I ate an alien tomato and my arms fell off

An oftentimes overlooked avenue for exploration in speculative fiction is gastronomy, which is surprising given that food is not only a human necessity, but also something that we greatly enjoy.

 

Two creative works in particular spring to my mind when I think of fun fantasy foods: Star Wars and Star Trek. The former has a penchance for blue food, including blue milk and blue noodles (bludles? bloodles?); the latter particularly shows us various examples of alien booze.

 

One thing that often isn't considered in these works (to my knowledge) is how our bodies might react to alien cuisine. I think this is a shame, because there are lots of strange things that biology can do which are safe to one organism, but dangerous to another.

 

Chirality in chemistry is one such way that alien food might be dangerous to humans. Just as we have left and right hands, molecules can also be geometrically oriented as right-handed or left-handed. This matters because it changes the way these molecules fit together with other molecules, which can lead to very different effects when those molecules end up inside our bodies.

 

Thalidomide is an example which many may be aware of. A drug used to treat morning sickness, thalidomide has the unfortunate side effect of causing birth defects by degrading a particular protein which is important for embryonic limb development. Thalidomide comes in left- and right-handed variants, and it was observed that one of these variants seemed to be the cause of the defects moreso than the other. This matter gets complicated, however, by the fact that thalidomide seems to convert itself into its mirror form when inside the human body.

 

An alien made of opposite-handed molecules would likely emerge in an environment alongside similarly structured organisms. As such, the food available in their environment will be made of those same molecules. In many cases, this might not have any dangerous implications for humans at all -- the body would just flush out the chemicals as normal. But what if you ate something that contained a chemical that can disrupt the proteins responsible for keeping your grey matter together? Your brain could get turned into soup mere hours after eating some alien gazpacho, and it could take years for scientists to even figure out why!

 

 We human beings take the safety of our food for granted. Grapes are delicious, and we know that they are safe to eat after thousands of years of eating them. But did you know that grapes can cause kidney failure in other animals? Moreover, we don't even know why this happens. Imagine what could happen to your body if you ate an alien grape, and how helpless you would be in a hospital designed to cater to non-humans! Or, imagine what could happen to a poor alien visitor who takes a sip of some human wine D:

 

Explaining this problem is just as much fun as trying to solve it. In a universe where people from all over the galaxy and beyond are interacting with one another, the science of xenocompatibility would be incredibly important. Foods which are unsafe for certain species would definitely be something that the space equivalent of the European Union would need to keep on top of -- just think of the lawsuits! People who travel off-world might even get modified stomachs to cope with alien cuisine, in the same way we get vaccinated when travelling abroad.

 

I haven't even mentioned the sensory aspect of alien gastronomy. Here's a fantastic thing about human beings: our primate ancestors appear on the fossil record at the same time as flowers and fruits. Think about the kinds of sensory experiences that we value. Sweetness and vibrant colours are considered very wonderful things cross-culturally, but not all animals would agree with us! Many animals can't really taste sweetness, or they might consider sweetness to be a sign of food going bad. Many animals don't have colour vision like we do. What can we infer from all this? We can infer that we've evolved symbiotically with fruiting plants -- that's why we are drawn to colour (flowers) and sweetness (fruits). It's also why we have hands with fingers, and why, millions of years later, we've taken our hands and used them to cross-breed fruiting plants that produce even sweeter fruits and more vibrant flowers. For almost 100 million years, primates have depended on these plants, and these plants have depended on us, and this relationship is part of the very foundation of the human species and civilisation.

 

Humans and angiosperms are one thing, but imagine what strange gastronomical relationships an alien might have with the other species on its planet, and how that might affect the sensory experiences these aliens value most. A carrion-feeding alien might love the taste of rot and decay -- fermenting food might be more important to such an alien than cooking it. A herbivorous alien, meanwhile, might value the colour green, and love the taste of silicon-coated grass. What would these flavours feel like on the tongues of our aliens? Would they be sweet? Umami? Sour? Something beyond our comprehension?

 

An adventurous explorer in space might go even further than modifying their digestive system. They might also modify their tongue, to enable them to experience the full range of flavours that the galaxy has to offer.

 

Of course, many people might find it a bit too much bother to get an operation just to be able to eat food from other planets. One aspect of xenocompatibility, then, might involve assessing which species can co-exist with the least friction. This goes beyond just food -- having a personable appearance and breathing similar atmospheres would likely be factors in designing inter-species communities. Biologically similar species might have a natural tendency to live together, for the simple fact that it makes day-to-day life a whole lot easier. Certain enjoyers of speculative fiction find it a bit annoying when lots of aliens with similar body plans and biologies are shown on the screen, but if we think about xenocompatibility, I think it makes quite a bit of sense. After all, imagine how much of a nuisance it would be to live on a planet like Kashyyyk as a hydrogen-breathing alien whose body is 70% ammonia. You'd have a hard time breathing and finding something to drink, let alone getting a sandwich that your body is capable of safely digesting. To make matters worse, everyone would think you smell like piss. Such an alien would likely congregate around other species whose bodies work in similar ways, which unfortunately means not having much screentime on a show like Star Trek. Only the most adventurous of ammonia-drinking aliens would traverse the stars to meet people like us, and even so they would have to wear a hazmat suit the entire time.

 

So personally, I'm fine with the majority of aliens on the screen being at least somewhat familiar. But even within those limits, I think there is plenty of room for further exploration in speculative fiction. Alien foods could be safe or unsafe, or even just mildly intoxicating for us but not for them (or vice versa). When combining cultures, different species might create all sorts of strange new cuisines (and other works of art besides) as different sensory values collide. Certain people might also face discrimination on planets that are physically, scientifically hostile to their entire bodies -- how would lawyers respond to that? I hope to see more of these kinds of things being explored in the future.