Fancy a bite of the food we’ll be eating in the future?

If you want to know what you will be eating fifty years from now, then these food concepts might give you some ideas. SPACE10, the IKEA innovation lab, have created a menu of the fast food of the future using only healthy and sustainable ingredients. The firm previously introduced the world to Tomorrow’s Meatball, a re-imagining of IKEA’s iconic meatball using insects, algae, and lab-grown meat. Now, they’ve come up with five new space-age foods, all designed to be delicious despite their unorthodox ingredients.

First up is the Dogless Hotdog, which is made of dried and glazed baby carrots, beet and berry ketchup, mustard and turmeric cream, roasted onions, cucumber salad, and herb salad mix. The dog itself is described as the ‘star of the show’ however, and is made from spirulina, a micro-algae that contains more beta carotene than carrots, more chlorophyll than wheatgrass, and fifty times more iron than spinach. Spirulina has been called “the most ideal food for mankind” by the United Nations because it’s so easy to produce and its low environmental footprint.

For their ‘Bug Burger’, SPACE10 used a mix of beetroot, parsnip, potatoes and mealworms, a common ingredient in food in Southeast Asia. Mealworms are also used for their ‘Neatballs’ – although an entirely vegetarian option is available made up of carrots, parsnips, and beets. For their LOKAL salad, all the greens are produced hydroponically – that is, without soil and in water with a perfect mix of nutrients.

For an after-dinner treat, the lab has developed microgreen ice cream and a Popsicle, both made from hydroponic ingredients. Simon Caspersen of SPACE10 told Lonely Planet: “the menu is fresh from [our] test kitchen – and it’s important for me to state that there are no current plans to put these dishes on IKEA’s menu! The fast food menu of the future project is culinary research for us. We are a future living lab – set up in collaboration with IKEA, but we are external. We have several ongoing labs, and one of those labs explores new, imaginative and sustainable ways of producing, growing and distributing healthy food in the heart of our cities.”

To find out more about exactly how the meals were created, you can visit their blog.