(delicate music)
Welcome to the restaurant
at the end of the world.
This is Huset.
78 degrees north of the equator, the menu features
local fare, like reindeer, foraged mushrooms,
sea kelp, bearded seal, and blue cheese covered in ash.
The head chef, Philip Gemzel.
For me, it's a lot of wild flavors.
But it's also about simplicity.
It's definitely challenging to be in Svalbard.
When you discover something new, it's always a rush.
I'm doing something to be excited about all the time,
which is fantastic.
We don't have anything here.
Nothing is growing.
There's no trees, there's no vegetables.
There's no farms of any thing.
There's no pigs on the island.
So we gotta deal with the things we have around us.
All the protein we get, we get
from our hunters and trappers here in Svalbard.
All the fish that we use, all the chefs
go fishing together with the fishermen.
It's a different respect to what you do, really.
The lack of resources has served as inspiration
to dream up new tastes, textures and ingredients.
It's about making whatever you have
taste as good as possible and focus on that ingredient.
This is Svalbard reindeer.
It's lightly smoked, served with an onion vinegarette
that we make with Norwegian ice wine.
(gentle piano music)
So this is a mushroom soup
made with local mushrooms here in Svalbard.
There's not many things growing in Svalbard,
and this is one of very, very few.
I wanted to kind of recreate that environment
of where the mushrooms are, where we found them.
It's a very, very earthy flavor.
Finding inspiration in nature,
creating dishes based on seasonality and availability,
modern chefs like Philip are hoping
to inspire a sustainable future.
(stirring music)
The food industry contributes to some
of the greatest challenges facing humanity:
climate change, water scarcity, dwindling resources,
increased chronic disease, and overpopulation.
And the food of the future is going to be
as different as the world itself.
As cooks, scientists, foodies and citizens
begin to look forward, what will be the future of food?
(waves rumbling)
(sentimental string music)
On a remote island of the Svalbard archipelago,
halfway between Norway and the North Pole,
scientists are making plans for the food of the future.
If you fly into Svalbard, the only thing you will see
is ice, ice, ice, and ice.
If you are lucky, you might see one of
the three-and-a-half thousand polar bears.
I'm pretty sure you will see some of the 12,000
funny-looking reindeer that live here.
But except this, there's really nothing much in Svalbard.
Nothing grows here.
Except we then have the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.
This seed citadel holds
almost a million samples of plant species
originating from almost every country in the world.
It is our largest and most diverse
collection of crop species.
(laughing)
Marie Haga is head of the Global Crop Trust.
She and her colleagues have made global crop diversity
their mission for a very important reason.
Our food system is in deep trouble.
Our mandate is to safeguard the diversity
of crops around the globe.
As of today, 95% of the food we eat
actually come from 30 species.
60% of calorie intake comes from only three plants:
from rice,
from wheat,
and from maize.
This makes us extremely vulnerable.
We have a desperate need to develop a food system
that is more sustainable and more resilient.
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault
is one piece in the global puzzle
we are putting together to safeguard crop diversity.
It's more important than ever because of climate change.
Carved 500 feet into the side of a mountain,
standing 436 feet above sea level,
this bastion of hope was built to withstand
rising tides and temperatures.
You walk through a tunnel approximately 120 meters long.
Then when you're past actually four, five doors,
you'll come in through a huge white hall
that I like to call the cathedral.
In there you see an extremely icy door.
Behind that door, with all these beautiful ice crystals,
you will find just boxes, boxes, boxes, boxes of seeds.
We have crops from absolutely all over the world.
It's actually fascinating to think about;
that that is both the history of agriculture
and potentially the future.
(stirring music)
Contained in each of these boxes
are seeds which represent nearly 12,000 years of hard work
by our farming forefathers and mothers.
Though there are more than 1,700 gene banks
storing seeds around the world,
they can be vulnerable to war,
natural disasters and other threats.
Extremely important genetic material has gone lost.
And we in the Crop Trust are concerned
to conserve each one of these.
We desperately need to breed plants
that can stand higher temperature,
higher salinity in the soil.
We know that the plants we are growing today,
they take far too much water, so we need to develop plants
that can give good yields without the same amount of water.
We know we will have to fight new pests
and new diseases as a consequence of climate change.
And we of course always need to be concerned
about nutritional value and taste.
All of these things can be managed
if we are wise enough to safeguard
the diversity that we have, because one of them
might have the trait that we need today or tomorrow,
in 50 years or 200 years, to develop a plant
that can stand new environments.
(gentle piano music)
As we blast into a 21st century
rife with complex challenges,
food diversity is one of humanity's most potent weapons
in the fight against hunger.
