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If your pizza was made from algae and bugs, would you still eat it?

What if someone made you a perfectly normal-looking pizza, with your favourite toppings on it, and it smelled really good, but they told you it was made from algae, duckweed, grass and insects... would you eat it?

This is the kind of question that anyone planning on going to Mars (or any other long space-flight) is going to have to wrestle with, apparently, since NASA is currently looking into 3D printer technology to feed people on future human spaceflights.

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People have been using 3D printing to create food for a few years now, and NASA is turning to an Austin-based company called Systems and Materials Research Corporation (SMRC) to create a version of this for their human spaceflight program. The idea is simple enough. Use the same methods for 3D printing, by using a device similar to an inkjet printer to lay down layers of material to build up an object, but instead of using plastic, put edible materials in the printer. Whatever they use will have to be plentiful, easy to get, and easy to store for long periods of time, though, and this is when they turn to 'alternative' food sources.

As long as the food smells right and tastes right, it likely won't be a problem for some, and with no other options, having the choice between starving out in space and eating stuff made from bugs and grass will likely compel anyone with any problems to buckle under and eat it. It's conceivable there will be those that can't get over it, though.

However, according to Arjan Contractor, a senior mechanical engineer with SMRC, who spoke at the Humans 2 Mars summit two weeks ago, this is the kind of thing that we are all likely going to have to get used to as the population increases on Earth.

"I think, and many economists think, that current food systems can’t supply 12 billion people sufficiently," he said in an interview with Quartz. "So we eventually have to change our perception of what we see as food."

The United Nations seems to agree with him as well, since they recently talked about how eating insects is good for the world, and they've been talking about that for years now.

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Given how little thought we sometimes give to what's already in our food, and how unhealthy some of those things are for us, would it really matter what went into our food as long as it tasted good, it had the right texture, it was good for us, and it wasn't harmful in any way? Millions of people around the world already eat insects as part of their daily diet. Many people in the western world already seek out alternatives to the typical 'go-to' foods of our culture (wheat, corn, meat), either due to medical reasons or based on personal or philosophical choices.

I'm not saying that I'm going to run out right now and buy some insects for dinner, because I have to admit the idea makes me uncomfortable, but if my next meal turned out to be made from them and I didn't know it, what difference would it really make? Also, with how plentiful these alternative food sources are, it would make food less expensive, too, which would definitely be a good thing with how costs are on the rise lately.

Food for thought, I suppose.

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