Straight
from the Hall of Shame of Future Past we give you the food pill.
As far back as the 1930s the great hope, or desperate fear, of the
future was that the tedious business of eating would be reduced to
swallowing a pill. Yes, no more of that cutting, chewing,
tasting, swallowing, chatting, belching, relaxing, socialising and
generally enjoying your food. Just get that tablet down your
gullet and get going!
Despite the obviously revolting notion of downing your sustenance like
vitamins, it kept popping up in smug predictions by kill-joy chemists,
as a lame, over-extended gag in Just Imagine, and as a
prediction of what space food would be like in George Pal's
Conquest of Space. In any case, the food pill never came off
as an enjoyable substitute for roast beef and Yorkshire pud and made
living off energy bars seem like a better choice.
Thank heavens the food pill turned out to be a complete bust.
True, you could stuff all the nutrition you'd need in a day into pill
form, but to do the job you'd either need a pill the size of a small
boiled ham or you'd need to munch on heaping bowls of the things ala
an excellent gag on the topic in the late lamented MST3K series.
Despite the obviously revolting notion of downing your sustenance like
vitamins, it kept popping up in smug predictions by kill-joy chemists,
as a lame, over-extended gag in Just Imagine, and as a
prediction of what space food would be like in George Pal's
Conquest of Space. In any case, the food pill never came off
as an enjoyable substitute for roast beef and Yorkshire pud and made
living off energy bars seem like a better choice.