Homaro Cantu has been called many things over the years: “techno-chef”, “mad scientist”, “a modern-day Willy Wonka” - to name just a few. But now he can add another epithet to his resume: Champion.

Last night in the culinary equivalent of the gridiron known as the “Kitchen Stadium”, Cantu narrowly edged out famed Japanese Iron Chef Masuharu Morimoto to capture a 52- 51 point victory on the Iron Chef America. (If you’ve never seen the Iron Chef before, it’s a “cooking battle” show in which two chefs - an incumbent Iron Chef and a Challenger - must each cook a meal in less than an hour including in each course a specific ingredient.)

To secure a win against veteran Iron Chef Morimoto, Cantu and his team (including sous chef Ben Roche) pulled out the big guns: liquid nitrogen, an ink jet printer, and of course, a class IV laser. After filling several balloons with beet juice (the “ingredient of the day” for the competition) he rolled them in a bath of liquid nitrogen to create beautiful frozen orbs. Next he fired up the laser to a scorching 2800 degrees to caramelize some cellulose-based packing peanuts (yes, the kind that are used in shipping boxes). And while Iron Chef Morimoto delicately sliced beets to make sushi rolls, Cantu simply printed out pictures of maki onto edible paper using an HP printer and soy-based ink.

Cantu, owner of the Chicago-based Moto restaurant, has been hailed as an innovator in the emerging field of “molecular gastronomy“. I’ve been salivating over his work from afar for the last few years, but in October I had the chance to catch up with him at PopTech!. The following is an edited excerpt from our chat (the full version will be featured in the Big Idea Interview on the next episode of FringeHog).

MB: Tell me how Moto is different than other restaurants.

HC: Moto is the tool by which my design company, Cantu Designs, test markets all of its ideas and innovations. Cantu Designs is an idea factory revolving around what I call food delivery systems or consumable products. These can be the inventions that deliver the food to you or the actual food product itself.

MB: Give me a couple of examples…

HC: For instance, if you’re not able to digest a steak we can print one up for you that will dissolve on your tongue. MB: How do you ?print up a steak’?HC: Well, it’s patent pending… but in short, you press a button [on a desktop printer] and out comes your edible substrate [aka, edible paper] and you can eat it. We can alter the texture, the flavor, we can print text on it to communicate with you. We’re also working on a 3D food printer with the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC)…We’re dissecting, for example, the ingredients in an apple -pectin, water, chlorophyll, sugars, acids, etc. and after we dissect those, we place them into say, ink-jet cartridges, and we can reformulate it with a 3-dimensional printer. [The result is] a direct replication of the original product that looks and tastes just like it, but has an indefinite shelf life.

MB: Reformulating apples aside, what are some other applications of this technology?

HC: I think this could be used for famine relief. We want to take it a step further so we print up edible substrates that can be shipped over to developing nations and can be sort of patch for something that is far too costly for us to deal with right now. People need food to exist. If we don’t eat food, we die. If we have nations that have this crisis of starvation - of energy - we’re never going to evolve as a human society. This is the first step toward answering it from a technological point of view.

MB: In 25 years, what do you think the future of food will look like?

HC: I think we’re going see a lot of things grown in a lab. I use the word “lab” but I call it a food replication factory. We’re tired of watching cows get slaughtered… so we’re growing to grow meat in a Petri dish. When beef is grown in a Petri dish we can alter the caloric value, the good cholesterol that you ingest and maybe make super foods. So we become more healthy, physically which then directly affects our mental health, which directly affects us as a society.

If you missed last night’s competition, you can catch the recap of the sushi smackdown when the show re-airs on the Food Network at the following times.

January 25, 2007 9:00 PM ET/PT
January 26, 2007 12:00 AM ET/PT
January 27, 2007 7:00 PM ET/PT
January 27, 2007 11:00 PM ET/PT
January 28, 2007 2:00 AM ET/PT

“PERSONS PRETENDING TO FORECAST THE FUTURE SHALL BE CONSIDERED DISORDERLY UNDER SUBDIVISION 3, SECTION 901 OF THE CRIMINAL CODE AND LIABLE TO A FINE OF $250 AND/OR SIX MONTHS IN PRISON.”

New York State Code of Criminal Procedure

This New York state law, which dates back to the turn of the century, was originally applied to fortune tellers, astrologers and palm readers. Interestingly, the courts have defined a fortune teller as “one who attempts to foretell or predict the future” or as “one who claims to have some professed means of calling up the secrets of the future.” But while any reputable futurist will tell you that she doesn’t predict the future, science is helping us get one step closer to understanding how people “see” future events.

In particular, a recent study by researchers at Washington University used MRI imaging to identify specific areas of the brain that are active in helping people develop images of future events. The study, Neural Substrates of Envisioning the Future, looked at one of the qualities researchers believe is unique to humans - the ability to create a mental picture of events that have not yet happened.?

