Colin Todhunter – Off Guardian Dec 2, 2024

Sainsbury’s is one of the ‘big six’ supermarkets in the UK. In 2019, it released its Future of Food report. It is not merely a misguided attempt at forecasting future trends and habits; it reads more like a manifesto for corporate control and technocratic tyranny disguised as ‘progress’.

This document epitomises everything wrong with the industrial food system’s vision for our future. It represents a dystopian roadmap to a world where our most fundamental connection to nature and culture — our food — is hijacked by corporate interests and mediated through a maze of unnecessary and potentially harmful technologies.

The wild predictions and technological ‘solutions’ presented in the report reveal a profound disconnection from the lived experiences of ordinary people and the real challenges facing our food systems. Its claim (in 2019) that a quarter of Britons will be vegetarian by 2025 seems way off the mark. But it fits a narrative that seeks to reshape our diets and food culture.

Once you convince the reader that things are going to be a certain way in the future, it is easier to pave the way for normalising what appears elsewhere in the report: lab-grown meat, 3D-printed foods and space farming.

Of course, the underlying assumption is that giant corporations — and supermarkets like Sainsbury’s — will be controlling everything and rolling out marvellous ‘innovations’ under the guise of ‘feeding the world’ or ‘saving the planet’. There is no concern expressed in the report about the consolidation of corporate-technocratic control over the food system.

By promoting high-tech solutions, the report seemingly advocates for a future where our food supply is entirely dependent on complex technologies controlled by a handful of corporations.

The report talks of ‘artisan factories’ run by robots. Is this meant to get ordinary people to buy into Sainsbury’s vision of the future? Possibly, if the intention is to further alienate people from their food sources, making them ever more dependent on corporate-controlled, ultra-processed products.

It’s a future where the art of cooking, the joy of growing food and the cultural significance of traditional dishes are replaced by sterile, automated processes devoid of human touch and cultural meaning. This erosion of food culture and skills is not an unintended consequence — it’s a core feature of the corporate food system’s strategy to create a captive market of consumers unable to feed themselves without corporate intervention.

The report’s enthusiasm for personalised nutrition driven by AI and biometric data is akin to an Orwellian scenario that would give corporations unprecedented control over our dietary choices, turning the most fundamental human need into a data-mined, algorithm-driven commodity.

The privacy implications are staggering, as is the potential for new forms of discrimination and social control based on eating habits. Imagine a world where your insurance premiums are tied to your adherence to a corporate-prescribed diet or where your employment prospects are influenced by your ‘Food ID’. The possible dystopian reality lurking behind Sainsbury’s glossy predictions.

The report’s fixation on exotic ingredients like jellyfish and lichen draws attention away from the real issues affecting our food systems — corporate concentration, environmental degradation and the systematic destruction of local food cultures and economies. It would be better to address the root causes of food insecurity and malnutrition, which are fundamentally issues of poverty and inequality, not a lack of novel food sources.

Nothing is mentioned about the vital role of agroecology, traditional farming knowledge and food sovereignty in creating truly sustainable and just food systems. Instead, what we see is a future where every aspect of our diet is mediated by technology and corporate interests, from gene-edited crops to synthetic biology-derived foods. A direct assault on the principles of food sovereignty, which assert the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods.

The report’s emphasis on lab-grown meat and other high-tech protein sources is particularly troubling. These technologies, far from being the environmental saviours they are promoted as, risk increasing energy use and further centralising food production in the hands of a few tech giants.

The massive energy requirements for large-scale cultured meat production are conveniently glossed over, as are the potential health risks of consuming these novel foods without long-term safety studies. This push for synthetic foods is not about sustainability or animal welfare — it’s about creating new, patentable food sources that can be controlled and monetised by corporations.

Moreover, the push for synthetic foods and ‘precision fermentation’ threatens to destroy the livelihoods of millions of small farmers and pastoralists worldwide, replacing them with a handful of high-tech facilities controlled by multinational corporations.

Is this meant to be ‘progress’?