Diversity of diet also gives us an opportunity
to achieve new levels of health and nutrition
by taking advantage of delicious foods
that are available in our own backyards.
Historically, we have eaten roughly 7,000 types of plants.
And, you know, many of these still exist,
and we should absolutely find
some of these forgotten foods.
Many of them are exciting.
They can have high nutritional value.
And as a chef, a cook,
somebody who cooks dinner for your family every day,
it could give a lot of inspiration.
(ethereal music)
But in the future, humanity will have to tackle
yet another rising challenge: food access.
By 2050, it is projected that 70%
of the world's 9.7 billion people will live in cities.
So who will be growing our food?
Throughout the world, hungry young entrepreneurs
are tackling this problem.
By engineering solutions for the future,
they are blurring the lines between the rural
and urban approach to food.
New York City.
Ask an New Yorker, this is the center of the universe.
(intriguing electronic music)
An archetype of all things metropolitan.
Even weeds struggle to grow in this tough environment.
But a new revolution is blossoming here.
What we hope at Square Roots
is that we're really unleashing this new generation
of entrepreneurs and these amazing farmers.
Square Roots in Brooklyn
is planting the seeds of a big idea,
right here in an industrial parking lot.
Business people, like Tobias, are trying to change
how people get their produce.
People want local food.
And with 70% of the world's population
to live in cities by 2050,
entrepreneurs will need to find a way
to satisfy urban demand.
Square Roots is really an attempt
to bring local, real food to everyone.
Today, most of us are at the mercy
of what we call the industrial food system,
which ships in high-calorie, low-nutrient food
often from thousands of miles away.
We've lost connection with that farmer.
What we want to do as Square Roots is start to grow food
right in the middle of the neighborhood,
next to the people that are gonna eat the food.
We're sat inside of a 320 square foot shipping right now.
It's a standard 40 foot shipping container.
This was probably on a boat to China two years ago.
We've been able to refurbish it and turn it into a farm.
We're growing vertically and that racking
our fields vertically, which means we're essentially
growing food in three dimensions instead of two dimensions.
We're probably growing about the equivalent
of a two-acre farm's worth of food in here.
Right now, Square roots
is a collection of 10 shipping container farms
that house over 50 different products,
including kale, basil, mint, and even strawberries.
And there are companies transforming agriculture
on an even bigger scale.
Industry giant Aerofarms is located
right across the river from Manhattan.
We're standing here in Newark, New Jersey.
This is actually in an old steel factory.
We are actually the largest vertical farm in the world.
We started Aerofarms inspired by
some of the world's challenges in water.
70% of our world's water, fresh water, goes to agriculture.
70% of our water contamination comes from agriculture.
So if one wants to solve water,
one has to solve agriculture.
Aerofarms is applying cutting-edge technology
to the ancient traditions of farming.
They use a form of hydroponics they call aeroponics.
Through clever engineering, the team has built
an indoor farm that uses 95% less water than field farming,
zero pesticides, and they grow 365 days a year.
We grow without sun, without soil.
Instead of sun, we use LEDs, light-emitting diodes.
Plants don't need sun; they need spectrum.
So we study spectrums that optimize photosynthesis.
And then, building on that, we deliver nutrients, minerals
and elements that are in the soil through a spray.
Every one of the million seeds planted per year
provides precise computer-monitored data.
This is product that's about three days old.
We actually know, based on all the information;
there's sensors, there's monitors reflecting
millions of data points every single day
about what's happening with the crop.
We can actually see what's happening
on day two, day five, and then ultimately
what's gonna be happening on day 12 of harvest.
So this really gives us a line of sight in terms of
how do we insure the right quality.
So we think of ourselves as plant whisperers.
You know, thinking about what are the nutrients,
what's the right light, what's the right environment,
and creating the perfect environment for the plant.
This kind of thin out in the field
may take 30 to 45 days to grow,
but we can grow it in 12 to 16 days.
That means up to 30 harvests a year.
It's 390 times more productive per square foot
on an annualized basis.
But data and efficiency will only go so far.
Foodies want their veggies nutritious, crunchy,
and packed with flavor.
From an organoleptic, from a tasting,
from a sensory standpoint, what's exciting
is that we're able to accentuate different flavors.
It's really kinda like a wine flight,
if you will, of flavors.
So our baby kale is sweet.
Our water cress is really zesty.
Our spicy mix has incredibly bold, peppery flavors.
At the end of the day, we're farmers.
We're passionate about food.
And what's exciting is that we now have ways
of using technology to be able to have a better product.
But let's face it.
As delicious and healthy as greens are,
humans crave protein.
And our insatiable taste for one thing
has drastically altered our health and environment.
Meat.
