Author: Jawdah Hannad Basara

There’s a bag of lettuce in your refrigerator right now, and you might be surprised by how strange its life has been. It most likely began in soil that was nourished by nitrogen extracted from natural gas in the Salinas Valley of California. It was cut by a diesel harvester. It was transported over the majority of a continent by a diesel truck. Petroleum was also used to make the plastic film that kept it crisp. If you go back far enough, lettuce is essentially refined oil that has learned to be environmentally friendly. Additionally, oil is currently embroiled in…

The word keeps coming up in the most unexpected places. You can find “the longevity mushroom” stamped on oyster mushroom blends, reishi powders, and even homemade tinctures that people seem to be feeding their dogs if you browse enough wellness-related websites. I’m usually suspicious of the phrase because of its marketing slickness. However, beneath all the breathless Facebook posts and Instagram captions that promise a 16% decrease in mortality, there is something truly fascinating happening that has nothing to do with the mushroom. It concerns a compound that the majority of people are unaware of. Ergothione. The marketers probably prefer…

From spice racks in Karachi to California, a yellow powder has subtly entered a discussion about Mars. Turmeric. Scientists attempting to determine how a human body might survive the lengthy, radioactive journey to the Red Planet are now interested in the same root that stains cutting boards and colors curry. At first, it seems like a stretch. It’s not quite. Turmeric is being asked to solve a brutally straightforward problem. Because Mars only has a thin layer of atmosphere and no actual magnetic shield, the radiation that Earth deflects essentially flows down without any problems. Astronauts would encounter solar energetic…

Engineers have been working for years in a lab outside of Turin to figure out how to prepare a meal that will survive the journey to Mars. The food must not go bad for months. After a long day of floating in a metal tube, it must taste like something someone would genuinely want to eat. Additionally, since deep space lacks a corner store, it must provide precise nutrition. The odd thing is that people who have never left the planet are now finding the same food, essentially, on their kitchen counters and in wellness stores. Argotec, an Italian company…

When you enter the food lab at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, the first thing you notice is that it doesn’t smell like a lab at all. It has a subtle barbecue scent. On plates bearing the iconic NASA worm logo, Xulei Wu, the lab manager for Space Food Systems, has arranged a spread that includes beef brisket, chicken in salsa, mac and cheese, braised red cabbage, a soft tortilla folded next to it, and a tiny cup of cherry-blueberry cobbler. Coffee is served alongside. To be honest, it resembles the menu of a respectable Texas roadside diner. The…

Rajat Bhageria frequently reminds people that his business is primarily a cemetery. There’s only one way to say it, and he says it almost cheerfully. DoorDash swallowed Chowbotics, the salad robot, and silently killed it. Before going out of business in 2023, Zume, the pizza truck dream, spent almost $400 million. The list is endless, and anyone who has followed the food-tech beat for a few years will recognize the pattern: a glossy magazine spread, a Series B, a slick demo, and then silence. Bhageria’s company, Chef Robotics, has chosen to forego the glamorous aspect. Celebrity chef collaborations and neon-lit…

A strange new dialogue is occurring somewhere between Oxford’s cardiac wards and the tiny glass screens we carry in our pockets. Physicians who previously relied solely on blood panels, stethoscopes, and the laborious calculation of cholesterol levels are now sitting across from software that says it can predict a heart attack ten years in advance. Although it sounds like science fiction, the research is actual, peer-reviewed, and subtly entering hospitals that are typically reluctant to adopt new practices. CaRi-Heart®, created by Professor Charalambos Antoniades and his team at the University of Oxford, is the most discussed of these tools. Compared…

Something has changed between searching for a recipe for banana bread at nine o’clock at night and actually finding one. Before you can give it a name, you can sense it. You no longer see the blog you once trusted, the one with the somewhat disorganized introduction about her grandmother’s Ohio kitchen and the a little too long tale about the time she burned a tray of cookies. It is replaced at the top of the page by a clear, self-assured AI summary that tells you precisely how much baking soda to use. Not a grandmother. No, Ohio. Not a…

These days, the term “the perfect recipe” is frequently used, particularly in kitchens where the cook is also using a phone. ChatGPT entered the conversation somewhere between the popularity of meal kits and the quiet weariness of trying to decide what to eat on a Tuesday night. And there was little fanfare when it arrived. In the same way that people used to Google recipes rather than take cookbooks off the shelf, people have just recently begun using it. The way the supposedly “perfect” recipe keeps coming up is intriguing. It’s not a single dish. The person typing the prompt…

On a Sunday night, when most bad ideas seem reasonable, the idea seemed reasonable enough. The takeout menus had started to look like wallpaper, the refrigerator was almost empty, and in between a half-eaten apple and the third unread email, the idea struck: let the machine decide. Twenty-one meals, seven days, and no human thought. Simply type the request and comply. In a matter of seconds, the first plane touched down. It appeared competent in the same way that a stranger’s resume appears competent before you read it. Almond butter and breakfast oats. A bowl of grains for lunch. Dinner…