By: Shiva Neupane (Melbourne, Australia)

We are living in the age of modern science and Technology where we get constantly baffled with food science. We can assume how people in the past used to sprint relentlessly with arrows and bows to hunt down the wild lives in a lush forest. Their evolutionary urge for hunting the animals for the survival gave them the instinctual tricks for practicing the rudimentary method of cooking in a ritualistically mincing pace but not at the drop of a hat. 

Therefore, the idea of cooking food may have existed long before our civilization, meaning during the aforementioned Age. The Stone Age is the foundation of modern culinary practices and the art of cooking. 

It is undeniable fact that the people in the Stone Age must have been tacitly accustomed with what is now commonly known as Maillard reaction in cooking. The term Maillard reaction is a chemical reaction. It is named after French chemist Louis Camille Maillard. The Maillard reaction is a series of reactions that help to create a myriad of vital flavour compounds. The secret to unlocking the flavour in the meat will be generated by Maillard reaction. 

In the extreme heat the building blocks of proteins, the amino acids react with naturally occurring sugar in the meat product. The reaction becomes extremely complex and increases as the products of each reaction get involved in their own reactions.

When we talk about the importance of Maillard reaction in cooking, our forefathers must have known about how Maillard reaction had played a crucial role to make their meal more delicious although they were not well aware of its definitive meaning in relation to their version of cookery. It is our unequivocal guess that the primitive people must have sailed through the tumultuous journey to overcome their culinary-dilemmas when it came to unfold the basic art of cooking. Had they not struggled for the centuries during the Dark Age we wouldn’t have been where we are today to demystify this culinary conundrums and the agricultural perplexities. 

Therefore, the cooking techniques have transformed our culinary traditions over the centuries. As time went by, our forefathers had started to domesticate the livestock and cultivate the crops for the consumption. 

The practice of cultivating the crops and domesticating the livestock came to an end at the later centuries due to industrialization and globalization. Today the world has drastically changed and as with these changes the tendency of humans relaying on agriculture and their consumption of food have also changed. Gone are the days, we used to eat organic foods directly from our backyard. 

In the western societies people have shifted in the various dietary preferences. However, the majority of people are inclined to the processed food or fast food for one reason or the other albeit there is a growing health concern over what they have been eating. 

One of the compelling reasons must have been that in the developed countries people do not have time to grow organic crops owing to industrialization and globalization. To grow crops and relying on them for the consumption is not worth doing for an individual in the developed countries. An individual cannot outsmart this agricultural-dilemma. 

Therefore, it is implausible to try to live up to this ideal agricultural- utopia. 

In my speculation, we are still lucky to be where we are now. In the next few decades the future generation will not be able to enjoy the kind of food that we enjoy today. The diminishing of our ritualistic eating patterns will continue thanks to modernisation in agriculture. Our futuristic agriculture will be indoctrinated by food science and ultra-sophisticated biotechnology. 

It is for sure, people will not have time to rear the cattle for meat. They will not find it logical to spend time for rearing bovines or chicken for the meat production. The biotechnological industry will grow meat in the lab. 

The concept cellular agriculture will turn out to be a game changer for the culinary endeavour over the next century because it will certainly save the time for rearing the cattle and the otherwise be wasted time of human will be invested for other cosmic exploration. Therefore, in the distance future, people will not chose to subscribe today’s agricultural methods because this will be out-dated in the distance future. The lab grown or in vitro meat will come to everyone’s house in the drone.

 The butchery and slaughtering of animals will be the story of once upon a time. Instead of wasting time for rearing animal in the farm people chose to make a trip to the Mars and honeymooning to the moon because the practice of tissue-engineering in the lab will come into play to support the global demand for the meat. This will make people redundant from their agricultural task and cut down their huge time so that they can invest that otherwise be wasted time for the planetary tour like aforementioned. 

As an immigrant living in this modern country, it’s impossible for me to go back to my bucolic life in Falang a village of Syangja District to rear a buffalo in order for obtaining two litres of milk per day. It was unequivocally right for me to rear a buffalo two decades ago to obtain two litres milk as a matter of societal pride. But the today’s time is thousand times more valuable to me than the one I used to have two decades ago. 

Therefore, the future generation will have much more on their plate than we do. What I am trying to assert in the aforementioned paragraphs is that we find incalculably a dramatic spike in the value of time within this brief hiatus of our life. And this will come as a blot out of the blue when it comes to learn the value of futuristic time. They will have other extra-terrestrial priorities and the otherworldly missions to unfold the cosmic mysteries then just to worry about ploughing the field to put food on the table. 

Therefore, they will definitely live in what appears to be their culinary utopia by eating in vitro and cultured meat without wasting time for rearing tens of thousands of livestock in the future.

Mr. Shiva Neupane, is the author of In the Pursuit of Utopian Life in Australia and Falang English Dictionary. Falang Food Dictionary. His articles have been appeared in the Australian Mainstream Newspaper The Age, The Himalayan Times and The Nepali Times Australia. He can be contacted at: falang_socialwelfare@yahoo.com