All language subtitles for Modern.Marvels.S21E06.The.Future.of.Food.1080p.WEB-DL.DDP2.0.H264-BTN_track3_[eng]

- What do French
fries, TV dinners

and bottles of baby formula
have in common?

Nothing right?

But at one point they
were all considered to be

the future of food.

Americans have always
had a knack for inventing

and reinventing the future.

We have a long history of
pushing food technology

to create new flavors, new
textures and new foods.

Like the surprising
origins of Cheetos,

launching ice cream
into outer space

and adding eggs to a box
of Betty Crocker powder

to poof bake your magical cake.

Today we'll get a sneak peek
at the delicious innovations

in our food future.

From the sci-fi way to grow
veggies without sunlight,

to robots autonomously
crafting hamburgers and pizza.

And you won't believe what
scientists discovered in plants

that's also found in meat

and creates the delicious
meat flavor that we crave.

Come take a ride with
me in my flying car,

because this is Modern
Marvels: The Future of Food.

[lively upbeat music]

[lively upbeat music]

- [Adam] For a glimpse into the
future,

I've come here to
Natick, Massachusetts.

- [Presenter] Natick's
Generally Equipment

and Packaging Laboratory has
both small items and large.

- The military's
funding of food research

dates back to World
War II and by 1963,

their food research
and development mission

moved here to Natick Labs.

These food development
efforts by the military

are how American classics
like sandwich bread,

the McRib and some would even
say Cheetos were created.

[lively instrumental music]

So to see what they do here,

is to see a glimpse
of our future eats.

To learn how they do it,

Laurie Oleksyk is taking
us behind the scenes

of this vast compound of 50
buildings spanning 78 acres.

Laurie is the team leader of
Food Engineering and Analysis

at the Army's facilities..

How are you?
- How are you?

- A little bit of
patriotic elbow.

[laughing]

You develop everything here?

- Yes, we're the
only DOD facility

that conducts the
research and development

of all food service equipment.

- So how often are you
introducing new product?

- Every single year.

- [Adam] Really?
- Yeah.

- [Adam] Laurie's team are
the skilled pros,

constantly testing
new food technologies

for use by the military today

but soon could be the future
of consumer food tomorrow.

And speaking of the
future, while I suit up

we're making a pit stop to
a company in the Bay Area

that delivers an old favorite
with a science fiction spin.

[upbeat dramatic music]

Creator is the first restaurant

to fully automate a
major sector of food.

They're making
hamburgers by robot.

[lively upbeat music]

- With the app, you can
order from the ground up.

You can specify some of the
usual customization things

like extra tomatoes, no pickles.

You can also do things you
can't do anywhere else.

- [Adam] You choose every item
down to the milliliter

of sauces and seasonings
that make up your burger.

- [Alex] Finally when you
place your order,

the app will even tell you

exactly how long it
takes to make your burger

because guess what?

It's all made by a machine,

you know exactly when
everything's gonna be ready.

- At full go, it can
produce 150 burgers an hour,

but efficiency is
only the beginning.

Creator's robot takes
a fresh hamburger bun

and guides it through a
blade slicing it in half.

A series of motors then butters
and moves the sliced bun

through an open view toaster

so you can actually see the
browning as it's happening.

A conveyor belt
advances the toasted bun

to the next
position, the saucer.

Some of their sauce varieties
include smoked oyster aioli,

their own take on a
thousand island dressing,

sunflower seed tahini and
shiitake mushroom sauce.

Then your topping selections
are all cut fresh to order

and are carefully
placed onto your bun.

The next stop is cheese,
your selection of cheeses

is firstly graded onto your bun

and then moves down
to a torchlike melter

to give you that perfect
stringy yet gooey texture

when you bite into your burger.

While the robot
has been preparing

all of your
personalized toppings,

it's also been grinding
the beef to order.

- We throw cubes of chuck and
brisket right in the machine.

Not only does it
grind it to order,

after it grinds it aligns
the meat to go vertically

along with the way your
teeth bite into the patty,

and that makes it more tenderly
fall apart into your mouth.

