I have seen the criticism that humans in Star Trek are too much like contemporary people in behavior, preferences, and habits.
Food is a major aspect of the human condition that has been through significant changes and adaptations across both time and geography. Concepts of acceptable food and drink have varied greatly depending on scarcity or availability, cultural or religious mores, specialized cultivation and breeding, etc. For example, certain meat sources have grown or waned in popularity and acceptability or have even been considered taboo, and many varieties of vegetables have been developed, such as cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, etc. all coming from brassica oleracea.
Food on Trek has run the gamut from colored synthesized food cubes to rather exotic alien foods, while Earth foods seems to have largely maintained a twentieth century Western-hemisphere paradigm. In DS9, Ferengi tube grubs are considered alien and repugnant, even though there are cultures on Earth in which similar things are eaten. In TUC, eating with your hands is considered backwards and barbaric, even though various cultures right here on Earth do that!
I think this is a golden opportunity for the new Trek series to depict an everyday aspect of human life as having changed drastically in the next few centuries, even to a point beyond what would be recognizable to a contemporary North American audience.
So what do you think? Will the current gourmet trend of molecular gastronomy become the norm for everyday meals? Will humans renounce animal food sources and turn to veganism? Will synthesized nutrient blocks or nutrient pills be the typical cuisine? Will humanity abandon the taboos that Trek’s target audience may hold dear, and frequently consume more exotic types of meats such as horse, monkey, cat and dog?
How would you like to see food depicted in the new Trek series?
Kor
Food is a major aspect of the human condition that has been through significant changes and adaptations across both time and geography. Concepts of acceptable food and drink have varied greatly depending on scarcity or availability, cultural or religious mores, specialized cultivation and breeding, etc. For example, certain meat sources have grown or waned in popularity and acceptability or have even been considered taboo, and many varieties of vegetables have been developed, such as cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, etc. all coming from brassica oleracea.
Food on Trek has run the gamut from colored synthesized food cubes to rather exotic alien foods, while Earth foods seems to have largely maintained a twentieth century Western-hemisphere paradigm. In DS9, Ferengi tube grubs are considered alien and repugnant, even though there are cultures on Earth in which similar things are eaten. In TUC, eating with your hands is considered backwards and barbaric, even though various cultures right here on Earth do that!
I think this is a golden opportunity for the new Trek series to depict an everyday aspect of human life as having changed drastically in the next few centuries, even to a point beyond what would be recognizable to a contemporary North American audience.
So what do you think? Will the current gourmet trend of molecular gastronomy become the norm for everyday meals? Will humans renounce animal food sources and turn to veganism? Will synthesized nutrient blocks or nutrient pills be the typical cuisine? Will humanity abandon the taboos that Trek’s target audience may hold dear, and frequently consume more exotic types of meats such as horse, monkey, cat and dog?
How would you like to see food depicted in the new Trek series?
Kor
