Food, a big issue in SDG
Hello, Wenting Zhan I am. Bron and grown up in China, now study master in the Netherlands. My major is Food Technology, specialized in Food Processing.
I am ready to do some changes in food theme. As an old Chinese saying goes, “Food is the first necessity of the people”, but since the population is increasing rapidly, the food security is still a big issue for all the world. In considering how to solve food safety issue, there’re many ways to go, and in all, the most important two ways are decreasing food waste as well as developing and promoting more sustainable food processing.
I have some coarse ideas about food waste.
From the source, people should have more vegetables than meat product since the vegetables have less eco-exergy and exergy loss. Moreover, I would suggest utilizing more algae. They are popular food in China, Japan and other Asian countries, also in USA, more attention is focused on seaweed. However, in many European countries, it is surprised to find out people don’t really like the food or even want to try it. We can open a new door to the sustainable algae food world. How to modify the taste to cater to the preference of Europeans is a big issue, and worth further discussion. (New finding reveals there is one certain type of seedweed tastes like bacon, bright future!)
In the processing, people are working on how to reduce waste and make the processing more efficient, and new technology and equipment have been introduced. Extracting valuable materials out of the waste stream using membrane and chromatography, efficiently improve drying process, 3D printing, etc. All these can promote the prosperity of sustainability. However, the technique is not mature and well-developed enough, the scale of appliance, the initial investment and payback period, they should all be considered by experts in economics and applied science.
In food transportation, cold chain is of paramount importance, but costly. I am thinking about ,
- Novel way of killing bacteria in food
- Applying new packaging material (for example, applying antibacterial (thin) membrane directly to the product
In the consumer part, an idea has been raised that we can take off “best use before” shelf life label by a teacher in Wageningen, this idea also came to me after several courses about the food quality and shelf life, especially when food waste takes a huge part in unsustainability and economic loss, but in the perception of consumers, they tend to keep themselves safe by throwing away potentially unsafe products. So I would rather recommend we use fresh-check indicators to address the safety conditions of food. To perfect the idea, we need to establish a new system, including finding the indicators for different food and how to perfectly follow food law, etc.
There is bright future for food in SDG. Pay attention and do make some changes！I am ready to make the world better during unleashlab!
