Futuristic functional food inspiration needed
July 7, 2013 10:27 AM Subscribe
I want to write a science fiction story where somebody spends a few weeks or so living off a food that was intended for people colonising another planet, with odd effects. I'm not that scientifically knowledgeable and I want this to be grounded in facts. More details below.
I'm thinking it could be something like, the new planet lacks nitrogen, which we need to fertilise Terran plants, so this food makes you excrete more nitrogen than normal to be used as a fertiliser. Or t could be something that helps the human cope with some difference in the alien atmosphere, eg by changing your body chemistry in some way. Preferably it would not have side effects on the alien planet but would have weird results here.
Any ideas welcome please, especially if they come with a bit of science explanation and/or pointers to where I can research. Thanks!
I'm thinking it could be something like, the new planet lacks nitrogen, which we need to fertilise Terran plants, so this food makes you excrete more nitrogen than normal to be used as a fertiliser. Or t could be something that helps the human cope with some difference in the alien atmosphere, eg by changing your body chemistry in some way. Preferably it would not have side effects on the alien planet but would have weird results here.
Any ideas welcome please, especially if they come with a bit of science explanation and/or pointers to where I can research. Thanks!
You could also come up with something that "everyone knows", along the lines of the old "they put saltpeter in the food at Basic!" rumor, but in this case, it could be true.
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 10:57 AM on July 7, 2013
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 10:57 AM on July 7, 2013
The fertilizer idea doesn't make sense. Humans are pretty fragile and we don't manufacture nitrogen out of other elements in our bodies.
Obviously we don't "manufacture nitrogen out of other elements", as we are not nuclear reactors. However, we produce plenty of urea, which is an excellent fertilizer, as an end product of amino acid metabolism. A very high-protein diet should result in increased urea production.
posted by mr_roboto at 11:03 AM on July 7, 2013
Obviously we don't "manufacture nitrogen out of other elements", as we are not nuclear reactors. However, we produce plenty of urea, which is an excellent fertilizer, as an end product of amino acid metabolism. A very high-protein diet should result in increased urea production.
posted by mr_roboto at 11:03 AM on July 7, 2013
Any ideas welcome please, especially if they come with a bit of science explanation and/or pointers to where I can research. Thanks!
My wife has been trying to get me to read Teaming with microbes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mineral_nutrients
is a good introduction to "We don't want to piss away our potassium because then we won't have any more."
I'd think your spacefolk could be doing something like recycling their wastes into a bioreactor, then into a duckweed/tilapia tank-> hyrdoponic watering of plants in the greenhouse.
I want to write a science fiction story where somebody spends a few weeks or so living off a food that was intended for people colonising another planet, with odd effects.
'It's been five days since my last bowel movement.'
posted by sebastienbailard at 11:47 AM on July 7, 2013
My wife has been trying to get me to read Teaming with microbes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mineral_nutrients
is a good introduction to "We don't want to piss away our potassium because then we won't have any more."
I'd think your spacefolk could be doing something like recycling their wastes into a bioreactor, then into a duckweed/tilapia tank-> hyrdoponic watering of plants in the greenhouse.
I want to write a science fiction story where somebody spends a few weeks or so living off a food that was intended for people colonising another planet, with odd effects.
'It's been five days since my last bowel movement.'
posted by sebastienbailard at 11:47 AM on July 7, 2013
There is an unfortunate history of seeds being send to developing/famine stricken countries that was treated with mercury as an anti-fungal. The starving people didn't know that the red dyed grain was only for planting and got mercury poisoning. For SF, maybe seeds would be hormone treated for fast growth or something and consumption results in body modification.
posted by 445supermag at 11:53 AM on July 7, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by 445supermag at 11:53 AM on July 7, 2013 [1 favorite]
However, we produce plenty of urea, which is an excellent fertilizer, as an end product of amino acid metabolism
Yeah, but I can't imagine a situation where you'd want to process the fertilizer through your colonists rather than just putting sacks of it directly onto your crops.
The "planet is scarce in [mineral] or planet's native biota don't manufacture [biologically necessary chemical], so colonists need have supplements in their food" scenario is a pretty common one in SF (a la vitamin D enriched flour and iodized salt IRL). It seems like a stretch to me that this would lead to the scenario that KateViolet wants though; you'd need something where the side-effecty dose was only 2x the necessary dose, and that seems like a narrow enough margin that it'd be supplied in a more controlled way than as a food additive (e.g., colonists take a daily pill, or subdermal implant, or medical checkups, or get gene-therapied before going to the planet).
