Future Food in Utopia: A View from the Twenty-Second Century

Abstract

The influential “Today & Tomorrow” series of books published in London in the 1920s and 30s, which reflected on the future of science, technology and the arts, included a volume devoted to the future of food, Olga Hartley and C. F. Leyel’s Lucullus; or, The Food of the Future (1926). The authors predict a number of scientific advances that will lead to synthetic food, with the Neo-Vegetarians evoking the possibility of plant consciousness, a topic which is receiving increased attention nowadays. With lab-produced meat having already been developed, and plant awareness driving further research into synthetic nutrition, these texts provide thoughtful speculation on the future of food and the urgent need to achieve a sustainable environment.