It’s more like a boardroom recipe for increased food insecurity, rural poverty and corporate monopolisation. The destruction of traditional farming communities and practices would not only be an economic disaster but a cultural catastrophe, erasing millennia of accumulated knowledge and wisdom about sustainable food production.

The report’s casual mention of ‘sin taxes’ on meat signals a future where our dietary choices are increasingly policed and penalised by the state, likely at the behest of corporate interests.

The Issue of Meat

However, on the issue of the need to reduce meat consumption and replace meat with laboratory-manufactured items in order to reduce carbon emissions, it must be stated that the dramatic increase in the amount of meat consumed post-1945 was not necessarily the result of consumer preference; it had more to do with political policy, the mechanisation of agriculture and Green Revolution practices.

That much was made clear by Laila Kassam, who, in her 2017 article What’s grain got to do with it? How the problem of surplus grain was solved by increasing ‘meat’ consumption in post-WWII US, asked:

Have you ever wondered how ‘meat’ became such a central part of the Western diet? Or how the industrialisation of ‘animal agriculture’ came about? It might seem like the natural outcome of the ‘free market’ meeting demand for more ‘meat’. But from what I have learned from Nibert (2002) and Winders and Nibert (2004), the story of how ‘meat’ consumption increased so much in the post-World War II period is anything but natural. They argue it is largely due to a decision in the 1940s by the US government to deal with the problem of surplus grain by increasing the production of ‘meat’.”

Kassam remarks:

“In the second half of the 20th century, global ‘meat’ production increased by nearly 5 times. The amount of ‘meat’ eaten per person doubled. By 2050 ‘meat’ consumption is estimated to increase by 160 percent (The World Counts, 2017). While global per capita ‘meat’ consumption is currently 43 kg/year, it is nearly double in the UK (82 kg/year) and almost triple in the US (118 kg/year).”

Kassam notes that habits and desires are manipulated by elite groups for their own interests. Propaganda, advertising and ‘public relations’ are used to manufacture demand for products. Agribusiness corporations and the state have used these techniques to encourage ‘meat’ consumption, leading to the slaughter and untold misery of billions of creatures, as Kassam makes clear.

People were manipulated to buy into ‘meat culture’. Now they are being manipulated to buy out, again by elite groups. But ‘sin taxes’ and Orwellian-type controls on individual behaviour are not the way to go about reducing meat consumption.

So, what is the answer?

Kassam says that one way to do this is to support grassroots organisations and movements which are working to resist the power of global agribusiness and reclaim our food systems. Movements for food justice and food sovereignty which promote sustainable, agroecological production systems.

At least then people will be free from corporate manipulation and better placed to make their own food choices.

As Kassam says:

From what I have learned so far, our oppression of other animals is not just a result of individual choices. It is underpinned by a state supported economic system driven by profit.”

Misplaced Priorities

Meanwhile, Sainsbury’s vision of food production in space and on other planets is perhaps the most egregious example of misplaced priorities. While around a billion struggle with hunger and malnutrition and many more with micronutrient deficiencies, corporate futurists are fantasising about growing food on Mars.

Is this supposed to be visionary thinking?

It’s a perfect encapsulation of the technocratic mindset that believes every problem can be solved with more technology, no matter how impractical or divorced from reality.

Moreover, by promoting a future dependent on complex, centralised technologies, we become increasingly vulnerable to system failures and corporate monopolies. A truly resilient food system should be decentralised, diverse and rooted in local knowledge and resources.

The report’s emphasis on nutrient delivery through implants, patches and intravenous methods is particularly disturbing. This represents the ultimate commodification of nutrition, reducing food to mere fuel and stripping away all cultural, social and sensory aspects of eating. It’s a vision that treats the human body as a machine to be optimised, rather than a living being with complex needs and experiences.

The idea of ‘grow-your-own’ ingredients for cultured meat and other synthetic foods at home is another example of how this technocratic vision co-opts and perverts concepts of self-sufficiency and local food production. Instead of encouraging people to grow real, whole foods, it proposes a dystopian parody of home food production that still keeps consumers dependent on corporate-supplied technologies and inputs. A clever marketing ploy to make synthetic foods seem more natural and acceptable.

