Empty Kilobytes? The Promise and Peril of Digital Food 

By Randall Amster, J.D., Ph.D., Co-Director and Teaching Professor of Environment & Sustainability, Georgetown University

You walk into a restaurant but there are no tables, or people. A farm operates without farmers, and an almanac of accrued seasonal wisdom is written out in code rather than by quill. Meats are grown in labs, food can be “printed” by machines, plants are genetically enhanced, seeds are privately patented and the entire food supply chain is monitored so that it can be optimized for maximum production and security. 

You probably didn’t have to stretch your imagination too far to dial up such examples, since much of this already exists or is likely to in the near future. This simultaneously sounds utopian and dystopian, and both borne of necessity and invention. The increasing automation of our relationship with food, and our analysis of that automation, parallels the expanding role of technology in many facets of modern life. It is oftentimes uncritically accepted as benign, a sign of progress, potentially liberatory and essentially inevitable. 

As with many things digital, there can be a tendency to portray the digitalization of food as a catalyst for democracy. The digital realm is often viewed as a great equalizer, yielding more access and accountability. Yet as we know through studies of the “digital divide,” the digital realm can also serve to further amplify skewed power relations and exacerbate unequal distributions of benefits and burdens. 

Getting Technical

“Food goes digital,” a Forbes Magazine article proclaimed in late 2019, reflecting a trend  already in evidence from a 2018 article asserting that “the future of food is digital.” Digitized sensory experiences, curated social media posts, genetic modifications, cutting-edge agricultural technologies, virtual “ghost kitchens,” and on-demand deliveries are all part of this emerging landscape, as is the increasing use of tools such as AI and blockchain at numerous points in the food system. Technological methods and tools are increasingly deployed as a framework for accomplishing everything from reducing waste, ensuring safety, and optimizing production, to enhancing personal health and consumer choice and confronting climate change.  

At the same time, these digital food systems are subject to vulnerabilities and can exacerbate existing inequalities through factors such as privatization and centralization. A recent article in Forbes Magazine (2022) contended that “nature can no longer sustain us” and that food systems need to be “decoupled from nature” to meet current and future needs. While the aim may be to sustain and expand total food production in a destabilizing world, the capacity to grow food may become directly associated with the power to access novel technologies.

In light of these forces, it is important to evaluate the full implications of food becoming digitized, considering not only expediency but also access, justice, power, autonomy, conviviality, ecology and perhaps the very texture of life itself.

Eat to the Beat

The production and consumption of food have always been technological on some level; likewise, the socioeconomic relations that often determine access to food are a form of software and programming that can establish nutritional standards and distributive operations in society. It is thus unsurprising that the digital age has elicited a spate of technologies that directly impact food systems — supermarket self-checkout scanners, Amazon’s forays into food retailing and the growing utilization of apps and algorithms as part of community organizing and food rescue/redistribution efforts are some examples. 

Food is central to how we define ourselves as individuals, as a people and as a species. As a tangible substance that is dependent on biophysical processes for consumption and conversion to energy, it is hard to conceive of food being caught up directly in the vicissitudes of the digital/virtual age. Yet prior changes to food systems in the age of industrialization already have introduced systems of mass-production, commodification, packaging and conspicuous consumption (i.e., associating food choices with social mobility). In just a few generations, food has moved from something people grew themselves (or knew who grew it) to a “fast food nation” as described by Eric Schlosser in his influential 2001 book. Still, despite the sheer amount of food produced (much of which is wasted in many places), cities remain plagued by “food deserts” and patterns of “food apartheid” that reflect historical and racialized practices, often leading to high levels of undernourishment and food-induced medical conditions. 

The transition from food as a communal experience to a more individualized one parallels the trajectory of many modern technologies. Virtual experiences have impacts on communities at all scales, and consumer choices often flout ethics of sustainability. Even at a microcosmic level (consider a family dinner where everyone is on their devices or someone at a restaurant taking and posting pictures of their meal but hardly eating it) the default expectation is that people will not interact intentionally with what they are consuming, or directly with one another. These anecdotal moments are merely the tip of a systemic iceberg in which food consumption is becoming increasingly abstracted and individualized rather than communal, decoupled from social norms, and interwoven with technological changes. As Tania Lewis observed in the 2020 volume Digital Food: From Paddock to Platform, “our everyday food practices and experiences have become thoroughly entwined with the wider ethics and politics of digital media and technology.”  

For instance, this is seen with the growing presence of food delivery services, the on-demand food app system, automated supermarkets and the rise of “cloud kitchens” where food is prepared by chefs for delivery with no restaurant attached. “I think this structure of putting the preparation of food behind closed doors, it really disadvantages people who need the brick-and mortar experience — or who really need to access the internet, warm up between shifts at a job,  have a meeting point for them and their kids,” Georgetown professor Marcia Chatelain noted in a 2020 New York Times article. While many consumers might take their wireless access as a given, those on the other side of the divide often rely on public portals for access — as well as for maintaining a sense of community. The shift to a culture where any restaurant effectively can appear upon doorsteps can also eradicate important points of connection and contact. 

