrary, in all developing countries, with the exception of the Middle East, it fell by 2 percent in total, and by 4 to 5 percent per capita.
The situation is aggravated by the fact that in the last two centuries the population growth on the planet has reached unprecedented proportions, having acquired, according to the definition of the UN and WHO, the nature of a "population explosion".
According to one UN estimate, 7.4 billion people will live on earth in 2000: 1.4 billion in industrialized countries and 6 in all others. This means that in the year 2000 industrial areas will account for only 19-20 percent of the world's population, compared with 36 percent in 1900 and 33 percent in 1930. In 1970 this share had dropped to 27 percent.
Already, residents of the countries of the South American continent, Africa and Asia are extremely insufficiently provided with animal protein - each resident receives on average 26.9 and 2 grams of protein, respectively (at a rate of 50 grams). But in order to maintain at least the current level of nutrition by the year 2000, all world food supplies must be increased by 4-7 times, and animal products - by 9 times.
Meanwhile, calculations show that it will be practically impossible to obtain such a quantity of products in a natural way by the beginning of the next century. Analyzing international statistical data on the prospects for the production of basic foodstuffs, we can say that under the most favorable conditions, world grain production by 1985 will exceed the current level by hardly one third. The production of dairy products will also increase slightly, while the production of meat, eggs, oilseeds, and fish production will only double. Such an increase in food production will obviously not be able to radically provide the population of developing countries with protein. Moreover, in the future it will amount to at least 4/6 of the entire population of the planet.
Academician of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR A. Pokrovsky and many foreign scientists consider the provision of future generations with high-grade food among the most important strategic problems in the development of the productive forces of human society, one of the most pressing social and economic problems of our time. It is also reflected in the list of the main directions of the development of science, which includes 10 points that future researchers should consider first. The task of finding effective ways to increase food production takes 3rd place, second only to the issues of improving education and methods of educating the younger generation and the problem of maintaining peace.
Now it has already attracted the attention of not only individual scientists, but also many international organizations that are trying to solve this important problem through complex efforts. FAO specialists, for example, drew up the so-called Indicative Plan for the Development of World Agriculture. This plan allows us to hope for a solution at least to the energy deficit in people's nutrition. It is much more difficult to overcome the shortage of protein, the world shortage of which today is about 40-60 million tons.
Scientific centers in many countries of the world have joined in an active search for new, unusual sources of protein, which would make it possible to quickly obtain cheap, biologically complete protein, which does not differ in its properties from proteins of animal origin. Such a source, for example, is various non-commercial fish containing high-value animal protein. But this path is limited by the "ceiling" of its catch - it cannot exceed 200 million tons per year, or - in terms of protein - 30 million tons of additional protein. In addition, already now in some areas of the World Ocean there is an "overfishing", so to speak, of certain varieties of fish, which can lead to their complete disappearance.
Algae can also serve as an effective source of protein. But their protein lacks the most important essential amino acids that cannot be synthesized in the body and come only with animal proteins. This greatly reduces its biological value. In addition, it is necessary to organize special "greenhouse" reservoirs for algae, which is also associated with significant material costs. Open reservoirs are entirely dependent on the weather. All this limits the widespread production of algae for food purposes.
The most popular sources of protein are oilseeds - soybeans, sunflower seeds, peanuts and others, which contain up to 30 percent of high-quality protein. According to the content of some essential amino acids, it approaches the protein of fish and chicken eggs and overlaps wheat protein. Soy protein is already widely used in the USA, England and other countries as a valuable food material.
It is also possible to increase the amount of food protein through microbiological synthesis, which has attracted special attention in recent years. Microorganisms are extremely rich in protein - it makes up 70-80 percent of their weight. In addition, as by-products, they give various biologically active hormones, antibiotics, vitamins and other substances that are difficult to synthesize by conventional chemical methods. No less important is the issue that largely determines the profitability of the new mass production of protein - the rate of its synthesis.
Microorganisms synthesize protein approximately 10-100 thousand times faster than animals.
