The Swedish company WIN WIN has launched a new project aimed at paving the way for the “food of the future” in order to enable a “switch from high-carbon beef to low-carbon bugs”, the newspaper Veckans Affärerreported.
The idea of Play Food from the Future is for the kids to acquire a taste for food considered marginally edible or unsavoury by today's standards by using 3D-printed toys.
“The toy food should accustom children and parents to the idea that the food of the future contains ingredients that many of today's adults would reject,” the press release said.
“Each toy shows a category of sustainable food that children are probably not used to, but which we will have to start eating in the future if we are to save this planet,” Petter Swanberg, one of the creators behind the project, told Veckans Affären.
According to the company, the menu of the future includes insects, algae, waste, powder food and other nutritious and climate-friendly ingredients.
Sustainable food, project manager Lovisa Ralpher stressed, is “vital” for mankind's survival.
The company's ad features kids changing their attitude towards such delicacies as Algae Ball, Bug Mac, Power Powder, and Tasty Waste from “yuck!” to enthusiasm.
However, not all Swedes were equally zealous about the perspective of 'eating sustainably'.
“You may also try teaching your children how to grow, breed, hunt and fish their own food”, a Swede tweeted.
“Feels a little rushed. The zombie apocalypse is not here yet”, blogger Project Morpheus tweeted.
Some voiced apocalyptic premonitions about the trend.
“Our children will be forced to eat waste. They will die of starvation and cold. We see a new totalitarian ideology being born, climatism, which will result in the de-industrialisation and self-destruction of Western civilization. No adults can possibly stop it”, one tweet said.
Others thought it was not more than a trendy fad.
“Hipsters like to chop wood and grow veggies, don't they? Maybe hunting and rabbit breeding can be the next thing?” another one mused.
Still others bluntly expressed their disgust.