- [Adam] The freshest and most
tender of burger patties

is also custom seasoned by you.

You get to choose from
12 different seasonings

and how much of each
you'd like on your burger.

And with choreographed timing,
your freshly grilled patty

meets your custom dressed
bun at the end of the line

where the two are assembled.

- [Alex] All I did was push
a button on a phone

and made the freshest, most
personalized burger out there.

That's freaking good.

- Americans have loved a
good hamburger for decades,

but you'd be surprised to know
a lot of other foods we love

exist because of the military.

- To show how much
American food has changed

in just 50 years,
it's vastly different

even just two generations
back what Americans are eating

and what Americans see as
even being an American food.

- [Adam] Some of the everyday
foods Americans eat today

became everyday foods
because of the military.

Take for example, soft and
delicious sandwich bread.

During World War II,
military food scientists

came up with a formula to
keep bread soft and fresh

even longer than before,

which is still being utilized
commercially to this day.

Plus Cheetos lovers might
know during World War II,

the military funded research
in dehydrating cheese,

which eventually led
to cheese powder.

At the end of the war, the
surplus of cheese powder

was sold to food makers
like the Frito Company,

which covered corn puffs
with the magical cheesy dust.

- [Edward] It's the sort of
thing that you just can't stop

having more of you
keep having to go back.

And there's just something
about the satisfaction

at the very end where
you lick your fingers.

That specifically
that last moment

is what I most
remember growing up.

-[Adam] We may not have had any
of these culinary advances

without food technologists
like Laurie and her team

who are constantly
finding the newest ways

to push food into the future.

- Today what we'll
be able to show you

is we're doing a
tube food production.

Oh this is something I'm pretty
sure you have never seen.

- [Adam] Okay [laughs].

- These are tube
foods for U-2 pilots.

- Really?
- Yep.

- [Adam] The men and women
flying U-2 spy planes

monitor war zones and
targets all over the world.

- U-2 pilots fly at
very high altitudes

wearing a pressurized
suit and helmet

so they cannot eat the food
with their hands or utensils.

- [Adam] And they are up
there sometimes

for 12 hours at a time.

So, since pilots need to keep
their hands on the controls

and their eyes on the ground,

enter one of Natick's
most successful

and efficient products,
the tube food.

[upbeat dramatic music]

Now I noticed that
these don't have labels.

When I see tubes with this kind
of applicators it scares me.

- Well after we process them,
we do apply labels to them.

But I purposely took
these labels off

because I wanted to see
if you wanted to try them

and guess what they were.

- Oh, I absolutely want that.

[suspenseful music]

[upbeat dramatic music]

Wait a darn minute.

[suspenseful music]

Is that spaghetti and meatballs?

- It's spaghetti and
meat sauce, good guess.

- Oh my gosh.
- Yep.

- So is that a piece of pasta?
- Yep.

- It's incredible and it's
really good meat sauce.

There's clearly onion,
clearly has like that rich

sort of umami you get
from a good tomato sauce.

It's absolutely stunning.

These foods in tubes really
do give the mouth feel

and the experience of
actually eating a meal,

which is different
than the apple sauce

or pureed beef and vegetables
John Glenn was eating

from a tube back in the 1960s.

This is like the three
course dinner chewing gum

that Willy Wonka
made at his factory.

Now here's number two.

So okay it literally looks like

something like honey mustard.

[suspenseful music]

No way, is this
truffle mac and cheese.

- That's exactly what it
is, truffle mac and cheese.

- And you guys are
using real truffle?

- Real truffle oil, yes.

- It is phenomenal.
[laughing]

It's so good, I
can't stop eating it.

Round three, fight.

Looks like an aioli.

[lively instrumental music]

[lively instrumental music]

Holy moly.

[upbeat dramatic music]

- [Adam] The year, 1986,

my age 12,

the dream become a fighter
pilot like Maverick in Top Gun.