The report’s predictions about AI-driven personal nutrition advisors and highly customised diets based on individual ‘Food IDs’ raise serious privacy concerns and threaten to further medicalise our relationship with food. While personalised nutrition could offer some benefits, the level of data collection and analysis required for such systems could lead to unprecedented corporate control over our dietary choices.

Furthermore, the emphasis on ‘artisan’ factories run by robots completely misunderstands the nature of artisanal food production. True artisanal foods are the product of human skill, creativity and cultural knowledge passed down through generations. It’s a perfect example of how the technocratic mindset reduces everything to mere processes that can be automated, ignoring the human and cultural elements that give food its true value.

The report’s vision of meat ‘assembled’ on 3D printing belts is another disturbing example of the ultra-processed future being proposed. This approach to food production treats nutrition as a mere assembly of nutrients, ignoring the complex interactions between whole foods and the human body. It’s a continuation of the reductionist thinking that has led to the current epidemic of diet-related diseases.

Sainsbury’s is essentially advocating for a future where our diets are even further removed from natural, whole foods.

The concept of ‘farms’ cultivating plants to make growth serum for cells is yet another step towards the complete artificialisation of the food supply. This approach further distances food production from natural processes. It’s a vision of farming that has more in common with pharmaceutical production than traditional agriculture, and it threatens to complete the transformation of food from a natural resource into an industrial product.

Sainsbury’s apparent enthusiasm for gene-edited and synthetic biology-derived foods is also concerning. These technologies’ rapid adoption without thorough long-term safety studies and public debate could lead to unforeseen health and environmental impacts. The history of agricultural biotechnology is rife with examples of unintended consequences, from the development of herbicide-resistant superweeds to the contamination of non-GM crops.

Is Sainsbury’s uncritically promoting these technologies, disregarding the precautionary principle?

Issues like food insecurity, malnutrition and environmental degradation are not primarily technical problems — they are the result of inequitable distribution of resources, exploitative economic systems and misguided policies. By framing these issues as purely technological challenges, Sainsbury’s is diverting attention from the need for systemic change and social justice in the food system.

The high-tech solutions proposed are likely to be accessible only to the wealthy, at least initially, creating a two-tiered food system where the rich have access to ‘optimized’ nutrition while the poor are left with increasingly degraded and processed options.

But the report’s apparent disregard for the cultural and social aspects of food is perhaps its most fundamental flaw. Food is not merely fuel for our bodies; it’s a central part of our cultural identities, social relationships and connection to the natural world. By reducing food to a series of nutrients to be optimised and delivered in the most efficient manner possible, Sainsbury’s is proposing a future that is not only less healthy but less human.

While Sainsbury’s Future of Food report can be regarded as a roadmap to a better future, it is really a corporate wish list, representing a dangerous consolidation of power in the hands of agribusiness giants and tech companies at the expense of farmers, consumers and the environment.

The report is symptomatic of a wider ideology that seeks to legitimise total corporate control over our food supply. And the result? A homogenised, tech-driven dystopia.

A technocratic nightmare that gives no regard for implementing food systems that are truly democratic, ecologically sound and rooted in the needs and knowledge of local communities.

The real future of food lies not in corporate labs and AI algorithms, but in the fields of agroecological farmers, the kitchens of home cooks and the markets of local food producers.

The path forward is not through more technology and corporate control but through a return to the principles of agroecology, food sovereignty and cultural diversity.   

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This is an extract from the authors new open-access ebook Power Play: The future of Food. It can be read on Global Research, the publisher of the book, or downloaded via the OffGuardian bookshop

Colin Todhunter specialises in food, agriculture and development and is a research associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization in Montreal. You can read his two free books Food, Dependency and Dispossession: Resisting the New World Order and Sickening Profits: The Global Food System’s Poisoned Food and Toxic Wealth here.

 

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