I like steinwald's suggestion that the supplement is there to counteract a pest or disease on the colony planet. (Or even just a simple chemical: say the native life is almost earth-compatible, but produces and uses some chemical that interferes with a specific earth-biological process.) So their food has something to counteract that. Maybe the supplement sometimes has other side effects, but those are dealt with as part of the colonists' routine checkups, and they don't even think about it. Maybe the supplement is only harmless in the presence of the thing it's intended to combat. Maybe the protagonist of the story is living off a collection of surplus colonists' food intended for a variety of different planets, and the mixture of supplements, anti-spacemalaria-drugs, and whatnot combine to cause a side effect no one would have thought to consider when designing the supplement programs.
posted by hattifattener at 12:49 PM on July 7, 2013
Yeah, but I can't imagine a situation where you'd want to process the fertilizer through your colonists rather than just putting sacks of it directly onto your crops.
The "planet is scarce in [mineral] or planet's native biota don't manufacture [biologically necessary chemical], so colonists need have supplements in their food" scenario is a pretty common one in SF (a la vitamin D enriched flour and iodized salt IRL). It seems like a stretch to me that this would lead to the scenario that KateViolet wants though; you'd need something where the side-effecty dose was only 2x the necessary dose, and that seems like a narrow enough margin that it'd be supplied in a more controlled way than as a food additive (e.g., colonists take a daily pill, or subdermal implant, or medical checkups, or get gene-therapied before going to the planet).
I like steinwald's suggestion that the supplement is there to counteract a pest or disease on the colony planet. (Or even just a simple chemical: say the native life is almost earth-compatible, but produces and uses some chemical that interferes with a specific earth-biological process.) So their food has something to counteract that. Maybe the supplement sometimes has other side effects, but those are dealt with as part of the colonists' routine checkups, and they don't even think about it. Maybe the supplement is only harmless in the presence of the thing it's intended to combat. Maybe the protagonist of the story is living off a collection of surplus colonists' food intended for a variety of different planets, and the mixture of supplements, anti-spacemalaria-drugs, and whatnot combine to cause a side effect no one would have thought to consider when designing the supplement programs.
posted by hattifattener at 12:49 PM on July 7, 2013
However, we produce plenty of urea, which is an excellent fertilizer, as an end product of amino acid metabolism
Yeah, but I can't imagine a situation where you'd want to process the fertilizer through your colonists rather than just putting sacks of it directly onto your crops.
what if it contained an engineered virus (with a matching engineered cure that you take after your off-planet trip...or required constant repleneshment...hmmm a bacteria might be better) that excreted proteins that were somehow useful that come out in your urine...maybe something that you add to water (or some other readily available material...liquid methane?) to make plastics or something? (ha! pee into the local river to make a bridge) Bonus points for brightly colored/bizarrely smelly/oddly vapourous side effects...
posted by sexyrobot at 1:10 PM on July 7, 2013
Yeah, but I can't imagine a situation where you'd want to process the fertilizer through your colonists rather than just putting sacks of it directly onto your crops.
what if it contained an engineered virus (with a matching engineered cure that you take after your off-planet trip...or required constant repleneshment...hmmm a bacteria might be better) that excreted proteins that were somehow useful that come out in your urine...maybe something that you add to water (or some other readily available material...liquid methane?) to make plastics or something? (ha! pee into the local river to make a bridge) Bonus points for brightly colored/bizarrely smelly/oddly vapourous side effects...
posted by sexyrobot at 1:10 PM on July 7, 2013
OR...what if it wasn't a food supply that they had to eat, but had to survive with a space suit that recycles your poo into food?
posted by sexyrobot at 1:12 PM on July 7, 2013
posted by sexyrobot at 1:12 PM on July 7, 2013
...like some sort of gross cheese.
posted by sexyrobot at 1:13 PM on July 7, 2013 [2 favorites]
posted by sexyrobot at 1:13 PM on July 7, 2013 [2 favorites]
You could make it so that the Colony is the play-house of the super rich, and the food is an exotic luxury which is genetically modified to give them super human powers, greater longevity, reduce wrinkles, etc.