Well, I guess things played
out a little bit different.

But today I get a
consolation prize,

I'm eating just like the
pilot of a U-2 spy plane

and with 21st century
technology.

Come on talk to me goose.

Looks like an aioli.

That's apple pie.

- That's apple pie
dessert, that's right.

- Holy moly, but how on Earth

did you get the crust in there?

- It's real crust ingredients.

- So do you make a pie
and then blend the pie?

- It's more of an apple pie
filling with crust blended in.

- The crust is the thing
that's breaking my brain

a little bit Laurie.

The folks at Natick
totally understand

that hunger is
probably best satisfied

by the act of
actually chewing food

not just pumping our
bodies with calories.

And one day when I go to space,

I'm definitely gonna be hungry
for more than apple sauce.

But not all our foods are
conducive for space travel

or at least not yet.

- [Nilou] When you think about
barbecue or burgers

grilling in the backyard,
we love to feed the beast.

The commercial ability of
basically making you be able

to have meat at any
moment that you want to

by going to the supermarket
has made it so that we feel

that it's simple, that it's
a natural part of our diet.

- You won't be disappointed
in there steaks ma'am.

- That Norman Rockwell
image of the table of plenty

with the big turkey
is just so incredibly

20th century American dream.

- What we've evolved into is
a culture where we think that

in order for a meal
to be complete,

the center piece needs to
be a large piece of meat.

[lively upbeat music]

- [Adam] But what if
in the future,

science helps us
redefine what meat is?

[lively upbeat music]

Impossible Foods,
plant-based meat alternatives

have recently been popping up
on menus at iconic restaurants

around the country like Burger
King, White Castle and more.

They're on a mission to
convert avout meat lovers

to plant-based alternatives
that look, taste

and even bleed like
the real thing.

They're looking at meat not
just as a by-product of animals.

They're breaking it down to
inspect each and every molecule

so they can figure out
what plant-based sources

contain the same molecules.

Then they extract those
molecules from plant products

and mash them up together
again to replicate the juicy,

tender meaty experience
we as meat lovers crave.

- When you actually break
it down and ask consumers,

what is the number one
most important thing

when choosing the food
that they purchase?

Flavor is always their
number one choice.

So our first goal was
to really understand

what makes meat taste like meat.

Actually, it's a
really complex mixture

of like over 200 compounds.

- [Adam] Impossible Foods
does this

thanks to this
machine right here,

the gas chromatography
mass spectrometry machine.

Let's just call it the GCMS.

This thing takes a piece
of meat and breaks it down

until it reaches the gas phase.

Then generates a report telling
you what aromas and flavors

are detected in the meat sample.

Not just beef, you could
put a piece of chicken, pork

or even fish in there and the
GCMS will tell you what smells

and tastes are present.

- You can see that the
detector is picking up

all of these individual peaks

which represent different
flavor compounds and aromas.

So it's our job then
to go in and understand

which of those are
the most important

to make something that your
brain recognizes as meat.

- But flavors and aromas,
don't add up to meat.

Where's the beef? Well,
that's what comes next.

After the GCMS showed what
compounds were present,

the crazy smart scientists
at Impossible Foods

discovered something present
across all living matters,

including plants.

- They discovered this
iron molecule called heme,

which is the key ingredient

that makes meat taste like meat.

And when people crave meat,
it's really a craving for heme.

- Heme is the iron
containing molecule

that aids in carrying oxygen
throughout all living matter,

animals and plants.

It is essential for
life and it turns out

heme is what gives meat
that flavor we crave.

- If you look at
different types of meat,

the only thing that's different

is really the
concentration of heme.

So red meat and beef
from cows is red

because it has a lot of heme
and pork is a little less red

because it has less heme and
then chicken even less so.

It also is what's
giving you that color

and actually goes through the
same exact color transition

when you cook it.

- So once the scientists
came across heme,

they got to working on how
to sustainably and rapidly

reproduce the molecule in bulk.

And for the science geniuses
at Impossible it was simple,

yeast fermentation.