The BBC reports that “the researchers placed 21 volunteers into the MRI machine, then contrasted the scan results when they were asked to imagine vividly future events and recollect past memories. The resulting images showed clear differences between a birthday already experienced, and a birthday yet to come. When looking ahead, three particular areas of the brain were activated - the left lateral premotor cortex, the left precuneus and the right posterior cerebellum. These brain areas are already known to be involved in the imagining of body movements, suggesting that when the human brain is thinking about the future, it does so in terms of distinct movements and actions that will happen at that point.”

Reading the study, my brain was in overdrive considering the implications - will scientists be able to develop anphysical metric for quantifying a person’s future-thinking abilityWill we one day be able to electrochemically enhance that ability?

My good friend and colleague, renowned futurist Wendy Shultz, suggests that our knowledge about the future comes from:

our understanding and interpretation of past experience;

our observation of the trends and emerging issues occurring in the present, particularly those in the social and technological arenas;

our assumptions - our ideas and beliefs - about what will happen

I agree with Wendy and would argue that our ideas about what could - and should - happen is the most important factor in expanding (or diminishing) our knowledge of the future. In other words, our ability to “know” the future is directly proportional to our capability - as individuals, organizations and societies - to see and accept change, and to imagine different possibilities.

With advances in the rapidly emerging field of brain imaging - and an open mind - perhaps soon we’ll be able to “see” the future a lot more clearly.

(note: I’m filing this under CONNECT in our Verge taxonomy … under the category “hazards of connecting in the information age.” Enjoy.)?

Normally I love Mondays. While other people approach the beginning of the week with dread and trepidation, I see Monday morning as an eternal fountain of self-renewal, full of promise and possibility. Monday is the opportunity to baptize oneself of the sins from work weeks past and to start anew.?

Not today, though. Today I wake with a massive email hangover. Over the last twenty four hoursI’ve been on an email binge the likes of which will surely require Google to add another herd to its server farm. It started innocently enough, a typically lazy afternoon on the couch. Figuring I’d use the pre-game show as a chance to catch up on some correspondence, I fire up the laptop. In less than an hour, I’ve sent a colleague a number of emails. Five, to be exact. Well, actually, six:

“Do you know Greg W., CEO of xxx?”

“Have you read “The Best of Technology Writing?”

“Do you have Claudia’s email?”

“Do you know the date of next year’s (insert name of random technology conference here)?”

“Do you remember us talking about a pollution-eating metal thing that goes on the outside of buildings? I remember seeing the picture; it’s sort of bronze and looks like a small sculpture or a metal “screen” that would attach to a fa?ade. Do you by chance have any idea what I’m talking aboutI can’t find the website and it’s driving me crazy….”

After the fifthmessage it occurs to me that sending several one-off questions as separate emails is an extremely inefficient use of bandwidth. And despite Chris Anderson’s assertion that we live in an economy of abundance where bits are as free as air, my guilt over the digital divide finally overwhelms me (how can I use so much bandwidth when others have so little??). I decide that going forward I will put all of my random questions to said colleague into a single comprehensive (perhaps numerically organized) message. And because I’m a compulsive list-maker, I create a draft email full of questions (which I intend to flesh out later) that reads something like this:

Why isn’t tif carbon neutral?

Lots of MAWGs…

Semapedia??

… and then I promptly hit “send”. Aaaarrrggghhhhh! Mortified, I stare at the screen in horror, realizing that seconds from now my colleague will read this last message and come to the rather obvious conclusion that a) my caffeine addiction has reached epic proportions and b) I’ve now started to cyber-stalk him. My emails, in addition to pouring in at a rate of one every twelve minutes, have now taken on a deranged, psychotic tone, surely the fragmented ramblings of a serial-something in the making.?

But here’s the thing. I wish I could say that this particular colleague was the sole victim of my email assault, but sadly that’s not the case. I sent 114 emails yesterday. On a SUNDAY.

Clearly I have no self-control. Clearly I have an attention span equivalent to that of a five year old. Clearly I’m using email in a desperate attempt fill some unmet emotional need. Clearly, I have issues.

It occurs to me that in my email rampage I have revealed certain carefully hidden personality traits, which is as disconcerting to me as the impending delivery of the restraining order that I’m sure is on its way. In short, my uninhibited use of cheap processing power and a DSL line is now threatening the very social relationships I sought to enrich. On the one hand, in the case of said colleague, I haven’t known him long, so he could likely escape any future contact with me with the help of a sophisticated spam filter and a few well-timed “Out of the Office - Forever” replies. On the other hand, he doesn’t know me well enough to understand that (despite all evidence to the contrary) beneath the veneer of a crazed email lunatic I both enjoy and am actually semi-proficient at alternative means of communication. Such as talking, for example.

As the haze of my email hangover begins to subside, I promise myself that I will change. In an effort to regain some measure of self-control (my self-esteem is way past saving at this point), I resolve to engage in an email blackout. A diet, if you will. I will hydrate. I will share the bits and bytes of the world with those who are less fortunate than me. Along with eggnog and macaroons, during this holiday season I will limit my consumption to seventy-five (ok, eighty) emails a day.?

Happy Holidays.