When it comes to food there can be a great deal of sensitivity about personal choices and cultural norms, as people find ways to express themselves through their eating habits and by sharing them with others. Moving into an uncertain future in which food may become almost completely commodified and centralized in its production (while also impinged upon by climate change and environmental degradation), the temptation to look for high-tech solutions to a basic human need may further instantiate unjust arrangements of power and access, unless they are consciously inscribed otherwise. Especially in times of crisis, it is critical that we strive to keep food “unplugged” in a wired world if it is to remain more than just another item for “binging.” 

Drawing the Line

Food is both universal and highly personalized. Given the sobering realization that producing food for billions of people necessitates vast energy inputs (often from fossil fuels), massive  amounts of fresh water, centralized production and processing facilities, wasteful packaging and polluting forms of transport and the economic exploitation of vulnerable communities and frontline agrarian workers, the converging environmental crises of this era land squarely on our plates. It seems that we cannot feed ourselves anymore without a healthy dose of injustice, from production to distribution and all points in between. Indeed, to examine just one point in the food chain, as a 2024 article in The Guardian contends, “When your food comes via a delivery app, the exploitation is baked right in.” 

These sorts of lamentations, however, stand at odds with the ways that many people experience food on a daily basis. Modern life is replete with manifold drive-thru and fast-food operations, chain restaurants and street-corner shops and big-box supermarkets with items stacked to the rafters. It was like this before the pandemic fully emerged in early 2020 — but during it and in the aftermath, the impetus became more about finding clever digital ways to replicate this type of bountiful food experience rather than reinvestigating its tenability in the first place. Thus, fast food has gotten even faster, food transport literally comes right to your door, you can skip the grocery checkout line by having someone else shop for you and the supermarket display aisle is now an infinite scroll on any of your ubiquitous devices. 

As noted, this moment of digital food has been in the works for some time now. The global  pandemic interrupted business as usual, but it was not sufficient to jolt the baseline operations of a system that steadily has been eroding the life-giving capacities of the planet. And while mobilizations have arisen for social, economic, racial, and environmental justice, when it comes to food, there has been less of a clamor for change despite a few brief surges of attention when supply chains dwindled and food lines formed. We might say that generally well-fed people may at times get fed up with systemic injustices, but often they will still rely upon that system’s convenience and bounty in their lives. 

Proceed with Caution

When it comes to resources, especially essential ones, there are two great schools of thought. One is the baseline pessimistic math of too many people and too few resources, setting the stage for resource conflicts, and ultimately, the tragic collapse of the system itself. The other more optimistically focuses on the seemingly endless human capacity to innovate our way out of crises, casting the system as far more resilient and durable despite the appearance of fissures. While it may be tempting to view the latter as preferable to the grim Malthusianism of the former, the deeper reality is that the Cornucopian ideal can be equally problematic if it takes our gaze away from the need for structural change. 

In this regard, the activism at the nexus of food and technology is of particular interest, as it connects a range of emerging discourses that are not often coherently brought together. The 2018 collected volume Digital Food Activism (edited by Tanja Schneider and colleagues) examines issues including digital mobilizations, information exchanges, social media participation, and a resurgence of interest in “food transparency” sparked in part by the digital age. The conclusions proffered are partly optimistic, yet also are vigilant about these trends, observing how food activist networks can be increasingly surveilled (and thus potentially controlled or co opted) but likewise how they can be used to help communities imagine (and mobilize for) robust alternative food futures. These sentiments are echoed in a 2021 scholarly article also looking at issues of power and culture, viewing “the stunning (re)emergence of mutual aid groups and initiatives [that are] now organised through websites and other online sharing tools” as both inspiring and concerning. 

Thus, along with promising developments, the overarching impetus of digital food may be a  cautionary tale. Simply switching over to new technologies does not render an inherently unjust and highly unstable system somehow more equitable and sustainable. Before the advent of digital food, power issues pervaded the field in terms of access, information, and outcomes when it came to the production, distribution, and consumption of food. While convenience and optimization are often used to market innovations, other values that can be harder to quantify are also critically important to assess. Food serves purposes beyond its mere commercial and material values, oftentimes being deeply associated with family traditions, holidays and religious gatherings, and romantic encounters; those myriad roles can be imperiled by digitization, as the complete commodification of food potentially looms ahead. 

(Ana)logging on

Critical interventions often fall by the wayside when people are seeking sustenance—both biophysically and socioculturally. In the scramble to stock up pantries during a crisis, only a relatively small pool of consumers will scrutinize labels and source ingredients with the same level of diligence as in “normal” times. However, history counsels that societal changes created during times of crisis can outlive the moment, setting a new baseline for what ensues in the aftermath as conditions restabilize. In a time when convenience outweighs conviviality and deliverance becomes more important than digestion, it is incumbent upon us to find ways to understand, discuss, galvanize and potentially transform emerging trends in real-time, as opposed to engaging them after the fact when the die has already been cast. The maximal digitization of food may set the table for its unchecked abstraction in the days ahead. 

Tracing the evolution of digital food before, during and after the pandemic yields a complex and oftentimes troubling picture of the trajectory of food systems. Gains made in the realms of convenience, efficiency and transparency might be offset by losses of autonomy, community, and sociability. Paying attention to both the promise of emerging technologies and their perils can help provide opportunities for critical engagement rather than passive acceptance. This is especially important when it comes to essentials such as food that speak directly to our analog selves in a world becoming increasingly digital.