- The process that we use to
ferment yeast to make heme

is used to make a beer and wine

and we're utilizing that
same process of fermentation

from yeast in order to
make our key ingredient.

- And for all of you
doubters out there,

Impossible Foods executive chef

has one more thing to show you.

- This is gonna eat,
chew, respond, react

just how you cook it
just how you eat it;

the same characteristics
of any beef hamburger

just made from plants.

- If it looks like a burger
and tastes like a burger,

I'm probably gonna
call it a burger

no matter how it's made.

Now if they could only
just put one into a tube.

Now we're getting a
behind the scenes look

at how Natick Labs
makes the tube foods

that may one day be the
meals we eat on the go,

an entire dish at the
squeeze of our fingers.

So what are you guys making
right now on the line?

- They're making a caffeinated
chocolate pudding today.

- Can I see how it's made?
- Yeah lets go.

- Let's go.

Today we're venturing where no
man has eaten before,

the future and more
precisely the future of food.

I just taste tested the
newest meals in tubes

that the military has developed.

And naturally I had to see
how they were being made.

- So alright, walk you
through the process.

- Laurie and Dan
are going to show us

how they make these tube
foods which who knows,

one day we may be able to pick
up at our local grocery store

as easily as we buy
a carton of milk.

To make caffeine dense
chocolate pudding, sugar, cocoa,

butter, milk and
powdered caffeine

are added to this
vat where it heats

just like you'd make pudding
on the stove at home.

- Then it goes off and
over here into this hopper.

- [Adam] The hopper is attached
to several nozzles

pumping the food into tubes,
in this case it's pudding

but it could be the delicious
spaghetti and meat sauce

that I had earlier.

The food gets pumped into
a maximum of 1200 tubes

in just one run.

After the tubes are filled

the ends are folded
and crimped to seal.

Now one puts it together.

- Puts a big fold,

doubles that fold and a
third stage turns it around

and completes the fold.

And there's a last
station there at the end

which puts the date on it.

- Each of the foods
developed here

are created with
different goals in mind.

For example, the pudding
is to offer a pick me up

for long shifts but other tube
foods are meant to be meals.

So how long with the meal last?

- These will last three
years at 80 degrees.

- Wow.

- At least.
- At least.

- You have to think about
weight, volume, nutrition,

shelf stability, you're like
that machine on "The Jetsons"

where they could press a button

Well, we may not be
"The Jetsons" quite yet

but we are getting closer.

[lively instrumental music]

- Welcome to Picnic
headquarters,

we're making the world's first

automated pizza
production system

for restaurants and
commercial food operators.

- Custom made gourmet pizza
doesn't sound futuristic,

but how it's made has the
future written all over it.

Picnic is reinvisioning
pizza making

with their automatic
assembly line

programed to crank
out pizza pies fast

and with all the fixes.

- Food service is a
hard, tedious

sometimes a dangerous job

and automation can
make it easier.

[lively instrumental music]

- [Adam] Picnic isn't
selling pizzas,

they're manufacturing
and developing this robot

to help make the
pizza making process

more efficient, cost-effective
and standardized

so you can depend on the
same great tasting pizza

every time.

- Our system it's not
a robot, it's a cobot

meaning that it is
designed to work

in cooperation
with human workers

not to fully replace
human workers.

- It's true, while this cobot
assembles pies like any tool,

it just doesn't work
without a chef's touch.

Fresh ingredients are
prepared and loaded

into the system's compartments.

And of course, before anything
else, there's the dough.

- Our system will handle any
dough, frozen, hand-tossed,

any shape, any
size, any thickness.

So Brian's gonna enter the
order into the touch screen.

And as soon as the system
recognizes the order,

it automatically starts moving.

- This sleek piece of
futuristic machinery

is outfitted with
cameras to make sure

just the right amount of
each ingredient is added.

- So because this is a supreme,

it's gonna get every ingredient
that's mounted today.

We have fresh sliced
pepperoni, right off the stick.

