Food-Specific Communities

“A 2008 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that there was an 18 percent increase in food allergy between 1997 and 2007. This potentially deadly disease affects 1 in every 13 children, under 18 years of age in the U.S.” When we include food sensitivities, we’re talking about a serious problem for a substantial portion of the population. Including all allergies, it is estimated that 50 million Americans, 1 in 5, suffer from one or more types of allergy.

Symptoms of food allergies and sensitivities include everything from nasal congestion, itchy mouth, rash, upsets in all parts of the digestion system, to life-threatening anaphylactic shock. I once traveled with a colleague with a severe peanut allergy: every time we ate he had to ask whether the dishes he wanted included peanuts or were cooked in peanut oil, and often we wound up in discussions with the chef – one mistake and he would be headed to the hospital. Thus people are highly motivated to avoid the foods that cause them problems.

The people I know with significant food intolerance spend hours each day acquiring and preparing safe food. They can’t buy most prepared food – imagine having to cook everything, even condiments, from scratch. They can’t go out to restaurants – imagine if you had to fix all your own food.

Their gardens can grow more food than they need. They often cook food in batches to save time. With our food matching apps and Autonomous Transportation they could share or sell some of the food to other people with similar needs and tastes.

I predict that a new food economy will develop rapidly. It will be highly differentiated, matching the specific food needs and preferences.  Because of the high labor content, if sold in the normal food markets, prices would generally be higher than our current foods, but the quality will be much higher, and most importantly it’s food you can eat safely.

To overcome the challenges, I predict that Food-Specific Communities will form based on particular food needs and preferences. This isn’t just providing access to the raw and prepared foods to meet each individual’s needs, it’s managing the total environment. I saw a boy have a severe allergic reaction just form walking near a stand in an open air market where they were popping corn.

Who would join such a Food-Specific Community? Anyone who had a food allergy themselves, or had a family member with food allergies.

In addition to getting food you can eat safely, and a healthy environment, what are the benefits of such a community? People who like to garden or farm can grow the foods they need. People who like to cook or bake can easily access the ingredients for their specialized cooking. People who like to preserve and freeze foods can use their skills to save foods for eating and sharing later.

By providing the critical mass market for specialized foods, Food-Specific Communities make it economically feasible to grow, cook, preserve, and store foods for highly differentiated special needs.

The ease and speed of our matching apps and Autonomous Transportation will foster innovative new businesses. How about Restaurants Without Borders, RWB? 

I know people who love to cook, and one of their challenges is finding people to share their cooking with. They don’t want to run a restaurant or work in one. Now they can determine ahead of time how many people might be interested in having, for example, their corn-free curried chicken tonight at 7 pm. If, say, 12 people sign up, the cook orders the ingredients to be delivered by 4 pm from local suppliers, has a great time cooking, and then ships out the 12 dishes to wherever each person will be eating.

This can foster another innovative business, BYOF, Bring Your Own Food: they don’t cook any food, it’s all transported in from wherever the diners ordered it. The BYOF provides a particular ambiance, perhaps elegant candlelight, linen tablecloths, attentive service, and classical music. Diners order food from their choice of Restaurants Without Borders.

Now people with food allergies and sensitivities don’t have to always prepare their own food!

A major challenge with food allergies and sensitivities is that they are often hard to diagnose because we eat so many different things, and many ingredients are hidden in foods. And most doctors aren’t much help. The main process to diagnose food allergies and sensitivities is to an “elimination diet” where you avoid one or more foods and see if your symptoms disappear.

This could be another innovative new business opportunity for the Food-Specific Communities: a person can order a specific food elimination diet from the corresponding Food-Specific Community. The food can easily be shipped to the subject’s home, or if environment is important as well, the subject goes and stays in the Food-Specific Community for a time.

There is strong evidence that physical proximity stimulates creativity. Bellcore did some fascinating work on joint research creativity and productivity, showing that distance was a key measure, with 100’ reducing the joint productivity in half, and a stairway was equal to 200’ (if I recall correctly). The latest issue of Wired Magazine, 21.06, has an article on page 107 talking about these tradeoffs.

So imagine the progress in understanding and ameliorating, or even curing, food allergies and sensitivities that can come from these Food-Specific Communities. Providing common purpose, strong motivation, and constant attention with close physical proximity provide a strong impetus for innovation. I believe we will see amazing results from these Food-Specific Communities, in addition of course to happier and healthier people who live in them.

This is just the tip of the innovation iceberg. I have a wide range of ideas that I’ll discuss in future posts, both food-related and otherwise, especially building on Sustainable Communities.

Next I plan to discuss some more technical innovative ideas in how to implement Autonomous Transportation Systems, starting with a 4-Dimensional Global Map.