Here it is appropriate to give a classic example: a 400-kilogram cow produces 400 grams of protein per day, and 400 kilograms of bacteria - 40,000 tons. Naturally, obtaining 1 kg of protein by microbiological synthesis with the appropriate industrial technology will require less funds than obtaining 1 kg of animal protein. And besides, the technological process is much less labor-intensive than agricultural production, not to mention the exclusion of seasonal weather effects - frosts, rains, dry winds, droughts, illumination, solar radiation, etc.
Microorganisms are constantly present in the human intestine and food, and the body actively uses them.
Why not assume the possibility of a complete adaptation of the human body to such a protein. Experimental studies of domestic and foreign scientists, as well as our own, confirm this idea. True, the experiments are still extremely few, are of a exploratory nature, and therefore do not yet provide grounds for the practical implementation of their results.
The most promising microorganisms are yeasts. People have been using them for thousands of years as a food supplement. They were widely used in the nutrition of armies in the first and second world wars. This once again confirms the correctness of the idea. One of the reasons that hindered the cultivation of yeast in the diet of the population is the high cost of their production. This important reason was eliminated by the possibility of growing yeast on paraffin hydrocarbons discovered by the famous German scientist Felix Yust in 1952. The protein from such yeast is quite cheap. Using only 2 percent of the world's oil production to grow micro-organisms, it is possible to completely cover the protein deficit - to provide such an amount of protein that can feed 2 billion people for a whole year.
It is now known that microorganisms can be grown on a wide variety of nutrient media: on gases, paraffins, oil, coal waste, chemical, food, wine and vodka, woodworking industries. The economic advantages of their use are obvious. So, a kilogram of oil processed by microorganisms gives a kilogram of protein, and, say, a kilogram of sugar - only 500 grams of protein. The amino acid composition of yeast protein practically does not differ from that obtained from microorganisms grown on conventional carbohydrate media, and the most important essential amino acid tryptophan, which is deficient in most food products, is more than twice as much in “gas” (grown on methane) yeast than in egg proteins , milk, fish and meat. But it is the amino acids, these primary building blocks that any protein in wildlife is built from, that determine the biological value of the protein for the animal organism.
Biological tests of preparations from yeast grown on hydrocarbons, which were carried out both in our country and abroad, revealed the complete absence of any harmful effect on the body of the tested animals. Experiments were carried out on many generations of tens of thousands of laboratory and farm animals.
It turned out, however, that the animals return to yam in the form of meat only 10-20 percent of the protein they consumed. The rest is irretrievably lost. The assimilation of proteins by a person can reach 98 percent. Therefore, a study was begun on the possibility of using yeast protein directly in human nutrition. But from the perspective of a nutritionist (nutrition specialist), whole yeast is just a semi-finished product that requires further processing. It is possible that they may contain residual quantities of the nutrient medium that are harmful to health, as well as other substances that have not yet been isolated, the effect of which on the body may turn out to be unfavorable. In addition, unprocessed yeast contains non-specific lipids and amino acids, biogenic amines, polysaccharides and nucleic acids, and their effect on the body is still poorly understood.
Therefore, it is proposed to isolate the protein from yeast in a chemically pure form. Releasing it from nucleic acids has also already become uncomplicated. Similar studies are underway in many countries. At the Institute of Organoelement Compounds of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, under the guidance of Academician A. Nesmeyanov and Professor S. Rogozhin, an original technology for obtaining a protein isolated from yeast has been developed. The drug has a high nutritional value, which is confirmed by a number of special studies, and most importantly, it is completely free from the impurities that we talked about.
At the Department of Food Hygiene of the 1st Moscow Order of Lenin and the Order of the Red Banner of Labor of the Medical Institute named after I.M. Sechenov, under the guidance of Professor K. Petrovsky and Doctor of Medical Sciences A. Ignatiev, the author of the article began in 1972 to study the protein value of this drug. And so it was shown that in terms of chemical composition and balance of amino acids, digestibility in the gastrointestinal tract, it differs little from the best proteins of animal origin.
And after the inclusion of the deficient amino acid methionine in it, it came close in value to milk protein. Adding small amounts of the drug to low-nutrient foods (dry potatoes and pasta) increases their protein value. In addition, at the Department of Food Technology of the Institute of National Economy (Professor E. Kozmina) and at the Institute of Organoelement Compounds of the USSR Academy of Sciences (Director Academician A. Nesmeyanov), we prepared artificial pasta based on this preparation. Their protein value is 183 percent higher than commercial premium wheat pasta.
