I was never inside the animal area, haha, good one!
The food is mostly OK, I like good food, but I can eat just about anything. As the food in the airports goes, you should not hope to eat good regional dishes in anything but the most expensive restaurants there, so I generally avoid it :D
I usually prefer eating "safe" fast food, Burger King, McDonalds or KFC while traveling if the layover is long. This way I don't get that spicy of strange food that will make me want to have my own toilet.
My favorite food is on Qatari flights, they really strive to make it better.
Did you know that their food is engineered to not upset your stomach? The ingredients are selected so that the stomach acidity will stay neutral. I laughed at first but I found out that many companies are engineering their food, selecting the right ingredients in order to not keep the toilets full on long flights and prevent foul odors? :D

The automation... is already in use in many airports. The gates are automated more often than not, marshallers are slowly being phased out. Follow the greens is another system that takes the load off the Air Traffic Controller. Basically you are not communicating with the Tower, you just follow the green lights in front of you just like in a series of intersections. AI or simple traffic rules apply:

Planes are being managed and queued by software nowadays, to allow minimum waiting time for each flight, cargo and postal services are fully automated, people are just there for supervision. As for the piloting, most of the operations are done automatically, including CAT III landings (no visibility) with the Autoland system. If the crew wants and the airline regulations allow, the pilots are just there to turn knobs, they don't have to touch anything.
The passport checks are not mostly done by looking at a camera and scanning the passport.So yes, I think we are there, or as a friend recently said to me, we are contemporary with the future :D