Unnaturally Delicious: How Science and Technology Are Serving Up Super Foods to Save the World

by Jayson Lusk

Overview

The food discussion in America can be quite pessimistic. With high obesity rates, diabetes, climate change, chemical use, water contamination, and farm animal abuse, it would seem that there wasn't very much room for a positive perspective. The fear that there just isn't enough food has expanded to new areas of concern about water availability, rising health care costs, and dying bees.

In Unnaturally Delicious, Lusk makes room for optimism by writing the story of the changing food system, suggesting that technology and agriculture can work together in a healthy and innovative way to help solve the world's largest food issues and improve the farming system as we know it.

This is the story of the innovators and innovations shaping the future of food. You’ll meet an ex-farmer entrepreneur whose software is now being used all over the world to help farmers increase yields and reduce nutrient runoff and egg producers who’ve created new hen housing systems that improve animal welfare at an affordable price. There are scientists growing meat in the lab. Without the cow. College students are coaxing bacteria to signal food quality and fight obesity. Nutrient enhanced rice and sweet potatoes are aiming to solve malnutrition in the developing world. Geneticists are creating new wheat varieties that allow farmers sustainably grow more with less. And, we’ll learn how to get fresh, tasty, 3D printed food at the touch of a button, perhaps even delivered to us by a robotic chef.

Innovation is the American way. Thomas Jefferson, George Washington Carver, and John Harvey Kellogg were food and agricultural entrepreneurs. Their delicious innovations led to new healthy, tasty, convenient, and environmentally friendly food. The creations were unnaturally delicious. Unnatural because the foods and practices they fashioned were man-made solutions to natural and man-made problems.

Now the world is filled with new challenges changing the way we think about food. Who are the scientists, entrepreneurs, and progressive farmers who meet these challenges and search for solutions? Unnaturally Delicious has the answers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250074300
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	03/22/2016
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

JAYSON LUSK is a Distinguished Professor and Head of the Agricultural Economics Department at Purdue University, previously holding appointments at Mississippi State, Oklahoma State, and the French National Institute for Agricultural Research. One of the most prolific and cited food and agricultural economists, Lusk has published editorials in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Forbes.com, Foxnews.com, TIME.com, and the Huffington Post. He is the author of Unnaturally Delicious.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii

1 Overcoming Nature 1

2 The Price of Happy Hens 15

3 Hewlett Packard with a Side of Fries 35

4 Synthetic Biology: Brewing More Than Beer 53

5 Growing Flintstones 71

6 Farming Precisely 91

7 Bovine in a Beaker 107

8 Sustainable Farming 119

9 Waste Not, Want Not 149

10 Food Bug Zappers 163

11 The Case for Food and Agricultural Innovation 189

Notes 213

Index 241

Editorial Reviews

05/16/2016
In this lively look at the modern intersection of technology and food, Lusk, a professor of agricultural economics at Oklahoma State University, examines several ways that researchers are seeking to feed the world, combat malnutrition, and conserve resources. Robotic chefs, 3-D printed food, synthetic biology, and meat grown in a petri dish were once the province of science fiction, but these ideas are fast becoming realities as scientists tinker with nature's bounty. Lusk digs into the aforementioned techniques and others, such as encouraging sustainability, improving food safety, and finding more humane ways to raise livestock. "This is the story of the innovators and innovations shaping the future of food," he explains. He admits that genetically modified food is a controversial topic, but points out that humans have "been altering our food and innovating new diets since the beginning." If his enthusiasm for hamburgers from bovine stem cells or "convenient, healthy, and scrumptious" printed food becomes contagious, that's his intent: "If I accomplish nothing else with this book, I hope a few young people might see a new way to effect food change." While Lusk occasionally lapses into overly technical moments of scientific passion, he otherwise succeeds in keeping his book accessible, entertaining, and optimistic. Agent: Mel Berger, William Morris Endeavor. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

"Accessible, entertaining, and optimistic...In this lively look at the modern intersection of technology and food, Lusk...examines several ways that researchers are seeking to feed the world, combat malnutrition, and conserve resources." —Publisher's Weekly

