So yes, today’s post is about my book. More than 1,000 days have passed since I decided to embark on this challenging but above all exciting adventure of being a book writer. “What does the future taste like?” is an easy to read and enjoyable book that faces issues relative to the food of the future.
The reason why I decided to write this book originated during a food microbiology lecture in which an empowering teacher, Joaquín Fábregas, taught my classmates and me that in the future, insects would be a common ingredient in our meals. This suddenly made me so curious about the subject. I still remember how, after that lecture, I began to read and research happily on edible insects. Later after this, I started to expand in the field to the much larger subject future of food, which involves more knowledge and subdisciplines.
And it was not until I saw my father successfully publish his first two books that he began to excite me about combining everything I had learned in one document. A document that I started and ended up naming What does the future taste like? Almost without expecting it, that was, in fact, my first published work.
When I wrote the book, I was 19 years old, which is the equivalent of 6,935 days, a 4-digit number that I could never have reached without the nutrition that was given to me since my first day of life. In this context, food, and especially the future of food, should concern every human being.
I simply wanted to share with the reader that we are all challenged to feed a growing population on a planet with limited resources.
In just over 50 years, the world population has doubled to 7,500 million individuals. By the year 2030, it is estimated that 8,500 million people will inhabit the planet. Moreover, life expectancy increases in all regions of the earth. All this together in conjunction with climate change.
The more I read, the more I realize that everything that happens to us today has its origin in what our ancestors have done. Our diet today is the consequence of what the generations that have preceded us did. Consequently, it seemed to me that telling and reviewing the history of food would be an attractive and fascinating tool for those who decided to read my book. That is why I organized a series of space-time trips with the reader through different time periods, each with its characteristics and curiosities. Obviously, there is also a trip to the future, which is a realistic prediction that shows us how we will feed ourselves in the coming decades.
We are presently very aware of the consequences of climate change. The number of actions aimed at ensuring the integrity of the planet is exponentially growing. Being conscientious about water consumption, recycling, turning off the light and using public transport are just some of the most immediate examples. In the same sense, predicting the future of agri-food also involves changing habits and behaviours.
I sincerely hope that this book helps raise awareness and, above all, increase adaptability about the great challenge that we will all have to face in no more than three decades.
ABOUT ME
My name is Pedro Rivero Ramos and I am a PhD student currently exploring the utilisation of natural polysaccharide-based networks as advanced food materials. I recently completed a Bachelor of Science in Food Science as well as a National Higher Diploma in Health and Dietetics. Additionally to this, I have been a Food Science Communicator for 4 years now. I have written for Spanish newspapers and magazines and participated in Spanish media (TV and radio). I also have published a book as mentioned in this article, the English edition is still on the way.