Perhaps there's a security feature in the food where tiny nanites in the food with locational processors can tell if you're on the super-rich planet or not, and have 'consequences' for people who try to eat it off-world.
posted by codacorolla at 1:36 PM on July 7, 2013
Perhaps there's a security feature in the food where tiny nanites in the food with locational processors can tell if you're on the super-rich planet or not, and have 'consequences' for people who try to eat it off-world.
posted by codacorolla at 1:36 PM on July 7, 2013
what if it gave you the purple runs, but you mixed that with a (concentrated) catalyst to create a smell-free 'plaster' for making underground (ice?) caves airtight?
...hmm...poo can't be used as fertilizer until it's been thouroughly composted. The likeliest scenario might be that it has an additive that 'auto-composts' it so it can be used as potting soil (possible addition of local dirt?)...omg...what if it did that by becoming ridiculously hot upon contact with the air? bursting into flame? better wipe fast! (hot dingleberries!)
hmmm...what about a six-colonist crew and division of labor? like each colonist has his/her own food supply with a different horrifying mystery effect and thevictim survivor is trapped there long enough that he has to eat through them all...there's a lot of different body fluids...maybe some are designed to combine...like one makes your eyes and nose all runny with poo-plaster catalyst...
posted by sexyrobot at 2:12 PM on July 7, 2013
...hmm...poo can't be used as fertilizer until it's been thouroughly composted. The likeliest scenario might be that it has an additive that 'auto-composts' it so it can be used as potting soil (possible addition of local dirt?)...omg...what if it did that by becoming ridiculously hot upon contact with the air? bursting into flame? better wipe fast! (hot dingleberries!)
hmmm...what about a six-colonist crew and division of labor? like each colonist has his/her own food supply with a different horrifying mystery effect and the
posted by sexyrobot at 2:12 PM on July 7, 2013
To put a bit of science behind steinwald's idea, trimethylaminurea is a real disease caused by inherited deficiency or defect in the FMO3 enzyme. It's pretty harmless except it gives people a strong, fishy odor. So make up a local predator or parasite on the colony world that is repelled by trimethylamine, and give all your colonists an FMO3 inhibitor and food deliberately fortified with trimethylamine precursors. Maybe you could explain that for compliance purposes colonists are issued just one daily pill that combines the FMO inihibitor with some useful supplements or drugs that your character wants.
posted by d. z. wang at 2:14 PM on July 7, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by d. z. wang at 2:14 PM on July 7, 2013 [1 favorite]
Sorry, I should add that "compliance" in this context doesn't necessarily imply coercion. It just means whether the patient takes his medication as prescribed. For example, the early HIV drugs are said to have compliance problems, not because the patients were unwilling but because it's just really hard to take a pill every four hours on the dot, day and night, for the rest of your life.
posted by d. z. wang at 2:18 PM on July 7, 2013
posted by d. z. wang at 2:18 PM on July 7, 2013
The simplest, most plausible thing that I can think of is heavy metals and/or an essential amino acid deficiency.
For example, due to super high levels of selenium (causing it's own problems1) and low levels of sulfur and mumbojumbosomething causes l-cysteine to form incorrectly2. The locals had previously genetically engineered their children to more effectively pass selenium out of their bodies by expressing highly avid scavenger proteins and/or ion-pumps3, and to express a co-factor that scavenges S effectively but happily donates them to the amino acid synthesis cycle and offsets the incorporation of the high concentration Se due to its binding constant advantage4.
1Symptoms of selenosis include a garlic odor on the breath, gastrointestinal disorders, hair loss, sloughing of nails, fatigue, irritability, and neurological damage. Extreme cases of selenosis can result in cirrhosis of the liver, pulmonary edema, and death. From wikipedia
You could posit that the levels of selenium were low enough not to produce acute toxicity. You could make up whatever level of selenium you desire so that the presentation of effects could be anything from days to years of exposure without treatment.
2It's not typically a real thing, but early symptoms might include hair loss (newly made hair is a lot more brittle so when it breaks it takes the rest of it, newly made hair would also be more brittle but there'd be a stubble of brittle hair) and late symptoms would be accelerating decreptitude due to the inability to create properly folded and functional proteins - especially enzymes - leading to a very unpleasant death. Again, mild deficiency would have slowly presenting symptoms. Up to years of mild decline. Severe acute deficiency might be a few days for hairloss to manifest along with fatigue and general symptoms of liver failure. Immune failure would probably be co-temporal in severity.