“Delightful and telling stories of students, farmers, scientists and businessmen forging ahead with science- and technology-based solutions to problems with our food system. Reason for optimism . . . I loved this book. So much that is new, so informed, unpretentious unlike so much food writing.” —Rachel Laudan, food historian and author of Cuisine and Empire

"Lusk argues that agricultural innovation, technology and change have always been essential in improving the human condition, and we can best solve our problems just as our ancestors did, by innovating more. I recommend his book to everyone concerned about where their food is, or will be, or should be, coming from as well as what we should do about it." —John Coupland, Professor of Food Science, The Pennsylvania State University

"Technology and science have done the world of food far more good than harm. Check out Jayson Lusk's Unnaturally Delicious for a superior vision of where food is headed." —Tyler Cowen, Professor of Economics, George Mason University

"An exploration of 'the innovators and innovations shaping the future of food'...A provocative, well-documented challenge to one of the major contentions of environmentalists." —Kirkus Reviews

"Professor Lusk has written a wonderful book. He tells stories to illustrate important facts and principles. We (the readers) have fun and he has fun while we learn a lot in the process." —Daniel A. Sumner, distinguished professor of agricultural economics at University of California, Davis and director of the University of California Agricultural Issues Center

“In his new book, UNNATURALLY DELICIOUS, Lusk spotlights a number of innovations in the works . . . that could have a profound impact on the challenges we face as a food system. Mostly, he argues, for the better.” —The Huffington Post

“There is much in this book to please a reader curious about what the future farmers of America are up to. Lusk has a relish for the technical aspects of agronomy, and writes with lucidity and enthusiasm . . . The book's greatest strengths [are] its lucid accounting of costs and benefits [and] its descriptions of technologies in development and machines in operation.” —Popular Science

"Delivers a highly accessible look at the food technology that both exists today and is in our near future. Lusk takes readers on a mouthwatering tour of a smorgasbord of new foods, crops and technologies which provide a backdrop for an exciting and truly progressive way to think about the future of food. His insights offer a potential paradigm shift in how we can feed the world healthier foods- that people want to buy and eat. It's a stark contrast from the stale and highly ineffective command and control food police playbook." —Baylen Linnekin, Reason.com

From the Publisher

2016-01-09
An exploration of "the innovators and innovations shaping the future of food." Lusk (Agricultural Economics/Oklahoma State Univ.; The Food Police: A Well-Fed Manifesto About the Politics of Your Plate, 2013, etc.) admits that along with the abundance we now enjoy, there are significant challenges that must be met head-on, including climate change, environmental degradation, cruelty to animals, the abundance of unhealthy junk food, obesity, and more. Nonetheless, the author is optimistic. "We have inherited a bountiful world of food…[that] our ancestors could scarcely have imagined," writes the author. For him, this is proof that Malthus and his modern followers such as Paul Ehrlich—author of The Population Bomb (1968) and other books—were misguided. Lusk's claims are provocative, but he buttresses them by citing Department of Agriculture statistics demonstrating that U.S. agriculture has kept up with population growth through the application of technological innovations. Lusk reports that American crop production has more than doubled since 1970 while the use of pesticides has fallen, less land is in production, the agricultural labor force has decreased by half, and soil erosion has been reduced. In short, "agriculture has one of the highest rates of production of any sector of the U.S. economy." The author admits to having had an axe to grind in the past, and he bristles at the use of the descriptive term "sustainable." To him, it was "synonymous with organic, natural and local" and implied the necessity of reducing population. Lusk explains that he now recognizes that true sustainability depends on the use of agricultural technology. One counterintuitive example is the sustainability of U.S. beef production, which he claims has a "far lower carbon footprint than [grass-fed beef] in other parts of the world" because it is fattened with grain. Another fascinating example is the use of information technology to regulate seed-planting by providing farmers detailed, real-time information about their fields. A provocative, well-documented challenge to one of the major contentions of environmentalists.

Kirkus Reviews