In appearance, smell and taste, they also practically did not differ from the usual product for all of us.
Using conventional technological lines for the production of synthetic fibers, it is possible to obtain long threads from artificial proteins, which, after impregnation with their shaping substances, giving them the appropriate taste, color and smell, can imitate any protein product. In this way, artificial meat (beef, pork, various types of birds), milk, cheeses and other products have already been obtained. They have already undergone extensive biological testing on animals and humans and have left laboratories for store shelves in the USA, England, India, Asia and Africa. Only in England alone their production reaches about 1500 tons per year. Interestingly, the protein part of school lunches in the United States is already allowed to be replaced by 30 percent with artificial meat created on the basis of soy protein.
The artificial meat used in the nutrition of patients at the Richmond Hospital (USA) was highly appreciated by the chief nutritionist. True, when patients were given entrecote from artificial meat, they complained about its testiness, although they did not know and did not even guess that they were not receiving a natural product. And when the meat was served in the form of finely chopped pieces, there were no complaints. The attendants also consumed artificial meat, unaware of the fake.
They perceived it as natural beef. Hospital doctors also noted the positive effect of diet on the health of patients and especially those with atherosclerosis. The composition of such meat must include specially processed artificial protein, a small amount of egg albumin, fats, vitamins, mineral salts, natural dyes, flavorings, etc., which makes it possible to “sculpt” a product with desired properties, taking into account the physiological characteristics of the organism the product is intended. This is especially important in the diet of children and the elderly, sick and recovering, when it is necessary to limit nutrition for a number of food components, which is very difficult to do using traditional products.
Such meat can be cut, frozen, canned, dried, or directly used to prepare various dishes.
After conducting studies on adults and children, Ricardo Bressani et al. concluded that the nutritional value of artificial meat is approximately 80 percent of the nutritional value of milk. Such meat was willingly eaten by children, and it did not have any negative effect on them.
Artificial black caviar created in the USSR (at the Institute of Organoelement Compounds of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR) is highly appreciated by specialists, which in appearance and taste is almost impossible to distinguish from a natural product. Its biological value is quite high, since the chemical composition of caviar fully meets the requirements for products of modern nutrition science. At present, industrial production of caviar is being established in Moscow. A workshop with a capacity of 500 kg of artificial caviar per day has already been built.
Thus, quite a lot of theoretical and practical data has already accumulated, which are objective prerequisites for the further expansion and deepening of these studies. UN and WHO experts predict that the consumption of meat and milk substitutes by the end of this century will be about 30 percent of all protein. And, if it is too early to talk about artificial chops, then synthetic lysine and methionine - these most important, indispensable and often deficient amino acids in human and animal nutrition - are produced in tens of thousands of tons.
The industrial production of vitamins has also been established.
“All this means that humanity has already entered the age of non-agricultural production of food substances,” said Soviet scientist, academician I. Petryanov. In the near future, overseas production of artificial food will become one of the leading industries.
This is evidenced by the fact that the range of these products there is constantly expanding. For example, the annual sales of all plant-based substitutes in the United States reaches $30 million. Food industry economists predict that total sales of artificial foods will increase by at least $2 billion a year by 1980. Already, about 35 percent of the cream Americans add to coffee is not natural. Recently, "egg" powder made from soy protein has appeared in stores. Such products cost four to five times cheaper than natural ones. The issue of providing the population of our country with artificial foodstuffs is not relevant in the short term.
The food structure of our people will be improved mainly by increasing the productivity of agriculture and the development of new methods of preserving food, the loss of which in the world is huge and amounts to half of their total production.
Candidate of Medical Sciences B. Sukhanov.
Hello dear buyer!
We are well aware that the majority of our regular customers are busy, working people who, like us, constantly do not have enough time. Accordingly, you simply don’t have the strength to look for information about (and for some reason in Russia today you really often need to look for it) which products, from what is sold today in our grocery stores, are good for health, and which are harmful, you simply don’t have the strength, no time.
