Chemical Sources of Food: An Approach to Novel Food Sources

Abstract

The question of feast or famine has been a central issue for mankind from the very beginning. Technology has developed throughout the centuries; man has increased his ability to produce more food and then expand the population not only to meet the available food supply but to demand even more of it. While the basic question of food supply and demand has not changed with time, the intricacies and sophistication of the problem have increased. Prehistoric man was faced with the need for more efficient animal traps and new varieties of plants, while today we are faced with the need to develop alternative foods and more efficient ways to produce them. This dilemma is further compounded by uneven distribution of food and other natural resources as well as economic and political factors which, depending on how they are used, can lessen or increase the problem of food supply and demand.

Synthetic Foods

Once we have succeeded in controlling the overgrowth of the population and reducing the effects of unwanted materials in the atmosphere on our lives, it will be necessary to assure that we have sufficient food of the type we need. To go out and kill animals to provide the urban dweller with protein smacks of a holdover from an earlier time. It is clear, both from the point of view of a rational approach to the problem and for the safety of food supplies in the future, that chemical methods of producing food have much to recommend them. The subject is at an early stage of development, but the present position suggests that development might make possible the cyclical production of food from chemical means, involving basic materials such as carbon dioxide, nitrogen, hydrogen, and water.