And then we're going
to put sausage, onions

and green peppers on this pizza

so it's getting a
little of everything.

- And the assembly is whip fast.

- Our system can make up to
300 custom pizzas per hour,

it's part of what makes
our system unique.

- No matter how you slice it,

this system seems like
the way of the future.

[lively upbeat music]

And Laurie's team
of food scientists

is right at the cutting
edge of our edible future,

creating teeny tiny, compressed
and nutrient dense foods.

- [Laurie] Another way that we
hope to show you today

is using a combination of
pressure and ultrasonic energy.

- Ultrasonic energy?

- Mmh.

- Show me that.

- [Adam] Where would we be
without the technological leaps

that led to our favorite
foods, developments

like powdered cheese.

To this day the
military is researching

technological advances
that could bring us

our future favorite foods.

- [Laurie] This is
Dr. Ann Barrett.

- [Adam] Hi doc.

- [Laurie] Ann is an expert in a
novel compression technology

called ultrasonic agglomeration.

- [Adam] Ultrasonic
agglomeration

was first developed for
the plastics industry

but it was Dr. Ann
and her colleagues

who adapted that high
technology to food.

It uses ultrasonic
vibrations and energy

to almost melt powdered foods

and transform it into a solid.

- We are taking the
tropical fruit powders,

which actually contain
real fruits and vegetables.

- [Adam] Okay.

- [Laurie] And we're going to
weld them into a small chewable

candy type of product.

- Alright, I'm gonna
watch this happen.

- Alright.

This has the ultrasonic horn,
it's vibrating ultrasonically

so it will make sound.

- The sound waves
cause vibrations

on the powdered fruit particles

so they rub against each
other at a very fast rate.

That causes friction
which also causes heat,

making the surfaces
melt or soften.

Then the compression
component of the machine

forces the heated
particles together.

So the softened surfaces
can melt together

and form a solid.

Dr. Ann places about 15
grams of dried powdered fruit

under the ultrasonic horn.

[lively upbeat music]

I heard it, I felt
it in my teeth, wow.

- See how fast that is?

- The powdered fruit
is now compressed

into a chewy vitamin
packed candy snack,

giving soldiers the
vitamin boost they need.

And now I get the
unique opportunity

to taste one of the
first foods ever made

with the energy of sound waves.

It's super bendy almost
like a fruit roll-up.

[sniffing]

Hmm, it's like a Chewy Granola
Bar or Chewy Nature Bar.

I can taste mango very
very very prominently.

Hmm, and apple.

- Mmh, so far so good [laughs].

- There's a faint
kind of carroty note.

- There's carrot in it, yeah.

- This is crazy,
this was powder.

And I've already identified
different real fruits

that are in it.

Hmm Hmm Hmm.

Powder manifesting into food

has changed the
future of food before.

It's beater-leaking
delicious and as easy as pie

except it's cake in a box.

♪ Guaranteed perfect
every time you bake ♪

♪ Cake after cake after cake

- [Adam] Boxed cake mix is so
common to us today.

But before the 1930s,
if you wanted a cake,

you had to make it
entirely from scratch.

The box of dried cake mix was
officially patented in 1933

by John D. Duff
from Pennsylvania.

His molasses company
had a supply surplus,

so rather than toss it
out Duff figure it out

how to successfully dehydrate
molasses into powder,

which he mixed with other
powdered ingredients

to make cake!

Like flour, sugar,
salt and baking soda.

His original use was
for gingerbread cake

and in a subsequent patent,
he also introduced mixes

for white, spice and
devil's food cake.

But it wasn't until
post-World War II

that we learned to love the
convenience of just adding eggs.

This act of cracking
fresh eggs and mixing them

into a conveniently
prepared cake mix

like Duncan Hines
or Betty Crocker

made us feel like we actually
baked a cake from scratch,

without actually having to
bake a cake from scratch.

- [Presenter] A light and tender
Betty Crocker yellow cake,

perfect anytime.

