Welcome to a Future Where Food Is Made from Thin Air

Last year when Henry and I were writing The Future Normal, we wrote about a trend we named Unnaturally Better and profiled Solar Foods, a company that had created a protein called Solein synthesized from carbon dioxide. Literally food from air. This week, I came across another story of a similar company called Savor that can create fats from air and is starting specifically with a butter product that looks and tastes like “real” butter produced from dairy sources. Some reports share that the real genesis for these initiatives started with NASA, which makes sense since these foods would be ideal food sources for eventual humans living in space.

In our rush to talk all about the future and focus on the role of technology and AI, innovations like this are easy to miss … but potentially far more widespread in the impact on our daily lives they could have. Transforming the way we feed our planet is a category of innovation that could touch everyone, every day no matter where they live or what they do for work. So, if you spend a lot of time right now watching videos and trying to learn about what an AI-enabled future might look like, this week might be your ideal moment to spend a bit of time imagining what our future might look like if we could produce food out of air.