The Future of Food

By Dave Trecker

There’s evolution and there’s revolution. Food is entering a period of revolution. From health driven changes to hedonist insistence for better flavor, the food we eat will be different in coming years.

Chemical & Engineering News writes, “Science is changing sustenance.” Here are some of the ways.

Chemicals in food – The first consideration is safety. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is launching an intensive safety check of the thousands of ingredients and additives in processed food, reevaluating things like flavorants, preservatives and coloring agents. Many of these chemicals have never undergone FDA scrutiny because food companies have been allowed to declare them “generally recognized as safe” (GRAS). A proper safety check will take time. The government never does anything quickly.

The Ozempic phenomenon –Weight-loss drugs are spurring changes. Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic and Wegovy and Eli Lilly’s Mounjaro and Zepbound, the primary GLP-1 drugs, have troubling side effects, including loss of muscle mass. Food companies have been fast to jump in with high-protein offerings. Campbell Soup’s Mark Clouse says its soups and broths provide “nutritionally dense options, great satiety at a low caloric level.” Conagra is promoting meat-stick snacks and Nestle has introduced a line of protein-rich frozen foods.

The age of fermentation – Fermentation is far from new. In World War II it cranked out penicillin for our troops. During my working days, it provided everything from food ingredients (citric acid) to oil-field stimulants (xanthan gum). Today we look to bioreactors to free up farmland, reduce carbon emissions and make sustainable food. Market research firm Brainy Insights forecasts that sales of such “bio-foods” will increase from $3.8 billion today to $22.8 billion by 2033. We’re talking about things like food for fish farms, whey and casein, microbial honey, fungal mycelium for burgers and much more –all twenty-first century phenomena. The home run may be protein rich powder from the air, produced from single-cell bacteria that’s fed trace elements, hydrogen and carbon dioxide. Good grief, what’s next?

Sugar substitutes – Aspartame has been around for a longtime, as have saccharin, sucralose, stevia, sorbitol and xylitol. The problem is all of them have shortcomings in taste. So scientists are now redoubling efforts to make low-caloric sweeteners that taste like the real thing and good progress is being made. Advances include discovery of a sweet protein from the West African oublifruit that can be made in fermenters and the development of a mushroom-derived ingredient that masks bitter flavors of existing sweeteners.

Trace analysis – And how about fake chocolate? A German startup is using sensitive chromatographic analysis to suss out flavor bodies in scarce natural cocoa. Those flavorants combined with sunflower-and grape-seed flour plus a fermented fat make up the backbone of a new, sustainable chocolate.

Factory-grown meat – A seminal advance in recent years was the development of factory-grown meat. The potential benefits are considerable.

It reduces the amount of actual red meat in your diet. It eliminates the need to raise and slaughter billions of animals. Global water usage would be cut substantially and vast rangelands put to other uses.

Elimination of greenhouse gases from cattle flatulence and feces would reduce global warming.

After years of development, Upside Foods received approval from the FDA to sell chicken products made from cultured animal cells for human consumption. That was followed by broader approvals from the Department of Agriculture for both Upside and Good Meat, a firm active in the overseas market.

Commercialization has been slow. Sensory studies showed the synthetic meat didn’t taste enough like real meat. That should soon be solved. Although researchers aren’t there yet, lab testing has shown that textured plant proteins can be combined with cultured fat cells to make a hybrid product with acceptable taste.

Bon appetit!

Dr. Trecker is a chemist and retired Pfizer executive living in Naples.