Now here’s a tasty idea. Swedish appliance manufacturer Electrolux recently held a design competition, and, among many impressive entries, The Cocoon emerged the winner. The Cocoon was designed by Rickard Hederstierna, and no, it has nothing to do with rejuvenating the elderly. It grows meat.
Grows. Meat.
Allow me to explain. It takes pre-mixed food packets containing animal cells (specifically muscle, oxygen and nutrients), heats the packet up for a pre-set amount of time, and that’s it: a cut of beef or a piece of salmon, ready for use. Here, take a look at the video.
Folks, we just might have Star Trek technology. This thing is basically a replicator, though it’s unclear (and doubtful, I think) whether or not it would cook the food for you. I imagine it would create the raw ingredients, and then you prepare your food the way you like.
The whole thing does kind of have a creepy feel to it, though. Like it’s too clean and sanitized, which is an odd thing to say considering we’re talking about food. But if the meat or fish made by the Cocoon is safe and just as tasty as “real” meat… then why not use it?
The invention means you can get meat without killing animals, for those of you who are sensitive to that kind of thing. But aside from that, there’s no risk of contamination and it can address food shortages worldwide. I don’t want to jump the gun here (and this is gonna be a big one, so hold on), but is it possible that someone just designed a possible end to world hunger in a little round blue heater?
Of course, this is all design and speculation. It’s not like Electrolux has committed any resources or if this concept would actually work. But imagine if it did. I’d say that’s worth the investment, wouldn’t you?
Other ideas included a fridge that could teleport food to another location in the house, two-minute clothes cleaners (including drying and ironing) and a robotic greenhouse for use on Mars. And that’s just from one company. I’ve been hearing about other wild stuff like touchable holograms, functional transplanted hands and phones you can control with your eyes. I love The Future.
Comments
justin
November 6th, 2009 - 10:01:02 AM
i would imagine you would still need to grow food/livestock, as the Cocoon still requires packets of "pre-mixed food," whatever that means. i'm guessing though, it means you still need to get cells from animals (well, it says it does), making the real question: whether they need to kill livestock to get these cells or not -- and on what kind of scale it works? (i.e. will it take three cows to scrape enough cells to make 10 packets, and furthermore, how long until they're ready to be "scraped" again) still, pretty cool. all hail the future.
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