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Technically Speaking

The Future of Food

by Dave Trecker

here’s evolution and there’s revolution. Food is entering Sugar substitutes – Aspartame has been around for a long
a period of revolution. From health driven changes to time, as have saccharin, sucralose, stevia, sorbitol and xylitol. The
T hedonist insistence for better flavor, the food we eat will be problem is all of them have shortcomings in taste. So scientists are
different in coming years. Chemical & Engineering News writes, now redoubling efforts to make low-caloric sweeteners that taste
“Science is changing sustenance.” Here are some of the ways. like the real thing and good progress is being made. Advances
Chemicals in food – The first consideration is safety. The U.S. include discovery of a sweet protein from the West African oubli
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is launching an intensive fruit that can be made in fermenters and the development of a
safety check of the thousands of ingredients and additives in mushroom-derived ingredient that masks bitter flavors of existing
processed food, reevaluating things like flavorants, preservatives and sweeteners.
coloring agents. Many of these chemicals have never undergone Trace analysis – And how about fake chocolate? A German
FDA scrutiny because food companies have been allowed to declare startup is using sensitive chromatographic analysis to suss out
them “generally recognized as safe” (GRAS). A proper safety check flavor bodies in scarce natural cocoa. Those flavorants combined
will take time. The government never does anything quickly. with sunflower-and grape-seed flour plus a fermented fat make up
The Ozempic phenomenon –Weight-loss drugs are spurring the backbone of a new, sustainable chocolate.
changes. Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic and Wegovy and Eli Lilly’s Factory-grown meat – A seminal advance in recent years was
Mounjaro and Zepbound, the primary GLP-1 drugs, have troubling the develoment of factory-grown meat. The potential benefits are
side effects, including loss of muscle mass. Food companies have considerable.
been fast to jump in with high-protein offerings. Campbell Soup’s It reduces the amount of actual red meat in your diet.
Mark Clouse says its soups and broths provide “nutritionally dense It eliminates the need to raise and slaughter billions of animals.
options, great satiety at a low caloric level.” Conagra is promoting Global water usage would be cut substantially and vast
meat-stick snacks, and Nestle has introduced a line of protein-rich rangelands put to other uses.
frozen foods. Elimination of greenhouse gases from cattle flatulence and
The age of fermentation – Fermentation is far from new. In feces would reduce global warming.
World War II it cranked out penicillin for our troops. During my After years of development, Upside Foods received approval
working days, it provided everything from food ingredients (citric from the FDA to sell chicken products made from cultured
acid) to oil-field stimulants (xanthan gum). Today we look to animal cells for human consumption. That was followed by
bioreactors to free up farmland, reduce carbon emissions and make broader approvals from the Department of Agriculture for both
sustainable food. Market research firm Brainy Insights forecasts Upside and Good Meat, a firm active in the overseas market.
that sales of such “bio-foods” will increase from $3.8 billion today Commercialization has been slow. Sensory studies showed the
to $22.8 billion by 2033. We’re talking about things like food for synthetic meat didn’t taste enough like real meat. That should soon
fish farms, whey and casein, microbial honey, fungal mycelium for be solved. Although researchers aren’t there yet, lab testing has
burgers and much more –all twenty-first century phenomena. The shown that textured plant proteins can be combined with cultured
home run may be protein rich powder from the air, produced from fat cells to make a hybrid product with acceptable taste.
single-cell bacteria that’s fed trace elements, hydrogen and carbon Bon appetit!
dioxide. Good grief, what’s next?
Dr. Trecker is a chemist and retired Pfizer executive living in Naples.

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