IKEA SPACE10 Lab | The fast food of the future

20-3-2018

More and more people try to eat healthy, less meat, more veggies for health reasons and for the environment. IKEA SPACE10 Lab introduced Tomorrow’s Meatball – a visual rethinking of IKEA’s iconic meatball using alternative ingredients such as insects, algae, and lab-grown meat – three years ago. Since then they’ve been developing a wider selection of dishes that showcase the kind of food we could be eating in the not-too-distant future, the fast food of the future. There was one important principle in mind, the dishes shouldn’t just be healthy or sustainable. They had to be delicious, too. The dishes aren’t on IKEA’s menu…..

The fast food of the future

The designed menu includes five classic dishes and is fresh from SPACE10’s test kitchen, which is a collaboration between SPACE10 and IKEA. The ‘future living lab’ is created to do culinary research eying on the future. Although IKEA is involved in this project, there aren’t current plans to put these dishes on their menu’s. SPACE10 has 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.

Five classic dishes for a tastier tomorrow

As stated on their release on Medium: “To change people’s minds about food, to inspire them to try new ingredients, we can’t just appeal to the intellect—we have to titillate their taste buds. Which is why we’ve been working with our chef-in-residence to come up with dishes that look good, taste good—and are good for people and planet.” The five dishes they came up with are The Dogless Hotdog, The Bug Burger, The Neatball, LOKAL Salad and Microgreen Ice Cream.

The Dogless Hotdog

Made with dried and glazed baby carrots, beet and berry ketchup, mustard and turmeric cream, roasted onions, cucumber salad, and a herb salad mix. The star of the show is the bun itself, that’s because it’s made with spirulina—the micro-algae that contains more beta carotene than carrots, more chlorophyll than wheatgrass, and 50 times more iron than spinach. Moreover, ‘The Dogless Hotdog’ contains more protein that a “real” hotdog because of the Spirulina, which was called “the most ideal food for mankind” by the UN.

The Bug Burger

To show that insects can taste good, the guys at the lab took one of “tomorrow’s meatballs”—the Crispy Bug Ball—and cranked up the volume. Each patty contains 100g of beetroot, 50g of parsnip, 50g of potatoes, and 50g of mealworms—the larval form of a darkling beetle. The Bug Burger comes on a delicious white-flour bun, topped with relish, beetroot and blackcurrant ketchup, chive spread, hydroponic salad mix.

The Neatball

The Neatball is designed to get people thinking about reducing their meat consumption, using local produce and trying alternative proteins. They’ve developed two kinds of Neatball—one made with mealworms (“Bug Balls, anyone?”), the other with root vegetables such as carrots, parsnips and beets. And for a true Swedish experience, they’re served them with mashed potatoes, gravy, and lingonberry sauce.

LOKAL Salad

At SPACE10 they like a balanced diet, part of which is a salad. They grow their own microgreens in the basement. Thanks to hydroponics, or the art of growing crops without soil. Instead, their microgreens, sprouts and herbs (like red veined sorrel, broccoli and tarragon; pea sprouts, pink stem radish and thyme; and borage, red frill mustard and lemon balm) are grown in water that contains the perfect amount of nutrients. With hydroponics they serve delicious, locally produced food, more sustainably, tasty and healthy.

Microgreen Ice Cream

They serve ice cream made of herbs and microgreens with flavours like fennel, coriander, basil, mint and a combining flavour. The base is made with just 60g of sugar (for a 600g batch), with additional sweetness coming from a mix of apple juice, apples and lemon juice. They also created popsicles, made with a choice of hydroponically grown herbs including woodruff, coriander, Spanish chervil and sorrel.

Website: SPACE10

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