Common Foods

As humanity overcrowded the Earth and moved into the stars, the entire concept of food had to evolve. For a few centuries, it seemed like the very concept of agrilculture would die off entirely. Advances in science meant most meats could be synthesized in vats, mushrooms could be processed into synthetic meat proteins, and complex hydroponic setups could grow more crops than any traditional farms ever could.

Real meat, from an actual cow or chicken became a precious luxury reserved for the ultra-wealthy, while vat-grown steaks became the new high-end meat. At the lower end synthetic protein was used for commoners meat, and the poorest in the world would receive a protein-powder they could use to make meat-flavored things that lacked the structure of actual meat.

Then comes the variations for each region. In New Athens, the individual factions and planets seem to set the standard.

Corporatist Diet

In the corporatist-controlled systems, food is split on a simple line: haves and have-nots. Those who can afford good food eat like anyone else. They have synthetic meats and real veggies. Life is normal for them. For those at the bottom of the system however, the diets are not so pleaseant.

Synthetic Nutritional Supplements

If you live on the bottom of the food chain, then your food comes in liquid form. It’s dispensed in simple tubes with very little flavoring available. Just paying to eat will easily be half your wages. The material in the tubes is hard to really call food. It’s a slurry of precisely chosen nutrients, chemicals, and fillers. In animal testing, it didn’t kill the rats, so it was deemed good-enough for human consumption.

Common flavors in the tubes include:

• Beef
• Poultry
• Vegetarian
• Spicey Meat
• Synthetic Fruit Selection (#1-22)

The idea is these keep you alive and do little else. Most of the time they result in malnourished workers who experienced stunted growth in gravity wells and poor muscle growth with brittle bones in 0G.

Spacer Foods

Spacers, whether corporate, military, or otherwise tend to be a cut above the average corporate diet. This is in part to hand preparation, culture, and experience. In factories and processing plants, the workforce spends 18 hour days in grueling labor. They don’t have time to even think about making their own food - if they could afford it. The tube-goo is their best bet.

Spacers have time.

Travel between planets is a multi-day to multi-week trip. It’s inefficient to carry all thoe tubes of prepared chemical yumminess. Ships typically carry textured protein mixes, especially from mushrooms, and dehydrated vegetables or veggie-powders. They’re as dense as possible for the trip, recycler friendly, and optimize resources.

A good spacer cook can process these into an absolutely divine feast. Those in the backwaters systems are accustomed to things like Belter Kibble or Red Kibble. They’re easy to make, turning protein powders into meat balls and synthesizing some noodles from wheat bases. The result is a tomato or cheese based mix that resembles dogfood. It works. Red Kibble is the variant known for its scorching spice.

Militaries may resort to pre-packaged MRE systems, but these are still based on the powder-base and are designed to reheat into real food with some water added. It’s still better than slime and it tastes good-enough to keep morale up.

The Pirate Diet

Pirates subsist on a mix of diets. They do have a heavy reliance on spacer-style cooking for the same reason as the other spacers: efficiency for long-hault voyages without sacrificing quality. On the otherhand, on a pirate base, there’s room for actual food production.

The dirty-secret of corporatists systems is “Value”. Vat-grown steaks do not cost much more than synthetic proteins to produce. They’re valuble to the consumer however, so they are more expensive. The bulk of humanity could easily eat steaks every night if the market were based on cost and not corporate’s demand for ever more profit.

In pirate controled bases, there is plentiful vat-grown meats, hydroponic gardens, and in many of them even a thriving agricultural industry that raises real cows and chickens. The crushing constraints of big-business just aren’t there. They can trade their meats and survive without being taken out.

The net result is that pirates across the galaxy have the best diet on average and they come the closest to what a 21st century human had available.

The New Athens Worker’s Diet

New Athens adds a twist to the mix: the workers.

Across the galaxy, there isn’t much of a workers presence. It’s spacer, pirate, or corporate cuisine. New Athens, with its focus on being somewhere better and this strange 3-way power split has made life better for the common person.

In worker-controlled territory, places like the Parthenon and Poli, your basic food is free. Food is seen as a human-right and that is where some of the corporatist approach has been salvaged for good-use.

Practical Supplements

Liquid food supplements are available, like in the corporatist worlds, but they’re free. Anyone can get a tube of flavored liquid. Moreover, it’s required to pass safety testing. There is an abundance of flavors available and the portion sizes are kept smaller to encourage a variety of flavors. A typical liquid-dinner here might include:

• Synthetic Beef #5 - Sirloin
• Mashed Potatoes
• Applesauce
• Corn

The liquids often have textured chunks to simulate having chunks of beef in gravy or a more potato-soup like consistency to the mashed potatoes.

It’s not perfect, but the low cost makes it easy to give out for free and the efforts made to make it actually enjoyable make it less dehumanizing. It’s a temporary option until someone can find better or an emergency snack for someone who just doesn’t have time.

A Typical Dinner

The average worker is able to afford the best of spacer-style cooking on a daily basis. Many restaurants specialize in making the synthetic proteins into sandwiches, steaks, and more. On Poli in particular there is a budding agricultural industry that is starting to make both real and vat-grown steak more common.

There are some market forces involved, the system is still somewhat capitalist. These forces keep prices higher than ‘steak everyday’ type prices, but they’re in reach for the common-worker with a little svaing up for a special occasion.

Overall Health

Spacer and pirate style diets tend to involve the safest ingredients and the better outcomes for a person’s health. The corporatist diets feature excessive calories and more filler. The dubious nature of their ingredients can cause a higher rate of medical complications. Among corporatist children, there has been an epidemic of being overweight due to excessively sugary foods and excessive artificial sweeteners. Foods that are not filling are another concern.