- The indispensable convenience
of powdered cake mix

revolutionized baking.

It meant that any meal
could be as special

as a birthday celebration
by just adding eggs.

Dehydrated cake mix
isn't the only dried food

that revolutionized
the food industry,

the military has been
dehydrating foods

since World War II

using what was then a
cutting-edge technique,

the freeze-drying method.

And that new technique bled
into now famous favorites

like freeze dried fruits or
even Nissin's instant noodles.

But now they're working
on a new futuristic

dehydration method that sounds

like something out of
Star Trek, but it isn't.

- [Laurie] Well come on in, this
is the pilot plant here

and I'm going to introduce
you to Lauren O'Connor

and she does
product development.

Right now she's working
on new components

for the close combat
assault ration.

- [Adam] The decades old
freeze-drying method

has been the military's go-to

for dehydrating and
preserving foods

for soldiers on the move.

Today, we'll get
to taste something

that has been freeze-dried
the usual way.

Then we'll also get to
taste that same food

using the newer
high-tech method,

which almost no one
else has tasted.

The first prototypes haven't
even been field tested yet,

but Laurie and her
team are giving us

the first look at this
mind-blowing technology.

[lively upbeat music]

For decades the US military

has funded the research
and development

of culinary advancements
that eventually led

to some of our favorite foods.

The team at Natick Labs
continues those efforts,

investigating which
way the future of food

can be taken to the next level.

Today, I get to taste test
their latest discovery

in dehydration.

It could have repercussions
on the packaged

and preserved foods
that we buy today.

And it could also open up doors

for a variety of unexpected
foods in smaller sizes

that keep longer than before.

It's called vacuum
microwave drying or VMD.

Food technologists Lauren

is baking a fresh batch
of coffee cake today.

- This has all the
typical things you'd see

in a homemade coffee cake,
which is the great thing

about this technology is you
can take a regular recipe

and turn it into a
formula for the rations.

- This is pretty great

for several packaged
and preserved foods

that even we buy at
our grocery stores,

manufacturers and preservatives

that we'd never use
in our home kitchens

like sorbic acid or
Mono and Diglyceride.

But now Natick Labs is able to
use just regular ingredients

like butter and cream because
they're preserving foods

using the vanguard
of food technology

that surrounds us in
this kitchen, like VMD.

For both freeze-drying

and vacuum microwave
drying techniques,

the first step is
making the food.

In this case, it's
preservative free food.

This coffee cake is going
into the oven at 350 degrees

and 30 minutes later
it's fully baked.

It smells so good and it smells
the grandma's kitchen here.

[laughing]

And then like just beyond,

there's a guy with like
[laughs] an AR-15 gun,

parachuting in guys
with a 50 Cal on a Jeep.

Next, Food Scientist Dr. Tom
will slice up this coffee cake

and separate them into two
batches for dehydration.

First is the old school
freeze-drying method.

Once the item is frozen,

the moisture inside will have
turned into ice crystals.

Then it's placed in a
freeze dryer under a vacuum

where the dry heat is applied.

It causes the ice
crystals to vaporize

leaving behind air
pockets in their place.

Once these coffee cake
slices are dehydrated,

they get packed into
airtight pouches,

preserving it for
up to three years

for soldiers out in the field.

By eliminating any
re-introduction of moisture,

it virtually stops
bacteria from forming

thus preserving the foods.

Modern freeze-drying has been
the drying technique of choice

used by the military and NASA
since the fifties and sixties.

It's the technology that
brought us the creamy sweet

yet curiously crunchy
astronaut ice cream.

This freeze-dried
dessert took flight

on the Apollo 7 space mission
in October, 1968,

supposedly.

It turns out after
all these decades

of fawning over this novelty
treated space museum gift shops

astronaut ice cream
might be a farce.

In recent years, Astronaut
Walter Cunningham

who was aboard Apollo 7 said,
"We never had that stuff."

- So this is a freeze dryer

and we're going to
load the sample.