We do it professionally. Accordingly, it is not difficult for us to select the most authoritative sources and the most understandable to the mass consumer presentation of information that is widely known and actively promoted today in the West, but (for obvious reasons) not particularly popular in spontaneously commercialized modern Russia. 
We offer you a small selection of articles about the so-called artificial products - food surrogates created artificially using the latest advances in chemistry and high processing technologies. In the West, such "food" is known as junk food or "junk food".
National Nutrition Committees of the most economically developed countries of the West
explanatory work is tirelessly carried out that the biological value of such
products is zero, and use artificially created products in your
daily diet should not be, unless of course you want to have serious
health problems.
Every educated person in the West knows perfectly well that if milk at room temperature
temperature did not turn into full-fledged yogurt in a day, then this is not milk,
that real bread cannot be white, tender and airy, that natural juice cannot
can be stored for more than three days, etc., etc.
There, the state is forced to take care of the health of its citizens, because. he needs working hands and bright heads. What the chief state sanitary doctor of Russia does today and whose interests he defends, we all see and know very well. Therefore, as usual, saving the drowning -
the work of the drowning themselves!
artificial food
In the coming years, food technologists (chemists and biologists) will please us already artificially
created by meat. Geneticists are sure that a piece of pork from a test tube will lead to food
revolution: people will breed pigs and calves for aesthetic reasons, and meat
for cutlets, build up in layers in laboratory conditions from a single
cells.
Read more: 1stolica.com.ua/5749.html
Genetically modified Europe
Not so long ago, the European Commission allowed the cultivation of genetically modified
potato. This means that artificial food has taken another bastion.
Will Russia also fall before its pressure? Or thanks to outdated, but environmentally friendly
ways of agricultural production, we will remain the only country with real milk,
meat and bread? Elena Sharoikina, director of the National
genetic safety associations.
More: www.aif.ru/money/article/34984
Democratic Catering
Delicious food today is most often an illusion. Lab-created food
additives give taste and smell not only to popular soft drinks,
potato chips, cornflakes, ice cream, hard candies and toothpaste.
Chemists trick even innocent dogs and cats into believing that
appetizing meat pieces; artificial feed really have
something to do with meat. In fact, their meat taste is the same
like the frosty freshness of Tide or the pine scent of some kind of deodorant: the result of the manipulation of chemical compounds. The process of making shaving cream is not much different from making strawberry ice cream. Yes, and they are made in the same
laboratories.
Read more: cccp.narod.ru/work/nkvd/eda 01.html
Who is junk food for?
The main consumers of weed food are people who think little about their health,
always in a hurry and never getting anywhere. Children, sweet tooth, beer lovers, teenagers,
people with low socioeconomic status prefer fast foods
cooking, junk food - chips, sugary carbonated drinks, noodles and
fast food breakfasts, corn flakes, cheeseburgers, hamburgers and
semi-finished products.
More details: www.galya.ru/cat page.php?id=100615
Fast food or artificial food
We gave restaurant visitors two dishes to try - with natural meat and
with food chemistry.
Natural food was chosen by only one visitor out of ten. This happens because
in chemical food there is a taste enhancer - monosodium glutamate.
Read more: 4estno.ru/zdorovie/fastfood-ili-iskusstvennaya-eda.html
Junk food makes kids dumb
British researchers believe that a diet rich in fats, sugars and
processed foods leads to low IQ levels in children.
According to a Bristol study involving hundreds of British children,
if the nutrition of a child at the age of three years was predominantly based on
processed food, then when he turns 8.5 years old, it will be reflected in the form
low IQ.
More: www.vegopolis.ru/entry/464
Summary:
Maybe we should not continue these terrible experiments on our own body and
health of loved ones and relatives, over the health and viability of future
generations? After all, all these "epidemics of civilization" are direct
a consequence of the inadequate attitude of mankind to what is eaten.
The body is vital for high-grade cereals and legumes, natural
milk, meat, fish, crude vegetable oils, cabbage, beets, carrots,
apples, onions, garlic, etc., etc. Moreover, the less processed these products
exposed, the clearer and more useful they are for our digestion.
