Just before the first issue of 'Cuisine' appeared, Terry Gilliam released Brazil, a darkly comic science-fiction film.
One scene, set in a posh French restaurant, is worth recalling. Diners order classics such as duck a l'orange and braised veal in wine sauce. The maitre d' returns a few seconds later to announce each dish with great flourish. Each contains three scoops of something that looks like mashed potato. Only the colour changes with each meal, which is accompanied by a picture of the original dish.
Looking into the future of food is both exhilarating and frightening. For starters, 25 years from now, people who view eating as no more than refuelling will feel right at home as science fiction becomes fact. Sensors to monitor your body's nutritional needs already exist. All they'll need is an implant and pills containing core nutritional components to top up when required.
But where does that leave food lovers? Perhaps the world will cleave in two. On one side a passionate group will grow its own produce at home while only buying sustainable, ethically farmed ingredients. The other camp will rely on industrial agriculture for sustenance, even if it comes at great cost to their personal health and the environment. Whichever group you support will partly be determined by how much money you have. Eating well is increasingly for the wealthy.
While countries such as New Zealand and Australia will continue to enjoy their "clean, green" reputations, they'll also feel the effects of global markets, especially as supermarket chains source cheaper goods overseas at the expense of local production. It seems likely that we' ll eat lesser-quality foods, without necessarily having a choice.
Concerns already exist about food security and sovereignty, especially when companies such as China's state-backed Bright Food buy into the local dairy industry, as they have in both New Zealand and Australia. The nagging fear is that products will be exported to better paying markets, forci ng up local prices in the process.
A fierce battle rages between believers in organic farming and advocates of genetically modified food as the best way to feed us all. Some worry we'll starve, but Slow Food guru Carlo Petrini says we already have enough, pointing out that America wastes nearly half its agricultural production while millions of its countrymen go hungry.
The World Health Organisation projects a rise in meat production to 376 million tonnes by 2030 (compare that with the 218 million tonnes produced in 1997-1999). And that figure will continue to grow, with increasing demand from emerging economies such as India and China.
However, two key factors are likely to change our carnivorous behaviour. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates that livestock contributes to 20 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions while using 30 per cent of the world's arable land. If we're going to tackle climate change, we'll need to recognise that reducing meat consumption has a bigger impact than counting food miles.
Secondly, industrial livestock production is heavily subsidised by cash-strapped governments looking to make savings. Perhaps the true cost of factory farming will finally be revealed as we find it's not as sustainable as we believed.
Meanwhile, Mark Post, a vascular biologist at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands, is already working on growing meat from animal stem cells in a petri dish. He hopes to produce the world's first in-vitro hamburger, costing €250,000, by the end of 2012. While that sounds expensive, today you can buy a $300 digital camera containing technology that a decade ago cost $20,000.
Besides which, test-tube meat will use up to 60 per cent less energy, emit up to 95 per cent less greenhouse gas and take up just two per cent of the land required for livestock.
While all this is a bleak prognosis, the future's not all doom and gloom. Cast your mind back to 1987 when fish sauce and coriander, now commonplace, were known only to well-traveUed Western palates, and you'll realise how far we've come. And it can only be positive that our obsession with other cultures' cuisines will continue.
Our love of Asian food will develop increasing regional sophistication, so we'll pick the difference between Northern and Southern Thai and discuss our favourite Chinese, from Sichuanese to Hunanese.
Two key global regions will also excite our interest. Firstly, South American and Mexican cuisine will increasingly come to the fore.
On the opposite side of the world, the new Nordic movement will lift our perception of Scandinavian food far beyond vodka and herrings.
Danish chef Rene Redzepi's Noma has been lauded as the world's best restaurant. And in northern Sweden, young chef Magnus Nilsson seats just 12 people in his restaurant, Faviken Magasinet. His philosophy is engrained in the region's traditions, from foraging to killing his own meat and ageing it for up to five months.
Chefs have become this generation's Bono and Bob Geldof, strutting the global stage and lecturing leaders on feeding the world. After a recent gathering in Lima, Peru, leading chefs released the "G9" Chefs' Manifesto: "Cooking is a powerful, transformative tool that, through the joint effort of co-producers - whether we be chefs, producers or eaters - can change the way the world nourishes itself.
"We dream of a future in which the chef is socially engaged, conscious of and responsible for his or her contribution to a sustainable society."
Molecular gastronomy peaked with the genius of chef Ferran Adrià at Spain's El Bulli. When the restaurant closed, the demise of molecular gastronomy seemed inevitable - even welcome - as chefs turned back to the basics and traditional techniques.
Our curiosity about where our food comes from will continue, meaning it's also time for producers to have their 15 minutes of fame. Restaurants throughout New Zealand now proudly acknowledge suppliers on their menus and the best of these producers will be increasingly recognised and lauded.
Localism will continue as a buzzword - hopefully, we'll remember how to eat seasonally rather than flying in cherries from America in winter. Foraging may be big news now but it will have a limited life span because, just as in the past, we'll over-harvest to the point of extinction.
On the restaurant front, fine dining will survive, but as a niche product, despite the fact that eating out will continue to grow. More casual settings will mimic a home -away from- home feel, along with the comfort of home-style cooking.
Ambitious young chefs keen to experiment will use pop-up restaurants as a low-risk way to test their ideas on the cheap. Conversely, those who invest heavily in the dining-out experience will move towards making people buy tickets for dinner on the internet - if you fail to show, you'lllose your cash, just like missing a concert or the theatre.
Sadly, for those who like a bit of bedtime food reading, the printed cookbook will only exist for aficionados, as we follow recipes on iPads, watching chefs demonstrate the tricky sections.
And as for that duck a l'orange mashed potato? Perhaps it's destined to become a modern classic in 2037.
By Simon Thomsen in "Cuisine Collector Edition", New Zealand, issue 151, March 2012, excerpts pp. 26-27. Digitized, adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.