The sweet shop of the future will offer smaller portions in more elaborate forms, thanks to 3D printers adapted for food use.
Willy Wonka-esque candy floss lamps and edible diamonds were just some of the futuristic creations developed by self-proclaimed "food futurologist" Morgaine Gaye and award-winning British chocolatier Paul A Young at Future Fest, an event held in London this month.
They looked at the factors they thought likely to alter the landscape of confectionary manufacturing, and predicted that sweets as we know them were going to change dramatically over the next 20 years and beyond.
Perhaps the Chocolate Room isn't so far away after all. Let's hope chiral sugars arrive before it does...
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An article in this week's Time magazine gives us an insight into how the process of roasting and storing cocoa beans can be adjusted to enhance the antioxidant content of the chocolate they become.
Emmanuel Ohene Afoakwa, a professor of food science and technology at the University of Ghana, and his team have figured out a new process for making chocolate that’s healthier and contains more antioxidants.
Chocolate’s antioxidants are thought to be responsible for some of its health perks related to cardiovascular health and memory support. Capitalizing on those antioxidants could not only provide better nutrition, but could be of interest to the candy industry. The researchers presented their process at the American Chemical Society’s national meeting in Denver on Tuesday.
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Afoakwa says his team recommends consumers choose dark chocolate over milk or white chocolate since dark chocolate typically has more antioxidants and less sugar. The researchers are continuing to identify changes to the chocolate-making process that could increase the candy’s nutritional content. The researchers are currently receiving funding from the Belgium government.
There's a fine line between candy and bitter gack; I know, because my wife brings home dark chocolate that all too often crosses that line. At a certain point, why wouldn't you eat a bowl of kale if vitamins and anti-oxidants are what you're after?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by buswolley on Thursday March 26 2015, @07:25PM
Leave my food alone. Let it be natural, fresh, and from my garden.
subicular junctures
(Score: 2) by Snow on Thursday March 26 2015, @07:54PM
How do you grow candy in your garden?
(Score: 2) by The Archon V2.0 on Thursday March 26 2015, @07:59PM
Well, first you move to a world where your only human contact is an ASCII art man who looks suspiciously like Tom Baker.
After you manage that, the rest of it is easy.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by TrumpetPower! on Thursday March 26 2015, @08:41PM
Berries aren't candy? Figs? Dates? Sweet corn and sugar snap peas? Honey? Figs dipped in honey?
Okay, "candy" implies something made in a kitchen from refined sugar...but there're all sorts of things you can grow in your garden that are every bit as sweet and flavorful -- typically, much more flavorful when from your garden -- as anything you can buy at the candy store.
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
(Score: 2) by TK-421 on Thursday March 26 2015, @08:55PM
Agreed. Produce I can't stand from the store is surprisingly delicious when grown in my own garden. I am hoping for a better turn out with the square foot garden [squarefootgardening.org] this year.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Friday March 27 2015, @09:47AM
After I started growing my own tomatoes and other vegetables I formed a theory that Americans don't like vegetables because the ones they buy in the store are grown on the other side of the earth, are picked way before they're ripe, and don't taste like anything. The first time I tasted one of my home-grown tomatoes the sweetness and complexity of it were a revelation. It was like the first time I ever tasted Belgian chocolate or Corsican cheese.
I've thought about submitting articles on gardening, hydroponics, aquaponics, etc, but refrained for fear they'd revoke my geek card here. Glad to see I'm not the only one interested in this stuff...
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by TK-421 on Friday March 27 2015, @12:29PM
No revocation here. Gardening, in my mind, is kind of like white hat earth hacking. You start with nothing and use science to make something new. My spouse and I also use it as a teaching tool for our kids. Science, patience, planning, and charity are all easily taught from the garden. I say charity because if we have a good year there is plenty to share with friends and neighbors.
I couldn't have said it better myself, spot on! I will add that canning what we make from the garden is a favorite of mine too. Opening up a can in the middle of January (hardest part of our winter) and cooking with something like tomatoes is a real treat. That full flavor you described, experienced in the middle of winter, is a bit of a serotonin booster for me.
(Score: 2) by CRCulver on Thursday March 26 2015, @08:56PM
(Score: 3, Interesting) by TrumpetPower! on Thursday March 26 2015, @10:08PM
Erm...you seriously don't expect me to reproduce a complete gardening guide in the comments, down to climate zones and zoning ordinances, do you?
If you've got a garden that you can actually grow things in, there're all sorts of sweets you can grow there. Even in the Desert Southwest, we have native cacti with quite tasty fruit -- and some of them you'll find in landscaping where they don't receive any supplemental water or other care. If you can't grow figs, you might be able to grow blueberries. And so on.
The point isn't whether or not you can construct a scenario where somebody "lives" in a clean room environment that they're not permitted to sneeze.