Natural products cannot (and should not) compete with industrial products.
surrogates for tenderness and brightness of tastes. They are also completely uncompetitive.
and in terms of shelf life and all the rest selling today any
"miracle product" qualities. But without them, alas, neither health nor
complete work of the human body.
There is a way out: spend all the same time cooking! Because the time spent on
treatment is usually longer, more costly, and much less interesting. Besides
However, it is already quite obvious that there is simply NO other way out.
Sincerely, Administration of the online store "Diamart".
The idea for the sci-fi movie meal replacement came to Rinehart in December 2012, when he was once again despondent over his diet of burgers, cola, and pasta. In February 2013, he wrote a blog post, "How I Stopped Eating," in which he admitted he felt like a "$6 million man" after thirty days of replacing food with a "thick, odorless beige liquid" containing "everything substances necessary for a person to live, plus a few more that are considered useful.
Have you ever dreamed of super strength? Perhaps it would be nice to be able to fly or see through walls. But if you work a lot, then most likely you dream not about this, but at least one extra hour a day. And even better - an extra day in the week, during which you can not work, but read, write, catch butterflies or take extreme driving courses.
Lack of free time is perhaps the scourge of our globalized accelerated lifestyle. According to Gallup, for the past twenty years, almost 50% of the US population has complained that they do not have time for themselves.
“According to the U.S. Bureau of Employment Statistics, people spend about 90 minutes a day on food,” explains 25-year-old engineer and entrepreneur from California about Rinehart. This figure is an average, which includes going to the store, cooking, eating and washing dishes. Rob claims to have found a solution to the problem. By skipping food and replacing it with Soylent Formula, Rob claims to have “freed up at least an hour a day for himself.”
Soylent is a nutritional formula synthesized based on the nutritional guidelines regularly issued by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). It is similar to protein shakes for mass gain, except that in addition to proteins, it contains all the necessary fats, carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals. Available in powder, drink and nutrition bar form. Terrible in taste.
Rinehart's post about his food invention became a hit on Reddit and Hacker News, and Rinehart was inundated with recipe questions and partnerships. Three months later, the dispute exceeded Rinehart's wildest expectations, and he quit his job for the sake of a startup / When Soylent 1.0 hit the shelves in May 2014, the company already had more than 20 thousand pre-orders, more than $ 2 million in sales revenue and 2875 years free time.
Looks impressive. But what will people do with this freed time? A new era of the Renaissance? Will Soylent make it possible for literature, art, or even computer programming to flourish? Maybe it's too early to talk about it, but so far the signs are vague. For example, the author of the post spent an hour and a half a week freed up mindlessly clicking on social networks (which angered the editor-in-chief). As for Rinehart, he spent his hour and a half just launching a startup, reading books and taking training courses that he had been putting off for a long time.
Of course, this is not the first time that people have been promised freedom from kitchen slavery. This problem is rooted in the convenience food boom that began after the Second World War and is strongly tied to the gender issue. As researcher Harvey Levenstein writes in The Abundance Paradox, convenience foods have reduced the time the average housewife spends cooking from 5.5 to 1.5 hours a day.
Thanks to the convenience food boom, the number of working married women doubled by 1960, while the number of working mothers quadrupled.
As a particularly striking example, astronomical historian Rachel Laudan relates that as early as 20 years ago, a simple Mexican woman spent 4-5 hours a day just grinding corn cobs for tortillas and feeding a family of 5. But in the early 90s, fast food boomed in Mexico as well, tortillas began to be sold in stores and the number of working Mexican women grew from 30% to 50%. “Mexican women know supermarket tortillas aren't as tasty, but they don't care,” explains Laudan. “If they want to have time for work and children, then taste is no longer as important as extra money and the opportunity to move into the middle class.”
But can semi-finished products really save that much time? The authors of the ethnography "Home Life in the Twenty-First Century" note that families who cooked dinner on weekdays with fresh ingredients spent only 10-12 minutes more time cooking than families who ate frozen pizza, ready-made macaroni and cheese, dishes for the microwave and takeaway food from the cafe.
