Particles for the Palate By Mr. Fred, Professional Zombie

Hey, food fans! I come to you today to talk about something that I've discovered amid much research. It pertains to the future of food as we know it. Sure, plenty of people wonder what humans will look like in a million years, or what cities will look like in a thousand years, but that's a tad boring. Food is the only truly intriguing aspect of time!

Now in previous articles I began to dabble in this subject a bit. In Back to the Basic Ingredients I talked about how meals, deserts especially, were using more basic ingredients for flour. In Mastication Breakdown I had discovered that with the rise of liquid foods, teeth are on the way out. Now, however, I see the big picture!

As time progresses, all food as we know it will De-evolve into basic elementary particles. Yeah, I know it's a lot to take in, but it's true. First, let's begin by talking about the elements themselves and just how the effect how we eat things:

THE PERIODIC TABLE OF TASTE

Shown right is the periodic table, home of nearly a trillion elements (this is just the first page). Each element gets its own square to live in, and each square pertains to a specific taste. The Greens are sweet, the Pinks are sour, the Blues are bitter, the Purples are cheesy, and the Oranges taste something like dog fur. Particular combinations of elements can yield specific tastes, such as the combination of Lithium, Aluminum, and Nickel which tastes like potato salad. Although this might seem to taste like bittersweet cheese, the reality is that different combinations form different tastes that are predictable, albeit complex.

So how does this apply to the evolution of cuisine? Already, bistros and delis are building laboratories in their kitchens. Pots and pans are being replaced with beakers and burners, and gloves worn by chefs are now more for the purpose of protection from acid spills. "We installed a titration system by the deep fryer," manager of Chuck's Happy Times Diner Chuck Emry states, "and all of our fries now come with a phenylbutazone dipping sauce. Business has doubled." Elated restaurant owners nationwide have made the move to a more elemental menu, and complaints are yet to be heard.

Elemental Menus — What does that mean, exactly? Several establishments boasting elemental menus range in devotion to particle food. I suggest that the informed consumer get a taste of everything before deciding on a level they enjoy. Some of the lighter restaurants can serve things such as Isopropyl Pancakes or Potassium-Argon Omelets. Further up the scale of elemental foods are dishes like Electron Smoothies and Neutrino Cotton Candy. At the far end of the atomic cuisine spectrum one might find Quark Casseroles and Super String Pasta. Don't worry about stumbling upon those latter ones though, they're more or less unique to France.

As these cultures of food grow increasingly popular, organic solid food from plants and animals as we know it will probably fade into nothingness. Steaks will be replaced with blocks of copper ore, soda with gleaming elemental mercury, and salt and pepper with gluon particles. Don't be saddened by this trend, however, because our bodies are all evolving to prepare for it. By the time this grim future I speak of is reality, the human mouth with be a small ceramic chamber capable of splitting apart compounds with accelerated saliva particles and withstanding extreme temperatures, so cheer up!

Our ancestors will be proud of the day when the average jaw can achieve nuclear fission. I can't wait, but for now I'll stick with my Cheerios.

- Mr. Fred
Professional Zombie