59% of American crop land is devoted to corn and soybeans,
the majority of which is used to feed livestock.
It takes 1,800 gallons of fresh water
to produce just one pound of beef.
And the production of meat is responsible
for 14.5% of human-linked greenhouse gases.
Quite simply, meat is an ecological disaster.
Nowadays, the big push, environmentally,
is climate change.
And we've known since 2006 that animal agriculture
causes more greenhouse gases
than all transportation combined.
And yet, something that we can actually do
something about actively, consciously right now
is making food choices that make a difference.
It's a major part of our diet.
Worldwide, we consume 92 pounds of meat per person per year.
But there are pioneers offering
alternatives to our delicious addiction.
Some see meat substitutes as the answer.
We can put the feed that we feed animals in,
and we get very tasty, juicy plant-based meat.
A few innovative scientists
think the solution is so-called clean meat,
grown in Petri dishes.
Others believe that there's an easy
and natural source of protein right under our feet.
Insects.
Though reviled in the West, ants, crickets, grasshoppers
and worms are an important and delicious source of protein
in parts of South America and Asia.
(foreign language)
I kinda love eating insects,
so here are the chapulines; they're grasshoppers.
A really nice nutty, earthy flavor,
and with the salt and the lime they almost come across
like a olive or kind of a caper or something like that,
with a really intense flavor.
If you haven't tried insects,
these are a great one to try first.
These ones have garlic and chile on them.
Look.
Super crunchy.
The inside is a little soft, but really salty.
Yeah, they're really amazing.
I love these things.
I think everyone here has just been programmed
that insects are something you smash
with a shoe when you see them.
I was guilty to that as well, but I did keep an open mind,
and after tasting it, then seeing how intense
these flavors were, that was a whole new,
I guess, flavor palette of things you could use.
It's not only nutritious, it's also really flavorful.
As a chef, you'd be doing yourself
a disjustice to not delve into these ingredients.
So, these are ?gusanos.
They're grubs that grow inside
of the agave that you make mescal from.
It's often served with oranges on the side of mescal.
They're super duper tasty.
I definitely think that eating insects
is part of the future.
Not only because it's fun and exciting and delicious;
I think that, for the green footprint that's left.
There's a whole nother world of flavor there.
If grasshoppers taste this good,
who knows what all the other insects taste like?
I don't know.
And insects are ready to be grown
at an industrial scale.
The key thing is sustainability.
In this crate alone, there's roughly 50,000 little insects.
So, in this area, we have, I would say,
2,000 of these crates, so that's
a whole lot of food in a small area.
At this protein farm in the Netherlands,
farmers are breeding crickets, grasshoppers,
and very juicy buffalo meal worms.
Insect proteins can be ground down into enriched flours
and made into products like bread and pastas.
These are the little creatures.
As said, they're highly nutritious.
What a lot of people talk about, of course, is protein.
This is high quality protein.
Why?
Because it has all nine essential amino acids.
Then, when you look at other micronutrients,
so vitamins, vitamin B12, for example,
is a very interesting one,
because if you're a vegetarian
and you say, "Look, I want to eat less meat,
"or I don't want to eat traditional meat anymore,"
this could be a very good alternative.
Unsaturated fats; that's also a big one
if you compare to traditional meat.
The fats in the insects are healthier.
And then, of course, you have certain minerals.
Think about iron, think about zinc.
We don't use antibiotics, hormones, or pesticides.
Now, really, that's a major one,
because that's a big, big issue with traditional livestock.
And it's not just the nutritional value
of insects which has food entrepreneurs excited.
Insects are a sustainable source of protein,
because they are very efficient in terms of food conversion.
They don't use a lot of feed.
They're very efficient in terms of water.
They don't use a lot of water.
They're very efficient in terms of land use.
They don't use a lot of land.
And they don't produce a lot of greenhouse gas emissions.
Insects may sound
like a strange staple of the future.
However, these alternative sources of protein
could have a positive impact
on both our health and environment.
But many pioneers think that taking environmental
and ethical action one step further
is the key to saving the future of food.
Approximately 5% of the U.S.,
or 16 million people, are vegetarian.
About half of those are vegan,
and this number is rapidly growing.
The reasons for going vegan rest on a three-legged stool.
We start with animal compassion.
This was where veganism began.
Then, a low-fat, plant-based diet
is the only way of eating that has ever been shown
to reverse coronary disease, and we know that heart disease
is the number one killer of both women and men
in the United States and much of the developed world.
Then the third is the environment.
(bright music)
A revolution in veganism has exploded
onto the scene, and it's no longer for a select few.
That's the message of 30-year vegan
and author Victoria Moran.
We're not all celebrities.
We're not all people who look like we could be
on the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue.
