This article from the January 1 , 1896 Indiana Progress ( Indiana , Pennsylvania ) report the synthetic nutrient of the future .
When the nutrient of the hereafter is once in vogue , the food dispensary , licensed by the government , will long since have supplanted the butcher workshop and the grocery storage . We ’ll breakfast and lunch and dine by ethical drug at a cost of 10 or 15 cent per daylight per capita . Doubtless our houses wo n’t be heat and supply with power from a Keely motor at a centime a day additional , but the chemical or artificial intellectual nourishment of the time to come is already a moral certainty . For does not Flammarion describe it in “ Omega , ” and has not Bertholot , its chief apostle , been elevated from the lab to the alien office of France ?
give the chemical formula for our food , say Berthelot , the don of the artificial food idea , and why not prescribe it from the chemist ’s ? Surely the N and carbon copy of the beefsteak may not be as grateful to the roof of the mouth if absorbed from a condensation or masticated in a flyspeck tab , but the bones and the blood , the human body and the muscle will be just as well issue with their crucial stuff , their own particular foods , provided always the prescription drug is correct in symmetry , and , after all , the pleasures of the table have ages on remnant been absorbing too much of the fourth dimension and inclination of an orbit of valet de chambre and woman . When the area of chemical food come , we shall have done with symposia and supper parties , Welsh rabbit and fortunate bucks .
There are certain elementary food which a man ca n’t do without . He must absorb , or use up and drink , if you please , carbon and nitrogen and calcium for his bones . Without going too much into dry detail , he must absorb or receive each twenty-four hours , to repair the waste of his tissues , calcium , C , nitrogen , oxygen , hydrogen and sodium . There are other dalliance chemicals like phosphorous , which is an awful affair to burn oneself with , which the well fed valet motivation . But he could get along without it . He could get along without Na , were it not for the fact that salinity is chloride of atomic number 11 , and nobody can get along without salinity . It is n’t a simple , an element , but it is dead essential . When the era of the chemical food sets in , we ’ll all be in the habit of stopping morning and eventide at our pet dispensary for a armguard of common salt .
Adjusted for inflation , $ .15 is about $ 3.50 in 2007 dollars .
See also : That Synthetic Food of the Future ( Ogden Standard - Examiner , 1926 )
Food
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