Then where did the myth that convenience foods save time come from? According to research, all the salt is hidden in reducing the mental load on the brain. “Perhaps the most important and obvious effect of prepared food is to reduce the complexity of dinner planning. A family cook may think less about what to cook during the week,” they write. In other words, in a world where nearly 100,000 new foods hit supermarket shelves every year, convenience foods offer valuable decision-making freedom.
Soylent follows this logic further: the truncated reality becomes its trump card, not a miscalculation. The Soylent consumer can silence all the media noise about the dangers of gluten, the benefits of diets, the debate about veganism, and so on. As stated on the packaging, the bar guarantees "maximum nutrition with minimum effort."
But how will the abolition of food affect the culture? Many critics of "astronaut food" trumpet that the rituals associated with the preparation and consumption of food is one of the most important aspects of our culture. In particular, sociologists argue that regular family dinners reduce juvenile delinquency, alcoholism, the risk of obesity, improve health and psychological well-being, and are even the key to academic success.
The end of the breakfast-lunch-dinner era does not worry Rinehart at all, because regular meals "were originally invented artificially." Historian Abigail Carroll writes that the American family dinner, despite its sacred role as a culture, appeared about 150 years ago. Families didn't have tables in the 16th century, she says, and bowls and cutlery only became plentiful in the 19th century. And Carroll connects the growing popularity of the family dinner with the industrial revolution, when working from 9 to 5 at the manufactory did not replace agricultural work, and the evening became the only opportunity for the family to get together. In this context, it is difficult to disagree with Rinehart: the tradition of three meals a day is indeed relatively young and comes from external conditions, and is not dictated by our nature.
Another argument of Rinehart's critics also does not look very convincing.
If replacing food with a liquid equivalent deprives the mechanism of our mouth, what will be the consequences of our appearance? Walk without teeth, or what?
But do not rush to look at your bite in the mirror with sadness. The scientific basis for this hypothesis is frankly weak. Yes, and it seems that only the Japanese are concerned about this issue. So one Japanese study from 2013 found that chewing food does increase insulin production, preparing the body for the meal, but this association was minimal. Another Japanese study showed that eating foods that are difficult to chew leads to a leaner waistline, but does not reduce overall body weight.
There is also one interesting hypothesis that food directly affects our appearance. Studying the skulls of Europeans, the American anthropologist Sea Loring Brace discovered that the current human bite was formed about 250 years ago, when the mass distribution of spoons and forks began. Before the advent of appliances, Europeans gnawed their teeth into large pieces of meat, and then cut them off with a dagger - Brace called this style of eating "nibble and cut." As a counterbalance, the researcher cites the Chinese, who began using chopsticks 900 years earlier, and their bite is older by almost the same number of years. If Brace's theory is correct, then replacing food with liquid could dramatically change the appearance of the human jaw, and Soylent Face would become recognizable as DiCaprio's doppelgänger.
Soylent promises to meet all your body's needs. "It contains all the elements of a healthy diet, with limited additions of less desirable ingredients such as sugars, saturated fats and cholesterol," says Soylent. Rinehart's formula was formulated according to US Institute of Medicine guidelines, tested on Rinehart and his friends, and fine-tuned under the supervision of Xavier Pi-Suñer, professor of medicine at the Human Nutrition Institute at Columbia University.
But is this idea really that new? As historian Warren Belasco writes in his book The Coming Food, this is not the first time people have tried to replicate the properties of food from its ingredients. The discovery of vitamins in the early decades of the 20th century gave rise to a similar belief that "nutrition can be reduced to single substances that can be synthesized in a test tube." But vitamin B12, which is essential for liver health, was only isolated in 1948, so the "chemical man" of that time would most likely suffer from pernicious anemia.
Rinehart is optimistic that his product will be improved, which is why the label says "Soylent 1.0". However, I manage to catch him on an uncomfortable question about the effect of Soylent on the intestinal microflora. In short, the microbes in Rinehart's gut are markedly different from those found in other Americans. Although the study of microbiota is still in its infancy, Soylent does not appear to be such a good substitute for food for the microbes in our gut.
Soylent's ingredients seem to be simple and pure: a must-have nutrient squeeze.