We're also not leftover hippies
and leftover punk rockers.
We are all kinds of people.
As a health educator and vegan coach and author,
I advocate a high green, high raw,
high energy kind of lifestyle.
It means that we're having lots of beautiful, colorful food.
And we know that the antioxidants,
those great phytochemicals that are
supposed to ward off degenerative disease
are found in the colors of the fruits and vegetables.
Your shopping cart and your plate
should look like a Christmas tree:
mostly green with splashes of other bright colors.
So you want to have lots of raw foods, lots of fruit,
and beans, beans are amazing.
And interestingly enough, dark leafy greens
pack a nutritional wallop, actually have,
per calorie, as much protein as beef.
Evidence of the importance
of the plant-based diet goes back decades.
The China study was called by the New York Times
the Grand Prix of epidemiology,
because it was the biggest look
at human nutrition ever taken.
It was a 20-year study that started in the lab at Cornell
with Dr. T. Colin Campbell.
The takeaway from the China study
that even the researchers did not expect
was that the more animal food consumed, the mores disease;
the more plant foods consumed, the more health.
Based on this scientific evidence,
Dr. Campbell proposed a golden rule for eating.
The term whole food plant-based diet
was coined by Dr. T. Colin Campbell.
It means a diet based entirely on whole foods
from the plant kingdom: vegetables, fruits,
whole grains, legumes, beans, and some nuts and seeds.
The benefits of this diet
are evident in some of the world's longevity hotspots,
places like Greece, Costa Rica, Sardinia, and Japan.
In rural China, many 70-year-olds
have the same blood pressure, 110 on 70,
as the average 16-year-old American.
In rural Kenya, where the population
only feasts on meat on very rare occasions,
blood pressure actually goes down with age instead of up.
Each of the longest living people in these areas
enjoy a diet largely made up of whole grains,
vegetables, soy products and aquatic protein.
These diets are simple and are linked to our past.
A move back towards a predominantly plant-based diet
and away from a meat-focused industrial system
would be huge step in alleviating
many of the health and environmental problems
we are battling today.
This is just one of the many lessons
we can learn from the history of food.
And to understand our food is to understand
our shared story.
The reason I like studying the history of food
is the ability to food to take you back in time.
It transports you in a way that very few other things can.
You can experience a meal that might have been eaten by
Henry VIII, Marco Polo.
You can put yourself there
in a way that you can't in other ways.
It's a fragment of the past that we can put in out mouths,
that we can smell,
we can touch.
I just don't know any other way that time travel
can be so immediate and so physical.
For two million years,
food has been so much more than sustenance.
We eat some 80,000 meals in a lifetime.
Humans have evolved to see much more in food
than mere survival; it's cultural, it's social,
it's oftentimes a ritual in a religious way
or simply in how we structure out day.
So much is built around meals, around eating,
so I think it's important, as we go forward
making some of these changes that are absolutely necessary,
that we keep these ritual aspects
and the social aspects intact.
We need them.
And while the histories of food
have been written, the battles for its future
are just beginning.
In everyday society, food seems like a pleasure,
something that is just part of life and we can enjoy it.
But if you live in nature, food is the necessity.
It is important to reflect that, in the end,
survival depends on food.
In the West we've almost forgotten that.
Nowadays, more people have nutritional problems
from being overfed than being underfed.
But nevertheless, there's something like
a billion people in the world
for whom food security is always a problem,
and they are the ones that are in closer touch
with the reality of us as a species
than we are in the West.
The decisions we make
will dictate the future of the planet and our species.
The future of food is going back to our roots,
back to eating the simple, natural foods
that grow up out of the ground.
When this happens, I think that we just might
save this planet and people's health besides.
There are lots of policy changes we need to make.
But then there's the individual consumer, individual eater.
You know, what do I do at home
to make food more sustainable, to increase the odds
that we have enough food in a hundred years?
(moving music)
One scenario that people tend to talk about
is diversifying all of our food.
We need resilience in our food system.
We need to all eat local.
But if we realistically think about the future,
nobody really imagines that we're gonna convert
to a system where all food is local.
And so I think what a more reasonable argument is
that we need to increase the ability
of local food to be part of our story.
If you can afford it, buy more local food.
Buy more varieties of the food you eat.
Ask for varieties you've not seen before,
especially if those are native
to the region in which you live.
The future of humankind
is intrinsically linked to the future of our food.
Vertical farming, seed vaults, and edible insects
cannot save us on their own.
We are at the beginning of a new age
where we must reinvent to food systems of the last century.
The revolution is already underway,
so grab a plate, load it up.
But whatever you choose, consider the past,
present, and future of food.
(intriguing electronic music)