The kitchen of the future promises to revolutionise the way we live – from shopping, cooking, eating and even cleaning up afterwards. The boffins have been busy in their development labs – we take a look at some of the most innovative futuristic designs that could be coming to a kitchen near you in just a few short years.
Hot Stuff
If you’ve often squinted to study the small print on food packaging and struggled to work out how to programme your microwave, you’ll be pleased to hear that Samsung’s designers have created the answer. Teaming up with Bird’s Eye, when available, their intelligent microwave will ‘read’ information from food packaging, programming itself and presenting you with a perfectly cooked microwave meal.
Inside Out
Bring a taste of the future to your kitchen right now with a Nutrition Scale. Already available, the scale tells you exactly what you’re eating, by portion size. Measuring cholesterol, calories, carbs and much more, the Nutrition Scale shows you what’s inside your favourite foods and will also track your daily food intake. With a gadget like this, you’ll no longer need to rely on guesswork to get you back into those ‘thin day’ jeans, but expect inescapable post-binge guilt to go through the roof.
Lip Service
You might be pleased to know that somewhere in a development lab near you, shouting at your oven is about to become acceptable. Voice control is a big feature in the kitchen of the future, and being able to tell your oven precisely where to go is becoming a real possibility. Making cooking accessible to every member of the family, a voice-controlled oven might save an argument or two and help take some of the heat off mum.
Clean and Clear
GE has created the concept of a computer-controlled ‘kitchen suite’ comprising of some truly innovative and exciting features. Waste not, want not with a dishwasher that works out how much detergent your wash requires, and swap that water filter jug for a UV-powered purification system. Incredibly, GE has also envisioned a fridge that will tell you what’s inside versus what you need for a particular recipe – and all of this over the phone. Who needs a shopping list when your fridge is just a call away?
Wiped Out
If in your household one partner cooks and the other cleans up, it’s time to rethink the division of labour. Work surfaces of the future will clean themselves, retracting and reappearing sparkling and germ-free. With free time at a premium now and in the future, kitchen innovation like this will mean we’ll be spending less of that precious family time cooking and cleaning.
Many futuristic kitchen features work on the assumption that we’ll be living in a world faced with vanishing natural resources and other inevitable results of environmental damage. With the emphasis on saving energy, time and effort, appliances in our kitchens will work in together to think on our behalves and hold our hands through many a culinary adventure.