Food has no future.

[peter]

One of the obvious limiting factors in the ability of the planet to sustain an ever burgeoning population is our ability to produce food to meet it's needs. However, as the makers of recent products now coming on to the market tell us, it is not actually 'food' that we need, but amino acids, carbohydrates and lipids; vitamins, minerals and trace elements and a good hunk of roughage. Horrid yes - but true. Everything we actually need to live can be produced en masse in industrial chemical procesees and presented for consumption as quickly and comfortably as possible, so that we may be about the business of our lives with the minimum of distraction and cost. This [crazy as it sounds] surely must be the way that most peoples nutritional needs will be met when the populatin heads to twenty, thirty, fifty billion people over the coming centuries.

On a rather more 'old fashioned' note, something else strikes me. It seems to me that very little effort has been put by researchers into compensating for a major failing in our digestive capabilities - namely our inability to digest cellulose. Surely the least they could do is to develop a 'cellulase' that could be taken in tablet form which would allow one to tuck into a nice bucket of grass when the pennies were tight. In the longer term how hard would it be to 'splice' in a gene or two into the human genome in order to eliminate even the necessity of taking the tablet.

[nb feel free to tell me to 'keep taking the tablets'.]

[Hashi Lebwohl]

The cellulase article from World of Enzymes and ProBiotics.

The cellulase article from Wikipedia.

In fact, here is the Dogpile search for "cellulase".

I don't relish the idea of eating all my food by squeezing something out from what looks like a tube of toothpaste but as long as it has the necessary daily requirement of the correct mix of proteins, carbohydrates, vitamins, and minerals then it would keep you alive, which is always better than the alternative.
It might be possible to genetically introduce an ability in our digestive tract to produce cellulase but if that were possible then it should also be possible to introduce chlorophyll into our skin cells. Yes, I gain bodily energy by standing in the sunlight; no, I don't mind having a green tint to my appearance.

[peter]

Now that Hashi, is the kind of thinking I like!

Thanks for the links; I'll check them out later after work.