Timothy Dean's Blog

If you'd told science fiction writers in the 1930s that food in the early 2000s would be all about heirloom vegetables, micronutrients and artisanal pickles, they'd have laughed you right out of the decade. Back in the mid-20th Century, everybody believed the future of food was fully artificial. Pills, bars, goop, pastes, wafers and syrups were a staple of science fiction and futurism, and scientists did their best to make these things a reality. And then, they fell from popularity — probably starting with Soylent Green and other cautionary tales.

Here's the long, strange history of artificial food items in science fiction. And why food pills probably wouldn't be that good for you in any case.

Food pills are so retro-futuristic that they even make an appearance in William Gibson's short-story/commentary on retro-futurism "The Gernsback Continuum."

This idea actually got its start before the start of the 20th Century — at the 1893 World's Fair, when suffragette Mary Elizabeth Lease proposed a scientific solution to the kitchen drudgery forced upon women (little did she know that science would actually lessen kitchen drudgery via the dishwasher, microwave and the Slap Chop.)

See the full article on i09