In Green Queen’s “What Does the Future of Food Taste Like? A Lot Like Its Past, It Turns Out,” climate editor Jill Ettinger reflects on her attendance at Taste the Future: A Luncheon Celebration of the Future of Food, an event hosted by SOSV (IndieBio’s VC firm) and Apeiron Investment Group. The menu for the event featured animal-free ingredients developed by the firms’ portfolio companies, including several graduates of IndieBio (Endless West, NotCo, The Every Company, California Cultured) and was designed to showcase the latest food tech for investors, celebrities, and industry influencers. 

In the piece, Ettinger outlines the problems of the current food production system and its effects on global warming. She also describes how, although the popular term has become “the future of food,” what is really necessary is to go back to a more mindful way of eating: “Whether it’s an ancient grain or a genetically programmed yeast. All of these foods are aiming to connect us to what we eat in important ways—reconnect us, rather, to the ways we used to value food. Mindless consumption is both the driver and consequence of our current food system… We’ve resigned ourselves to seeing food as a byproduct of supermarkets, forgetting the organic roots of all that we put into our bodies and everything that entails.”