Future Foods

Connection to Research

This unit is based on cutting-edge research by the FoodID team. “ID” stands for innovating and diversifying, which is how these scientists are working to build a more sustainable food system. First, however, they need to understand the inputs and outputs at each phase of food production, processing, and distribution, as well as their impacts on the planet. It’s a complex problem, and students will engage with this complexity by using data to calculate the carbon footprint of their favorite dish and unpack what it means. Like FoodID researchers, students will identify key points in the system where their “foodprint” might be reduced. Finally, they will flex their creativity and problem-solving savvy (the skills of future food engineers!) and consider both social and technological solutions to develop a more sustainable version of their favorite dish.

Research Background

Everything we eat has a story. It starts long before the food appears on our table and continues even when the meal has faded from memory. Our systems for growing, harvesting, processing, transporting, packaging, preserving, distributing, and preparing food are continually remaking our planet, using land, energy, water, and other raw materials while generating byproducts at each stage. Incorporating renewable resources can make the food system more sustainable, but it also creates new technological, environmental, nutritional, and social challenges. In order to meet these challenges, the FoodID team is harnessing the power of plants and microbes to produce healthy food for everyone—a blueprint for a future food system scientists call the bioeconomy. To make foods that are delicious, affordable, and healthy for people and the planet, FoodID researchers are developing new ingredients and new ways of producing and processing them. To accomplish this, they are tackling several key challenges to the bioeconomy. Our research has four major aspects:

• Nutrition: Proteins and lipids are two of the primary nutrients we get from food. Compared with the third major nutrient—carbohydrates—proteins and lipids are more resource-intensive and less efficient to produce, since they are more likely to come from animal sources. To meet the needs of a growing population in a changing climate, we need to diversify the food system with alternative sources of proteins and lipids. For example, microbes can be engineered to produce albumin, the main protein found in egg whites. FoodID researchers are using genetic selection and engineering, fermentation, and other novel, low-carbon methods to produce proteins and lipids, enhancing the nutritional properties of foods while reducing negative impacts on the planet.
• Scale: The bioeconomy has the potential to expand access to high-quality foods by producing more with less. You may have noticed that new technologies and products tend to be more expensive at first. This is because, during initial development, they are produced in small quantities using lots of hands-on labor. Additional research and development are needed to scale up production systems, making the product more widely available and affordable. FoodID researchers are doing just that for alternative proteins and lipids—developing ways to produce them in large batches, unlocking their potential to create a more environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable future food system.
• Taste: Access to nutritious foods is important, but it’s just as important that people actually want to eat these foods! Food preferences are subjective, of course, and they depend in part on cultural factors and the kinds of foods you grew up eating. FoodID researchers are designing novel foods that mimic the taste and texture of familiar foods, taking into account the sensory properties that make foods appealing (or not) to different people in different contexts. One of our favorites is “mouthfeel”—if you’re someone who can’t stand the stickiness of peanut butter or the slipperiness of shellfish, you know just how important mouthfeel can be!
• Trust: Taste, nutrition, and availability aren’t the only factors that might influence your food choices. You might also want to know: Is this food safe? Do I trust the way it was produced? Does it contain anything harmful? There are lots of myths about alternative and novel food ingredients, including that they are less “natural” or less well-understood than foods produced by traditional methods. Learning a little bit of the basic chemistry and engineering involved in producing both traditional and novel foods will grow curiosity and confidence in foods that can improve planetary health. Supercritical fluid technology, extraction of bioactive compounds, and biorefining are just some of the “green” technologies FoodID researchers are using to develop healthy plant-based and fermented foods. Scientific terms like these can be intimidating, so our social scientists are working on ways to tell the whole story of these innovations to help consumers make food choices that are safe and healthy for themselves and for the planet.

Further Reading:

Scientific Papers

• "Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers" J. Poore and T. Nemecek Science (2018): The scientific paper that produced the data students analyze in lessons 1&2 journal link open-access link