Severe cysteine deficiency would definitely have mental degeneration. Inability to form new memories. Inability to recall recently formed memories. Deliria and delusions as the consciousness tries to make sense of the brain that is slowly failing in cascade after cascade after cascade. I suspect that the oldest most reinforced and most referenced memories might remain the longest, re-remembered and then lost because they were accessed and reinforcement changes in phosphorylation status and network patterns aren't renewed when called upon. Well, basically like any other slow death involving mild protein synthesis/folding poisoning. Or the body dies first - I don't believe that there is a documented case of dietary cysteine deficiency though, so I can't think of symptoms.
Congenital mild cysteine synthesis genetic diseases are rare but include mild-ish mental retardation, psychiatric diseases, seizures, increased height, and eye problems are typical. Severe cysteine synthesis mutations are probably lethal.
3People with this modification would have to take selenium supplements back in the "homeworlds"
4No known problems with too much cysteine. Bodybuilders think that taking too much leads to headaches, dizziness, and nausea. But this metabolic modification shouldn't affect the rate of cysteine synthesis so shouldn't be a problem.
posted by porpoise at 10:40 PM on July 7, 2013
For example, due to super high levels of selenium (causing it's own problems1) and low levels of sulfur and mumbojumbosomething causes l-cysteine to form incorrectly2. The locals had previously genetically engineered their children to more effectively pass selenium out of their bodies by expressing highly avid scavenger proteins and/or ion-pumps3, and to express a co-factor that scavenges S effectively but happily donates them to the amino acid synthesis cycle and offsets the incorporation of the high concentration Se due to its binding constant advantage4.
1Symptoms of selenosis include a garlic odor on the breath, gastrointestinal disorders, hair loss, sloughing of nails, fatigue, irritability, and neurological damage. Extreme cases of selenosis can result in cirrhosis of the liver, pulmonary edema, and death. From wikipedia
You could posit that the levels of selenium were low enough not to produce acute toxicity. You could make up whatever level of selenium you desire so that the presentation of effects could be anything from days to years of exposure without treatment.
2It's not typically a real thing, but early symptoms might include hair loss (newly made hair is a lot more brittle so when it breaks it takes the rest of it, newly made hair would also be more brittle but there'd be a stubble of brittle hair) and late symptoms would be accelerating decreptitude due to the inability to create properly folded and functional proteins - especially enzymes - leading to a very unpleasant death. Again, mild deficiency would have slowly presenting symptoms. Up to years of mild decline. Severe acute deficiency might be a few days for hairloss to manifest along with fatigue and general symptoms of liver failure. Immune failure would probably be co-temporal in severity.
Severe cysteine deficiency would definitely have mental degeneration. Inability to form new memories. Inability to recall recently formed memories. Deliria and delusions as the consciousness tries to make sense of the brain that is slowly failing in cascade after cascade after cascade. I suspect that the oldest most reinforced and most referenced memories might remain the longest, re-remembered and then lost because they were accessed and reinforcement changes in phosphorylation status and network patterns aren't renewed when called upon. Well, basically like any other slow death involving mild protein synthesis/folding poisoning. Or the body dies first - I don't believe that there is a documented case of dietary cysteine deficiency though, so I can't think of symptoms.
Congenital mild cysteine synthesis genetic diseases are rare but include mild-ish mental retardation, psychiatric diseases, seizures, increased height, and eye problems are typical. Severe cysteine synthesis mutations are probably lethal.
3People with this modification would have to take selenium supplements back in the "homeworlds"
4No known problems with too much cysteine. Bodybuilders think that taking too much leads to headaches, dizziness, and nausea. But this metabolic modification shouldn't affect the rate of cysteine synthesis so shouldn't be a problem.
posted by porpoise at 10:40 PM on July 7, 2013
This thread is closed to new comments.
If you consume colloidal silver too much you turn blue. Maybe on the alien planet that would be a reasonable compromise to keep safe if there's a malaria-esque disease that colloidal silver prevents.
The fertilizer idea doesn't make sense. Humans are pretty fragile and we don't manufacture nitrogen out of other elements in our bodies. Any weird food additives would probably be to keep the humans alive.
Another reasonable side effect might be that the space food would be way way more calorie dense than normal food since (1) weight matters and (2) the colonizers would be exercising all the time. I remember reading about pre-packaged military meals that were designed with a phenomenal number of calories per meal. So your guy might find himself feeling odd and gaining weight despite eating what looks like a normal amount, sort of along the lines of the documentary "super size me".
posted by steinwald at 10:43 AM on July 7, 2013