Food/Food and health

A shortage of food is not the only problem. Over a billion people are overweight, and 300,000,000 are obese ^[1]. A third of all children born in the USA in 2000 are expected to become diabetic ^[2]. Metabolic syndrome  is estimated to affect a quarter of the US population.

Unfortunately, changing human behaviour is not as straightforward as finding a solution to an engineering problem. But what the suggestions given here can achieve is a change in the food environment. A decentralized food production system grows vegetables, eggs, meat, mushrooms and whole foods like that — not refined sugar products and processed foods like that.

Hopefully, by transforming the food environment from the current one, where the most convenient food is bought in a bag, preserved with salt and flavored with sugar, to one where fresh, unprocessed fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts, seeds, mushrooms, meat and fish are conveniently available locally, people's behaviour will change and we can mitigate obesity and diabetes as well as hunger.

The high levels of control of the biochemical environment in techniques like aeroponics and in-vitro meat allow for precise control over the nutritional profile of the food produced. It should be possible with these methods to create the most nutritious food that can possibly be grown.