- You know he's
a food scientist,

he took a tray of cake
and called it a sample.

- Close it, start operating.

- And how long does
the process take?

- 48 to 72 hours.

- Two to three days?

- That's why freeze-drying
is so expensive.

- And that's why the team
at Natick has been working

with a new and improved
technology,

vacuum microwave drying.

[upbeat dramatic music]

- I'm now going lower
the VMD samples.

- [Adam] Okay, so regardless
of freeze-drying

or vacuum microwave drying,
everything gets frozen first?

- Yeah.
- So how long does VMD take?

- For this product it takes
about 15 to 18 minutes, yes.

- 15 to 18 minutes
versus two to three days,

why on Earth would you
ever do freeze-drying?

- Right.

- Natick Labs is
one of few places

preserving food using VMD.

And once Laurie's team
has cracked the code,

we could be eating up tons
of different food this way.

And it rotates I guess
during the process?

- Correct, advantage
of this one is

because you use microwave

so you can uniformly
dry the product.

- So is this doing
both processes at once?

It's a microwaving--

- And vacuuming
at the same time.

- Get you a machine
that can do both.

- [Laurie] And the
other advantage is

we don't have to dry this down
all the way to bone dry

while the freeze-dry process
takes it completely dry.

Tom can kind of decide how
dry he wants to make it.

- With the ability
to adjust dryness,

each food item has the
potential to be more appetizing.

There's some freeze-dried
foods you can just add water to

like a cup of instant noodles.

But it wouldn't be appetizing
to add water to coffee cake.

So if this technology succeeds,

it allows for a much
wider variety of foods

to be dehydrated
and still be delicious.

It's much more cost
and time efficient

which means dehydrated foods
that are almost identical

to their original form can be
more affordable and available

to the average consumer
holding more nutrition

and tasting better overall.

For today, coffee cake is
the prototype on the menu.

First, we have
Lauren's original bake.

Second and third are the
two dehydrated slices

via two different
drying methods,

which is which we don't know.

But it's amazing because they
both look virtually the same

as the original bake.

And if the tastes
are comparable,

I could be getting
the very first bite

of the future of
dehydrated food.

- [Adam] Oh!

- [Adam] Welcome back to the
future.

We're at Natick Labs,

where they're pushing culinary
technology to the limit.

But while the teams
here in the past

have given us some of the
greatest advancements in food,

not all futuristic
foods from the past

have been so successful.

Let's explore the
past future of food

as what they may have
predicted right or wrong.

- In the 1950s, a writer
for Science Digest

predicted that we would
all be grazing our own beef

in our backyards and
those cows would be

about the size of dogs.

Radiation would have
produced these mini cows

which would be the perfect
serving size for our family.

- Maybe it doesn't
take radiation,

but some people do eat small
cows by way of their calf

aka veal.

Another past vision
of future food

that actually became quite the
success might surprise you.

And the underlying technology

was developed by the
military's food researchers,

the saucy restructured
meat phenomenon known as

the McDonald's
McRib sandwich.

It originally made
its debut in 1981.

It's made by taking primarily
undervalued pork trimmings

and sort of gluing it
together so to speak

which food technologists
originally developed

for the military
back in the sixties.

Now if we go back to December,
1900, Ladies' Home Journal

published an article
forecasting that in the future

vegetables would be
grown with electricity.

But where on Earth can
real life plants grow

using just electricity?

Well, it turns out
they were right

and the answer is everywhere.

All you need is some water
and a shipping container.

[lively upbeat music]

Freight Farms is a company

that somehow created
hydroponic farms

scaled to fit into 320 square
foot shipping containers.

Today, we're getting an
intimate look at one of those.

Wiseacre Farms.

In these tight quarters, Aviad
Scheinfeld and his dad Sam

are growing two acres of
traditional farm land.

Meaning the equivalent
amount of land you'd need

for the same amount of crops
would take over 270 times

that of this container.

All together there are about
8,000 living plants in here,

thanks to 88 plant panels

hanging vertically against
the container walls.

