What is the future of food?
A staggering volume of food is wasted on its way from producers and farms to people’s fridges and cupboards, and public concern is mounting. Journalist Lucy Purdy meets three inventors of potential solutions — all previous entrants to the James Dyson Award (JDA) — who are experimenting with what and how we will eat in the future.
When one in nine people on Earth remain malnourished, one statistic makes for uncomfortable reading: between 30 and 50 per cent of all food produced on the planet is lost before ever reaching a human stomach.
Identified as a problem in the UK as early as 1915, when combatting food waste became one of the initial goals of the Women’s Institute during the Great War, now the topic has rocketed up the public agenda. Along with sugar intake, waste is now more of a concern to shoppers than price, according to the Food Standards Agency’s public attitudes research in the UK.
There are no shortage of compelling reasons to tackle it: not least the people currently going hungry, but also the damage that wasted food inflicts on the planet — from global warming to deforestation. Food loss accounts for eight per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, and it is projected to increase in most regions around the world, particularly industrialising countries with growing populations. As wealth grows, people demand more diverse foods that aren‘t grown locally, creating further wastage.
“With the world’s population expected to reach 9.8 billion by 2050, demand for food will soar. Insects could be a big part of the solution as they are high in protein but place land under much less pressure compared to meat.”
Developing nations often have high levels of what is termed ‘food loss’ — unintentional wastage often due to substandard equipment, transportation and infrastructure. While wealthy nations usually manage to keep unintentional losses lower, they actually have higher levels of ‘food waste’, the ditching of food by consumers because they have bought too much, or by retailers who reject produce on the grounds of exacting aesthetic standards.
Fortunately, as public awareness grows, so do the number of potential solutions. From smarter labelling to making better choices about what we eat, below are three people with the appetite needed to solve the problem.
Nesting instinct: Azcatl
Eating insects has a bit of a marketing problem in the west. But two billion people around the world already eat bugs regularly, and Karla Rosales García and Mariana Cervantes Macías of Mexico City-based Insecto-Lab are on a mission to persuade us to join them.
With the world’s population expected to reach 9.8 billion by 2050, demand for food will soar. “Insects could be a big part of the solution,” say the pair, “because they are high in protein but place land under much less pressure when compared to meat, both in terms of space and intensity of use.”
And when it comes to food waste? “With meat, we eat just 40 per cent of the animal,” says Mariana, “but when it comes to insects, it’s more like 80 or 100 per cent. Here in Mexico, we have 549 species of edible insects, so we’re super familiar with this food.”
The pair have designed Azcatl: a prefabricated nest for ants, which will help the insects establish colonies quickly and easily. Azcatl means ‘ant’ in the indigenous Nahuatl language, but the foodstuff in question is not the ants themselves but ‘escamoles’ — ant larvae. “In Mexico it’s considered very good to eat,” says Mariana, “it has a buttery taste. But it’s also quite exotic, quite luxurious, because collecting the larvae is currently not easy or predictable.”
During escamoles season, between April and June, collectors first have to find nests underground. They excavate them — often being bitten in the process — before shaking them to release the eggs. Often, the fragile nests break and the ants have to start the painstaking process of rebuilding them, depleting next year’s harvest.
“At least 10 per cent of all food waste happens inside the supply chain. If food waste were its own country, it would be the second to third largest CO2 emission-contributing nation in the world.”
The Azcatl nests measure 15cm and are produced using 3D printing technology and polylactic acid (PLA), a polymer made from renewable corn starch. They are biodegradable, lasting approximately 40 years before breaking down, claim the pair.
The nests are placed near a small ant’s colony and, once populated and filled with escamoles, can be removed without breaking. Once the escamoles have been harvested, the nests can then be placed underground and repopulated without a slow rebuilding process.
It makes producing escamoles easier and represents an exciting opportunity for sustainable food production, particularly in rural areas where escamoles are mainly harvested. Ants don’t require any extra technology: only a small amount of water and vegetables. “Here, one kilogram of escamoles sells for about 1,000 pesos ($53USD) so this could form a family’s principal income,” says Mariana.
“We would also love to design small city ‘farms’ that people could have at home. But this is only a vision at the moment.” Other future plans include nests for “delicious and difficult-to-farm insects, like gusanos de maguey (edible caterpillars) and scorpions.”
“Mexico is a leader of edible insects and we’re super shy about it at the moment,” smiles Karla. “We want to be part of the solution. We need to start thinking about how population increases are going to have a huge impact and how we’re going to meet the demand. We want to prove that eating insects is greener, and that it’s pretty tasty too!”
True colours: Fresh Strips
Emerging from Eindhoven’s booming start-up scene comes, Fresh Strips, a solution to the problem of safely shipping food. They are stickers you attach to boxes transporting produce. When exposed to excessive heat, ink on the strip changes colour from green to red, irreversibly indicating that the food is no longer edible.
CEO Marios Chryssolouris met co-founder and chief technology officer Koen Nickmans when Koen was finishing his PhD in liquid crystals. The pair had the idea of using thermochromic ink on labels for food packaging during transportation. They can even be customised according to the temperature profiles of different foods.
