We're now three different series in three different universes by this author

[conuly]

And in every single one we have enough information to conclude that people in the future don't cook.

I'm starting to wonder if the author herself just hates cooking. I suppose there are worse personal issues to drag into your writing.

**********

A Blue Hill man wrote a singles ad for his lonely duck

Fewer kids report sex abuse in US juvenile detention centers

Art Forgery Is Easier Than Ever, and It's a Great Way to Launder Money

Feeling out of step with the mores of contemporary life, members of a conservative-Catholic group have built a thriving community in rural Kansas. Could their flight from mainstream society be a harbinger for the nation?

‘Soldiers of Jesus’: Armed neo-Pentecostals torment Brazil’s religious minorities

'We Were Blindsided': Families Of Extremists Form Group To Fight Hate

Extremist cops: how US law enforcement is failing to police itself

Why people are freezing in America’s prisons

White House veterans helped Gulf monarchy build secret surveillance unit

Methane: It’s a Vast, Invisible Climate Menace. We Made It Visible.

‘Fangirls’ Defend China From Hong Kong Protesters and the World

Revolution 101: For hardened teens of Hong Kong protests, violence is one way forward

Comments

[hilarita]

In the 1960s Doctor Who we're watching, it was the time when food in the future was little white cubes from a machine that somehow tasted of bacon and eggs or roast beef, and delivered a complete nutritional package.

[conuly]

What was it with the mid 20th century's obsession with food pills?

This author doesn't go that far, but everything seems to be very good food that is, idk, mass produced and just heated up at home.

[jesuswasbatman]

Middle-class male writers who resented having to do any housework after moving out of the family home and despised the whole concept as feminine, I assume. The same attitude still exists today in fringe circles-look up the whole enthusiasm for "Solent".

[redbird]

Maybe also women for whom time-saving devices didn't actually give them any more leisure time, but were used to raise the standards: if you can make an OK meal in 20 minutes instead of an hour, is that 40 minutes to yourself, or is it reframed as "you used to spend an hour a day cooking, now you can make us a better meal in that time."

Or women who saw that those labor-saving devices were yet another excuse men used for not doing housework: if what took their mothers 20 hours/week can now be done in ten, why should *they* give up *their* free time so their wives only have to spend six hours/week instead of twenty? If the only choices are "no cooking happens at home" and "I spend most of the time that I'm not doing paid work on cooking, while someone else gets to sit around watching television and hanging out with his friends," I might decide that if you're not cooking for me, I'm not cooking for you either.

[conuly]

Yeah, but did those folks not like to eat at all?

(Then again, I've seen some retro recipes. Maybe they didn't.)

[conuly]

I still can't believe they actually call their stuffy soylent.

[moon_custafer]

I’ve seen at least one early-20th-c take on the idea (Stephen Leacock’s ‘The New Food’) though it parodied the concept.

My guess is that commercial canning, powdered gelatin, Bovril, etc, were all recent-enough things that many people assumed the trend would just continue to its logical end point.

Which makes this seem retro. I still think Glennlivet is just trolling us: https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/05/world/glenlivet-scotch-whisky-capsule-glassless-trnd/index.html