From levitating peas to sustainable diet supplements, smart eating is coming to London, says

Trends Rosamund Urwin

SCI-FI paints a pretty grim picture of the food of the future. There are a lot of worms: Star Trek’s Klingon speciality “Gagh” and Babylon 5 ’s “spoo”. In Futurama, the Pringles of the 31st century — “popplers” — turn out to be the larval stage of an alien race. And according to the dystopian vision of Suzanne Collins in The Hunger Games, most of us will be toasting squirrel meat before packing off our offspring to an annual child butchery competition.

But according to Fredrika Gullfot, the food revolution will actually be algaeised. The 50-year-old founded the Swedish company Simris, which farms algae to turn into omega 3-rich capsules — an alternative to fish oil. “Everyone knows fish is really healthy because of the omega 3, but not many people know that the fish get their omega 3 from the algae

The capital is hosting a food tech fair, where the focus will be on the eco aspect of innovations

they eat,” she says. “This is a smarter way to get it — you cut out the fish middlemen. Omega 3 is essential to our diet. The biggest benefit is that this is such a safe product, whereas fish often contain environmental toxins like mercury.”

Simris isn’t on sale here yet but will make its debut on November 2 at the UK’s first Food Tech Village at Borough Market. Part of London Food Tech week, the village is free to attend.

Innovation is in the air. Yesterday, scientists at the University of Sussex announced they can make food float using high-frequency soundwaves. It only works on pea-sized morsels of food (they also taste sweeter as a result) but could help save on the washing-up.

At the Food Tech Village, a major focus will be on sustainability. “There’s a strong case for algae from a sustainability perspective,” adds Gullfot. “Fish oil is one of the drivers of over-fishing.”

Simris launched in 2011. Its greenhouses are in southern Sweden and the company has recently gone from a small pilot to production on an industrial scale. Gullfot, a former investment banker who worked for Dresner Kleinwort, had the idea after returning to university to study biotechnology: “I realised this is such a fantastic group of organisms. Farming it made so much sense — the concept is so simple.”

She says initially sceptics heard “algae” and “thought of something that smells — green goo”, but now she has converts: “We have forgotten there are so many plants in the sea.” This is a futuristic food that stems from the primordial past: “These algae have been around for so many billions of years.”

Another element of futuristic food, according to the companies at the Food Tech Village, is that it will stop clogging up landfill sites. Hannah McCollum, a Fulham-based chef who founded hummus company ChicP 18 months ago, has long felt horrified by how much we chuck away.