And all of this can
be done without sun,

just like Ladies' Home Journal
predicted back at 1900.

- So in this farm instead
of depending on sunlight,

we make our own
with the led panels.

- That means the plants
sunbathe every day,

starting at 4:00 PM till 8:00 AM

when the led lights go out
and the work lights come on

at which point Aviad and his dad

can tend to the plants,
harvest as needed

and plant and sow new seeds

without disrupting the
natural growing process.

It allows Aviad and his dad
to deliver fresh produce

directly to people's homes
within hours of harvest,

rain or shine.

- Back my good days we
had to plow the ground

then we had to plant
waiting for the rain

and then in the end of spring,
we came back to harvest,

it took about six months.

With a lot of grain in
here, it takes us five, six,

seven weeks between
the time we seed

and the time we harvest.

So I know exactly
when I'm going to get

and what I'm going to get.

- The technology behind
container farming

could mean we may all be
Dr. Greenthumbs one day,

never killing a plant
and always having access

to fresh produce even when
the sun isn't shining.

But now that we've
had our vegetables,

let's get some dessert,
high tech dessert.

Natick Labs is at the
brink of cracking the code

to the future of food
dehydration and preservation

with the latest technology
of vacuum microwave drying.

And I'm getting a sneak peek
at their latest prototype

with this coffee cake.

- [Tom] There you go have fun.

- [Laurie] Thank you, Tom.

- [Adam] Thank you.

I am on a blind taste test
of different coffee cakes.

One will be Lauren's
original bake,

the other two will be two
different dehydrated versions.

One is freeze-dried,
the dehydration method

that's been used in the food
and pharmaceutical industry

for decades.

The other was
dehydrated in a machine

that looks like it's from
"2001: A Space Odyssey",

the vacuum microwave dryer.

If Laurie's team can make a
great-tasting dried coffee cake

using this new method, we could
all be seeing a cornucopia

of preservative-free
dehydrated foods

in every grocery and
convenience store.

So this is the fresh
one that Lauren made.

- That's correct.

- [Adam] Okay, it feels
so moist.

Well done, Lauren.

That's so good [mumbling]
[laughing]

- It's like kind
of like pound cake

in terms of like the
richness and that stickiness.

Oh, okay so number two.

And this still smells like when
you had the ingredients out.

[suspenseful music]

Yeah I can't...

It blows my mind that
this has been dried

and still smells
like coffee cake.

Okay, now the next one.

Again, you would look at this

you immediately know
it's coffee cake.

[suspenseful music]

And I remember what you said

that the VMD has a
little more give,

which leads me to believe this
is probably the freeze-dried,

then I would say
VMD in the middle.

- [Laurie] That is exactly
correct, you got it.

- [Adam] What's also crazy
is that in my mouth,

I have that butter
feeling and like,

you think it would only be
manifesting the fresh one,

but as you chew it comes
out in all of them.

What's so amazing about this
is, is that the VMD coffee cake

tasted so much like Lauren's
original coffee cake

and without any
preservatives or chemicals,

which several packaged foods
at the grocery store need

for shelf stabilization.

There's no telling
what this could mean.

Not only for the types of food

that may be added to
our grocery isles,

but also without having to worry

about eating a ton of additives.

If this is what the teams at
Natick have been researching

and developing all these years,

the future of food is boundless
not just for the military.

We can't forget

that the technology
explored at Natick Labs

often becomes the food
industries advances

that the American public
gets to enjoy too.

And as long as we stay
inspired and keep innovating,

the sky is the limit.

But I think we're in pretty
good hands right now.

We've seen how
facilities like this one

are constantly pushing
the technological envelope

when it comes to
feeding our military,

we've seen the impossible
become possible

with meat that isn't meat.

We have seen robots
flipping burgers

and we learned that
size isn't everything

when it comes to the
farms of the future.

So make sure your
DeLorean has a cup holder

because the future of
food looks delicious.

Oh my God that's pizza.

[upbeat dramatic music]