In fact, its production chains and ecological impact are just as complex, if not more mysterious, than the food it replaces. Warren Belasco notes that "the quest to make food production disappear, if not from the face of the earth, then at least from the minds of consumers" is a long-standing dream of people in an effort to reduce food to chemistry. This is perhaps the most important drawback of Soylent. After all, food is our main way to establish contact with a changing environment. And Soylent wants to cut off this rich connection.
After five days living exclusively on Soylent, I can safely say that its main problem is the disgusting taste. It's like you're eating foamy vanilla shower gel with the consistency of river silt. Yes, I lost weight, but only because I felt more comfortable going to bed hungry than drinking more Soylent.
The main advantage of Soylent for me personally was not the time saved, but the taste of real food forgotten in a week. Half a New York bagel with butter, a slice of cheese, and a perfect Jersey tomato was so delicious that the hand with the food was trembling with excitement. I will remember this breakfast for the rest of my life. Perhaps the ability to return the love of ordinary food is the main value of Soylent? For me, Soylent is a Rorschach test of our personal and social attitudes towards food.
By the way, I have a few bars left in my locker, write to anyone who needs it - I will share it.
Not so long ago artificial food passed from one science fiction novel to another, in the form of "nutritional pills". A time traveler who arrived in the distant future and was desperately hungry was treated to one or two sweets the size of a button. artificial food. These candy pills, as a rule, “melted easily” in the mouth, “tasted nicely”, the hero suddenly felt completely full and immediately became an ardent supporter of “pill nutrition”.
food energy
Today, artificial food is out of the realm of fantasy. On average, the human body should receive 500-3000 calories of energy per day. This energy is hidden in the chemical compounds of food molecules and is released when they decompose in the body, just as the chemical energy hidden in a piece of coal is released during combustion (more details:). But the process of release and use food energy incomparably more complex and subtler than the process of fuel combustion. Food is needed by the body for two purposes.- The first goal is to replenish energy costs (this purpose of food is directly similar to the purpose of fuel burned in a furnace).
- The second purpose of food is to serve as a building material from which the body synthesizes itself.
Food to replenish energy costs. In order for the human body to successfully carry out both tasks, food must contain substances of five groups: - proteins,
- fats,
- carbohydrates,
- salt,
- vitamins.
- the body needs about 20 grams of salt per day,
- vitamin - about a gram,
- fats and proteins - approximately 100 grams each,
- carbohydrates - about half a kilogram,
- The average human body consumes about two liters of water.
- the absence of microscopic doses of iodine causes the appearance of goiter,
- deficiency brings scurvy.
Chemistry - the creator of artificial food
Chemistry is one of the leading sciences of modern life. The innovations she brought to people's lives are grandiose. She has a major role in creating artificial food. Natural dyes, herbal medicines, rubber from hevea juice have long been replaced by synthetic products. They were followed by synthetic fabrics, leather and fur substitutes - beautiful, durable, hygienic, cheaper than their predecessors. Well, what next? What else is subject to synthetic replacement? Food, say the chemists. Indeed, our food remains largely the same today as it was centuries and millennia ago. Literally everything has changed. The man moved from the tarantass and the cart to the car and the plane. The signal drum "there-there" and messengers were replaced by telephones and radios. Hundred-story buildings stood up, electric suns lit up. Is there a lot in our diet that would have been unknown to people a hundred or a thousand years ago? Meat of animals, fruits of plants, dairy products.
Human food. However, the best minds of mankind have long foreseen the approaching revolution. Here is what the great Russian scientist D. I. Mendeleev wrote: As a chemist, I am convinced that it is possible to obtain nutrients from the combination of the elements of air, water and earth, in addition to ordinary culture, that is, in ordinary factories and plants.And here are the words of the famous French chemist M. Berthelot, said by him at the very end of the 19th century:
The problem of food is the problem of life. When cheap energy is obtained, it will be possible to synthesize food from carbon (obtained from carbon dioxide), from hydrogen (obtained from water), from nitrogen and oxygen (extracted from the atmosphere).Today, this long-foreseen revolution is on the agenda.
