Science The Future under the Magnifying Glass

Mani Samani
Contributor

Fo" single pills providing a day's
nutrition to bubble gum that serves
you a three-course dinner, bite-sized
food replacements have been present
in fiction for a long time and the fuss alll
started with the suffragette.

Food innovations have created every
manner of better eating through
chemistry. But why don't we have
food pills, which would solve problems
ranging from world hunger to messy
kitchens? Today there are pills to
provide the vitamins we need, which
leaves just the pesky issue of caloric
intake. Although an adult typically
needs about 2000 calories per day,
the question is why even the most
concentrated source (pure fat) can't

make that many calories fit into a single
pill?

Dr. Stephen Rader, bio-chemistry
professor at UNBC, answered some
questions:

Can we make energy available to our
bodies without using food?

This is an interesting question. If you
have a pill that you could take to
replace food, this would be presumably

“‘Lhaven't got it quite right yet.
-Willy Wonka

convenient because then instead of
having to cook to make food and
buying things you just take a pill. What
we are really talking about is energy
density, so the most energy rich food
that we have now is things like fats and
oils. Butters for example, have the most
energy per unit volume in unit weight.

So is it possible fo pack more than that
into a smaller volume?

Certainly for other processes there

is much denser form of energy. For
example, you can generate energy by
burning wood, but wood doesn't have
much energy in per unit weight in unit
volume. It is much more efficient to use
the efficient of uranium. There is an
example that there is a huge difference
in scale that you can operate on and
how much energy you can get from

a little bit of uranium vs. a little bit of
wood is many orders of magnitude
ditference. But our bodies are really
only able to use limited number of
things and | don't know any way to
pack those in smaller volumes. So |
would have to say no.

Would it be able to solve hunger
problems?

If you are providing all of the necessary

Part 3: Replacement Pills

vitamins and micronutrients in pil
form, then the only other thing that
you need is calories, the actual
energy that keeps your body
running, so in principle then

you could make something

that is cheap and easily
available and you would

give it to everybody and you
would supplement that with vitamins
that you would normally get by eating
a range of fruits and vegetables.

But can you really live off of the things
we get from food, like fatty acids and
carbohydrates, without eating actual
foode Dr. Mamdouh Shubair, assistant
professor of nutrition and food studies
at UNBC claims that it's probably

not the best idea. “The matter is
satisfactory, if you don't eat food there
is no way to have that satisfaction that
comes from enough food when you
are happy while eating. In the case of
pills it actually doesn't replace foods.
So pills give you the basics of our
bodies’ needs but you cannot live on
pills.” He says the problem of switching
from food to blended shakes containing
all the nutrients and micronutrients
humans are known to need is that you
are not certain about whether nutrients

in the
shakes are natural or
made of chemicals.

A few years ago, a man actually spent
a week eating nothing but monkey
chow and recorded the experience

on Youlube called “Monkey Chow
Diaries.” Not even halfway through, he
was almost manic with cravings for hot
food. The repetitious, barely satisfying
nature of the diet made him depressed
and irritable, and he joked about
acquiring monkey-like characteristics-
namely, the desire to scream at people
and throw poop.

To recapitulate, There's no way we
know of to achieve Willy Wonka's
dream of swallowing a pill that tastes
like a blueberry pie, and makes a
person feel as satisfied as eating a
real one.

Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory | Warner Bros.