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The Audacious Plan to End Hunger With 3D-Printed Food

The Audacious Plan to End Hunger With 3D-Printed Food
Uber is slavery…Uber will add to traffic congestion…Uber destroys the savings of cab drivers… Hold the litany. Is this the incumbency speaking? And my name isn’t Marie Antoinette. I might get in trouble for this, but I’d like to add a drop of customer experience into the boiling broth of opinions about Uber. After five decades of riding in taxis, both in my native Paris and my adopted Bay Area, I’ve had my share of interesting and sympathetic cabbies, most of whom are more than willing to share their life stories. Unfortunately, pleasant rides with charming drivers are rare exceptions in a succession of dirty Silicon Valley cabs with cracked windshields, duct taped seats, and noisy wheel bearings threatening to seize at any minute. Simply finding a cab can be an unpleasant, complicated experience. The memories must be deeply imprinted. The phrase “transforming experience” was first used, and then abused, in Hollywood when describing the requirements for a script. Related:  Foodstuffs

5 Web Technologies and Trends to Watch in 2011 In 2010 we saw the rise of HTML5, the maturation of CSS3, the release of Rails 3.0, and the widespread adoption of the @font-face selector (part of CSS3) — among other things. In short: it was a busy year for advancing web development technologies. What will 2011 hold? Below is a list, compiled by Mashable editors of some of the web technologies and trends we think should be on your radar for the coming year. These aren't all straight up web dev technologies, per se, but they're all things that will have an impact on website and app development in 2011. 1. jQuery Mobile jQuery has become practically synonymous with JavaScript, in large part because of its extensibility, ease of use and strong project leadership. - Christina Warren, Mobile Reporter 2. Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) is lightning fast, thanks to its use of DirectX 10 and hardware acceleration, vastly improving the speed and capabilities of the browser versus its competitors. - Ben Parr, Co-Editor 3. - Josh Catone, Features Editor 4.

3D Printed Food Could End World Hunger, Says 'Universal Food Synthesizer's' Anjan Contractor NASA has funded the development of a 3d food printer to feed astronauts in space. But the developer thinks the machine could also have a purpose closer to home: ending world hunger. The engineer of the so-called "universal food synthesizer," Anjan Contractor of Systems & Materials Research Corporation, told business news blog Quartz that he envisions every kitchen having a 3d food printer to keep the planet fed . People could buy the nutritionally complete cartridges of powder and oils at the store and keep them for up to 30 years, he said. “I think, and many economists think, that current food systems can’t supply 12 billion people sufficiently,” Contractor told Quartz. Visit Quartz for more on Contractor's hunger-zapping solution. Ending hunger is a giant task. Other mass-produced food has been hailed as a possible hunger cure. As of September 2012, UNICEF planned to buy 32,000 metric tons of Plumpy'Nut in 2013, an increase of 4,000 tons over 2012, according to CNBC. Related on HuffPost:

Coke Targets Teens With Black Friday SCVNGR Promotion Coca-Cola is kicking off a nationwide location-based rewards initiative targeted at young teens with SCVNGR as its platform of choice. The soda maker has seeded Simon Malls across the U.S. with challenges that players can complete to earn special Coke rewards. The campaign is called Coke Secret Formula and is set to go live at 10 malls beginning November 26 — otherwise known to holiday shoppers as Black Friday. SCVNGR players who complete the Coke mall challenges can accumulate enough points to redeem instant rewards including American Express gift cards and Coke-branded merchandise. Coke will be aggressively promoting the initiative with online, print and mall signage to include giant elevator wrappers like the one pictured above. Landing Coke is a big coup for the young startup, who competes with the likes of Foursquare and Facebook Places. SCVNGR anticipates that it will hit 1 million members before the year's end.

Mini Mushroom Farms: Gardenista Older Mini Mushroom Farms by Michelle Slatalla Issue 71 · Kitchen Gardens · May 10, 2013 Newer Issue 71 · Kitchen Gardens · May 10, 2013 After a childhood spent being warned against wild and possibly poisonous mushrooms, it's no wonder I still have an arm's-length relationship with fungi. But mini mushroom farms could change that: Above: Kits from specialty growers, such as California-based Far West Fungi, will grow indoors and are capable of producing multiple crops of shitake or oyster mushrooms. Above: Far West Fungi, which has a retail store in the Ferry Building in San Francisco, offers a Pre-Activated Shiitake Mushroom Farm for $25. Above: A Back to the Roots Mushroom Garden is $19.95; grown in recycled coffee grounds, the yield can be as great as 1.5 pounds. Above: Oyster mushrooms, via Hunger and Thirst. EXPLORE MORE: Issue 71: Kitchen Gardens, Indoor Gardens, Urban Gardener, Kitchen Gardens, Plants, Urban Gardens Woodland Plants That Bloom in Dappled Light Under Trees By Kendra Wilson