The point is that, if you have an edible garden, chances are good you're already growing candy because that's the sort of thing gardeners do.
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 27 2015, @11:59PM
It's a shame that that kind of ignorance persists in so many places.
With European honeybees, don't bother them and they won't bother you.
They're actually quite docile. [ixquick.com]
Now, I did hear of an event south of Los Angeles concerning Africanized bees ("killer" bees).
3 dogs were stung to death.
Some accounts reported "thousands" of bees involved.
I found it difficult to believe there was a "hive" of bees that large and the property owner wasn't aware of it and I had to look up more details. [newsantaana.com]
-- gewg_
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 26 2015, @08:53PM
Grow sugar beets, refine them, make candy, profit.
(Score: 2) by jimshatt on Thursday March 26 2015, @08:53PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 28 2015, @12:01AM
Not an option for most people
For apartment dwellers with no common area for growing stuff (e.g. rooftops)?
Yeah, limited opportunities.
For a homeowner with a small plot of land? It's pretty much doable.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 26 2015, @09:30PM
If I print a "fruit" molecule by molecule using a 3D printer from 2045, who's to say that it's not "fresh" and "natural"?
Petri dish meat assembled cell by cell could have some big sustainability and nutritional benefits and come much sooner.
Take off your Luddite blinders and evaluate technologies as they become available.
(Score: 4, Funny) by SrLnclt on Thursday March 26 2015, @07:35PM
Am I the only one who read the headline as "The Sweat Shop of the Future"?
(Score: 3, Informative) by bart9h on Thursday March 26 2015, @07:56PM
No.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ikanreed on Thursday March 26 2015, @08:10PM
Veering further off topic, that's a question that's sincerely not asked often enough. Most westerners have at least a "oh, that's probably not good" attitude towards sweat shops. But not many people ask themselves what exactly is going to take the place a 16 year old Bangladeshi girl sewing their cheap jeans, once she can go to school instead.
Presumably total automation is the endgame, but before that happens, factories gradually moving to new impoverished countries for cheap labor, demand for labor eventually catching up with the shrinking supply of people willing to be paid beans in awful conditions, and SOME kinda market shift.
(Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Friday March 27 2015, @10:59AM
Well, recent history alone sadly suggests very strongly that there probably won't be a point where industry will run out of societies full of people willing to undercut one another for peanuts rather than work together to push for greater wages. It was less than a century ago that the USA stopped being a major source of sweatshop labor under horrific conditions as well, don't forget — things improved dramatically for a few decades, then began deteriorating again.
If sweatshops vanished, what would happen next for Americans would depend on where manufacturing went and how our government handled things, IMHO. If our government made it more expensive for companies to outsource manual labor and began focusing on changes that would benefit citizens (rather than Wall Street investors), much as it did several decades ago after the Great Depression & WWII, then we might see a repeat of the economic bright spot of the 1950s-1970s. (That's a big "if," of course. If it instead continued the path it has been on in recent decades, we'll end up with a dystopia that might eventually kick us down into non-"first world" status.)
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Friday March 27 2015, @01:26PM
That's called protectionism and has its own history of problems.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 28 2015, @12:07AM
Yeah. 2 generations of a thriving working class and a stable society was such a burden.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by The Archon V2.0 on Thursday March 26 2015, @07:53PM
> Self-proclaimed "food futurologist"
So, someone who can make guesses... about food.
Man, I thought the field of amateur *general* futurology was bad enough. I'm surprised this sub-sub-niche is even viable.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Gaaark on Thursday March 26 2015, @08:15PM
You should call yourself the 'Self-proclaimed "food futurologist" skeptic.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 26 2015, @10:33PM
Food futurologism denier?
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday March 26 2015, @08:32PM
It works like this:
If you can get a major publication to print your arbitrary conjecture, you're a futurologist.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday March 27 2015, @12:12AM
Can you make a living at that?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Ryuugami on Thursday March 26 2015, @09:26PM
I'm surprised this sub-sub-niche is even viable.
It's sub-niches all the way down [xkcd.com].
If a shit storm's on the horizon, it's good to know far enough ahead you can at least bring along an umbrella. - D.Weber
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Thursday March 26 2015, @07:59PM
I think the most interesting part is the article on chiral sugars. That's worth an RTFA.
(Score: 1) by g2 In The Desert on Thursday March 26 2015, @08:02PM
We've been hearing of left handed sugars for decades. Sugar beets was supposed to be a major source. And still nothing. I'll wait till it's on store shelves before I believe it.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Ryuugami on Thursday March 26 2015, @09:23PM
Left Handed Sugar
Sounds... sinister.
If a shit storm's on the horizon, it's good to know far enough ahead you can at least bring along an umbrella. - D.Weber