Obtaining synthetic products
The body needs proteins, fats, carbohydrates, vitamins, salts. It is extremely easy to cover the lack of mineral salts. The problem of synthetic production of vitamins has also been solved: today you can simply buy any vitamin at a pharmacy. And if goiter, scurvy, beriberi and other diseases associated with food deficiencies of certain vitamins and salts are also found on the globe, it is not science that is to blame, but social conditions. It hardly makes sense to talk about carbohydrates: there is no shortage of them on our planet and is not expected. Production processes have been known for two hundred years. And today sugar is obtained even from wood.
Types of sugar. In fact, the issue of synthesis has also been resolved. Remain. If the body also uses fats mainly as a source of energy, then we need proteins primarily as a building material. And unfortunately, it is food protein that is still lacking on our planet. According to UNESCO, one third of the world's population is currently starving. In most cases, this is protein starvation. Diversity of proteins
Probably, many have heard about the fantastic difficulty of protein synthesis, that biochemists have been struggling with this problem for more than a hundred years, but that even today only a few simple proteins have been synthesized. Yes, indeed, proteins, moreover, extremely complex ones, are countless. Moreover, each organism has its own proteins. But everything is endless protein diversity is made up of a very limited number of amino acids, just as an infinite variety of words is made up of only a few dozen letters.Amino acids
Such amino acids, not very complex organic compounds - two dozen. That's how small the alphabet of the protein world is. Any proteins that enter the human digestive tract are decomposed by enzymes into these amino acids, and they are absorbed by the body. Therefore, we will only facilitate the work of digestion if we feed a person not with proteins, but with amino acids. By the way, some of these acids can be synthesized in the body from other amino acids, and there are only eight essential acids.
Molecules of amino acids. Their ratio in food should be quite strict, the lack of at least one can lead to tragic results. This is largely the reason for protein starvation, since in some cases the body receives a lot of protein, but cannot absorb it due to a lack of only one amino acid in it. The synthesis of amino acids is incomparably simpler than the synthesis of proteins. In a number of countries, some amino acids are produced on an industrial scale. Production in the world of one of the essential amino acids - methionine - in the middle of the last century exceeded 70 thousand tons. At the same time, more than 10 thousand tons of another essential amino acid - lysine - is produced in the USA and Japan. The production of amino acids that completely replace protein in the human diet is within the power of modern chemistry. Synthetic human food
It is no coincidence that the question of synthetic food for humans, and not about synthetic animal feed, which could then be eaten. It is easier to solve the problem of synthetic feed, but it is already being practically solved in a number of cases. But this is too expensive and a long way: the synthetic feed - animal - meat system has an efficiency of only 10-20 percent. This means that the total amount of synthetic feed should be 5-10 times more than human food, and besides, considerable labor costs are needed to service the intermediate links - animal husbandry. The well-known Soviet scientist Academician A.N. Nesmeyanov, under whose leadership many fundamental issues of creating synthetic food were solved, insistently emphasized that we should talk about a fundamental solution to the problem, about creating synthetic food for humans, and not feed for livestock. But two questions arise:- Will a synthetic mixture of essential and non-essential amino acids and four other components, plus water, provide everything necessary for the development and functioning of the human body? There is an answer to this question: yes, it will. The synthetic mixture, compiled according to the clear recipes of modern science, has been tested more than once, it has been fed to animals - not one, but a number of successive generations. It is fed in some cases to people - it is used as a therapeutic diet. And people get better and stronger.
- Will artificial food taste good? And will it not replace the pleasure that each of us receives from food with monotonous and boring satiety?
Artificial red caviar. Artificial food has already passed essentially comprehensive tests. So, in England back in 1974, about 1500 tons of artificial meat were sold - pork, poultry, beef. At present, 600,000 tons of amino acids are produced on a global scale a year, artificial glucose-fructose syrups are more than 3 million tons a year. In the US, 30 percent of school breakfasts are allowed to replace "soy meat". Here, about 300 thousand tons of protein are produced annually from beans and soybeans, they will replace 10% of meat raw materials. Experts from the World Health Organization believe that by 2020, the daily diet of each person will consist of at least a third of artificial milk and meat. The creation of artificial food is the grandest of the revolutions that chemistry has made and is making.