Marios mentions an estimate by the UN stating that at least 10 per cent of all food waste happens inside the supply chain. If food waste were its own country, it would be the second to third largest CO2 emission-contributing nation, he says incredulously.
“There is usually a single monitoring device in each truck and whenever that device sees a spike in temperature, the whole lot of food has to be thrown away,” he explains. “With our design, you can stamp Fresh Strips to each individual box, giving a much more detailed view.”
Liquid crystalline molecules are at the heart of this nanotechnology. Their helical structure expands or gets compressed during exposure to heat. “Initially we do the compression, and then it expands,” says Marios. “While it’s expanding, it changes the pitch of the helical structure and that causes the colour change. It’s not a chemical process but a physical one.”
At which stage in a product’s journey does he envisage the strips would be applied? “Mostly on transportation routes from supplier or producer to the supermarket warehouse, and from there to the supermarket branches.”
“We are focusing mostly on products that are rather expensive per item, and also risky. Chilled fish and poultry, which are quite dangerous if exposed to increased levels of heat, and also relatively expensive, so having to throw them away is a significant loss for a company,” says Marios.
Fresh Strips hopes to get the price per strip down to just one Euro cent each. “But it’s also probably the best colour that there is on the market,” he adds. “It uses the same types of molecules as in computer or TV screens, so it can generate really very vivid colours, which is vital for visual inspections.”
The team say they are working to get the strips out into the real world as quickly as possible. “We’re very R&D orientated people and there are always things that we’ve sketched on to paper but need to test out,” says Marios.
They are already in discussions with supermarkets in the Netherlands and in Germany, and in early stage talks with supermarkets in other European countries. Future plans include modifying their technology to take other mitigating factors for food quality into account, “humidity for instance is a major factor in terms of dried and powdered food,” notes Marios.
The environmental gain is a big motivating factor, but the simpler challenge of just getting their work ‘out there’ looms large too. “We’re rather ambitious,” says Marios. “We want to make a technology that doesn’t just stay in the lab but that goes out into the market — and that works.”
And Fresh Strips aren’t the only sticker based solution to food waste looking to shake up the market…
Feeling good: Mimica Touch
“I was raised not to waste food at all. Growing up, it was the worst thing you could do in our house,” laughs inventor, Solveiga Pakštaitė.
It might have been a no-no in her childhood home, but in the UK we throw away seven million tonnes of food and drink annually, costing the average household £470. Solveiga’s invention, Mimica Touch, is designed to show exactly when food spoils. It is a label containing a gel layer set over plastic bumps. The gelatine is calibrated to degrade at the same rate as the food in question, adjusting to conditions along the way. When the gelatine decays, it becomes a liquid, revealing the bumps under allowing the consumer to feel the difference. By providing a more accurate picture, it could save perfectly edible food from the bin, says Solveiga, “the whole system needed an update to something a bit more real-time.”
“In the UK we throw away seven million tonnes of food and drink annually, costing the average household £470.”
Use-by dates are just estimations of how long a product will last at a specific temperature. In reality, food is subjected to many scenarios and temperatures while in transportation and storage, all of which affect its freshness. As Mimica responds to temperature variations in the same way as food, she believes that checking for bumps is a more reliable way of determining food’s edibility.
The patented label has a flat side, which always stays smooth, providing a comparison to the ‘active’ side, as well as an expected expiry date. But it’s the ‘active’ bumpy side that has sparked interest from producers and retailers around the world. Labels will be supplied to the food manufacturers in a dormant state, before being applied and sent on their ‘temperature journey’.
“I wanted entire packaging going gross and bumpy to indicate food rotting,” says Solveiga, “so I tried using materials that provide those characteristics but realised I was barking up the wrong tree. A professor suggested I look at gels because they have interesting spoilage characteristics: they turn from their solid state back to a liquid state when they spoil because the bonds break.”
The fact that gelatine is a waste by-product from the meat industry also appealed — “so much gets wasted every year” — but she is also working on plant-based gel alternatives too.
Getting the price right is crucial, she says, “because it ensures retailers an attractive return on their investment. Producers say: ‘we’ve been wanting to use technology like this for ages, it’s just been too expensive.’”
There is a misconception that food producers are “evil and profligate” when it comes to food waste. “But by building in buffer times to guarantee food safety within the current system, they actually get fewer selling days, so our solution could help make them more profitable too.”
Mimica is working on a pilot scheme with the international dairy co-op, Arla, and their first production run will begin soon. “There’s no real reason for me to be at the factory on the day the first labels get made, but try and stop me!” says Solveiga.
Her ambition is for Mimica to be recognised as a global mark of freshness. “Anything that perishes can benefit from the Mimica, not just milk and meat, but all kinds of foods and cosmetics, pharmaceuticals and even blood and organ transportation,” she says. “We have such a huge opportunity here. But such a lot of work still to do!”
Words: Lucy Purdy, Editor of Positive News
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