Email Scams Come To Facebook It was only a matter of time: scammers have started targeting Facebook's new messaging system. I got my Facebook email account last Thursday. Early this morning, I received a notice that I'd won 950,000 South African Rand (about $135,000) in a contest held by the South African branch of Shell Petroleum. (Screenshot below.) All I have to do is send along a bunch of personal information like my name, phone number, date of birth, and occupation. If you've been on the Internet for more than five minutes, you can probably guess how this would end up. This is the kind of obvious spam that never makes it into Gmail. To be fair, this message did show up in my "Other" box, rather than the main inbox used for communications from known friends.

Paula Deen Releases Delicious New Butter Product Made From Her Breast Milk SAVANNAH, GA—Expanding a retail line that already includes kitchen supplies, bakeware, and cookbooks, television personality and restaurateur Paula Deen today introduced Deen Farms Butter, a delicious dairy product concocted from her own breast milk. “My new butter’s so sweet and creamy, it’s just like a lil’ slice of heaven, y’all,” Deen said in this week’s episode of Paula’s Home Cooking while applying a generous pat of the tangy mammary butter to a freshly baked blueberry muffin. “Now, what I like to do is melt a stick of it in with my macaroni and cheese, and you know it’s just perfect drizzled over of a big ol’ pot of mashed potatoes, too. Dig in, y’all!" Though Deen’s new lactation spread represents her first foray into the food products realm, the chef indicated that she has several other tasty edibles in the pipeline, including Paula’s Perfect Pasta Topper, a rich bolognese sauce made from her own menstrual blood.

Why Bill Gates Is Investing In Chicken-Less Eggs : The Salt hide captionAt left: Beyond Eggs' egg-substitute product, a powder made of pulverized plant-based compounds. Right: Mother Nature's version. Cody Pickens/Beyond Eggs At left: Beyond Eggs' egg-substitute product, a powder made of pulverized plant-based compounds. The egg of the future may not involve a chicken at all. "We're trying to take the animal totally out of the equation," Josh Tetrick, founder and CEO of Hampton Creek Foods, told me. Hampton Creek's egg substitute product is called Beyond Eggs. If you listen to my story on All Things Considered, you'll hear that it's pretty hard to distinguish between cookies made with Beyond Eggs and those made traditionally with real eggs. And why does this matter? In 2000, the global demand for eggs was about 14 million tons, according to the U.N.' hide captionHampton Creek founder Josh Tetrick is hot on the trail of the chicken-less egg. Hampton Creek founder Josh Tetrick is hot on the trail of the chicken-less egg.

Soylent crowdfunding campaign: USDA dietary recommendations are not the future of nutrition Courtesy of Soylent Corporation A friend admitted to me recently that she’d paid $65 into the crowdfunding campaign for Soylent, the “future of nutrition.” In August, she expects to receive a week’s worth of meals in the form of an unflavored beige powder. For her contribution she’ll also get a travel mug with a little wire ball inside, so that while reconstituting her meals in water she can more easily break up the chunks. “Mostly it was curiosity,” said my friend, who asked me not to use her name. She learned about Soylent from a foodie listserv. According to the 24-year-old software engineer who dreamed up Soylent, the recipe for pure nutrition starts simply with the standard dietary recommendations from the Agriculture Department. Rhinehart envisions Soylent as part of a future utopia in which no one has to grocery shop or scrub dishes, people spend less money and time on food, and everyone is healthy, having slurped down exactly the nutrients they need.

MONKS MEATS Monk’s Meats: A Vegetarian Butcher Makes a Case for Wheat Meat “Seitan isn’t a meat replacement, it’s a food stuff in its own right. Some of our happiest moments are when we get a meat eater who says, ‘You know what, this stuff is great. I didn’t realize vegetarian meat could be this good.’” Meet Chris Kim and Rebecca Lopez-Howes, the co-owners and seitan specialists behind Monk’s Meats, a vegetarian butcher shop – with plans to open a storefront – in Brooklyn, New York. “Nobody else in New York City was doing it, so it made sense to me.” – Chris Kim Monk’s Meats motto is Fresh Food. On a daily basis, they produce between 100 to 150 pounds of seitan for Monk’s Meats, hand-delivering them to restaurants, customers and a handful of retail shops around the city. SIGN UP for their weekly specials and delivery info here! Thanks so much for watching food. curated.!

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