2022 was a milestone year for mankind. By November 2022 the United Nations estimated the global population had reached an astounding eight billion. With more people on Earth than ever before in history, ensuring equitable global access to resources, food, water, and housing has become more important than ever before.
The global population boon started with the advent of modern technology and industrialization. Now the same technological revolution that spurred the proliferation of humankind is addressing the impact of mankind on the planet. Currently, agriculture leads to water pollution, and farming causes emissions and eats into arable, habitable, and forested land. However, in the future, technology may be able to make feeding the planet cleaner and greener.
Food tech start-ups are responding to environmental challenges by asking themselves, “Do we need cows to make meat? Do we need land to grow food?” The result is innovative, low-carbon, sustainable (and delicious) food solutions that are entirely unprecedented in human history.
Here are seven innovative food-tech, sustainability initiatives that sound like they came straight out of a sci-fi movie.
1. Food-From-Air
Harry Potter fans will remember the scene in the Great Hall, where Dumbledore claps his hands, and the empty tables suddenly fill with an abundance of food. Some food-tech “magicians” hope to create this same miracle, except, instead of clapping their hands, they use a high-tech fermenter and a nutrient rich soup to generate abundance from air.
The “abundance” comes in the form of a tasteless, protein-rich powder that can be mixed into foods to up their nutritional value. Just like beer, this powder is produced by fermentation. When yeast microbes feed on a sugar-rich liquid in a fermentation tank, the outcome is beer. Food-from-air protein is also made in a fermentation tank. Specialized microbes in the tank consume a mixture composed of hydrogen (generated from water shocked by electricity), a handful of nutrients, and naturally occurring carbon dioxide, sourced from the air we breathe.
The outcome is a flour-like, high protein substance that takes only a fraction of the water and carbon required to source the same quantity of protein from agriculture or livestock. It’s even cheaper to produce than traditional protein. Once this protein powder hits the mass market, those in the food industry can sustainably up the health content of their dishes.
Although food-from-air sounds like it’s straight out of a sci-fi movie, Solar Foods, one of the companies working on the protein, points out that it’s similar to the natural process of photosynthesis. If plants can turn energy, water, and air into nutrition, there’s no reason humans can’t do the same.
2. Meat-Free Meat
When is a cow not a cow? When it’s actually a lab grown steak.
Mass-produced meat has been controversial for decades. Animal rights activists aren’t thrilled about raising animals for slaughter and have long campaigned against it. Meanwhile, raising cattle and pigs is the cause of around 15% of global emissions. If livestock farming was a country, its emissions would rank higher than the United States, UK, and Germany’s emissions combined. In addition, cows, sheep, and pigs need pasture. Worldwide, about 40% of deforestation is attributed to livestock farming.
Many companies, concerned about sustainability, are turning to plant-based options, like the “Impossible Burger.” But a number of food-tech start-ups believe that meat isn’t the bad guy. It’s the process that is. These companies use a process to produce synthetic meat that is biologically identical to the real thing. They do this by harvesting a small amount of muscle cells from living animals. Then, in a laboratory bioreactor, they prod those cells to reproduce and grow, until they have a chunk of non-living animal muscle with the exact same cellular makeup as meat that comes from a living animal.
Challenges of Lab-Grown Meat
Lab-grown meat is far from perfect yet, and it still faces three hurdles:
Sustainability: The process of growing meat in the lab produces its own emissions. and is costly as well. So, it won’t be replacing the $5 fast food burger anytime soon.
Different conditions for growth are required: Meat fat cells and meat muscle cells require different conditions for growth, so they can’t be grown together. That means that companies growing meat in the lab can’t produce that beautiful, marbleized steak that nature can – at least not yet. The muscle or fat cellular paste that is produced in the lab isn’t the same as a chicken leg or hock of ham. It’s best suited for processing, and mixing to make meatballs, nuggets, or similar foods.
Different conditions may be actually be a benefit: The fact that the protein and fat are separate may prove to be a boon for the lab-grown meat industry. It means that food-tech laboratories can bioengineer and “grow” meat with custom nutritional profiles. In the future, they may be able to serve juicy, tender, and flavorful steak, containing the much healthier omega-3 fats found in salmon.
In recent months, the FDA has approved the lab-grown meat process, although it still requires USDA approval to market. That means lab-grown meat may be hitting your grocery shelves soon. Imagine adding a lab-grown burger to your restaurant menu!
3. Avocado-Free Ecovado
Avocado-generation is a moniker given to millennials because of their love affair with the creamy fruit. Avocados have a fantastic health profile, their texture and neutral flavor means they can feature in almost any dish, and, admittedly, guacamole is addictive.
The one drawback to the green nut is their “green” profile. Unfortunately, avocado trees need lots of arable land and drinkable water to grow. With avocado popularity soaring, and 11 billion pounds of avocado consumed per year, that starts to add up. After studying avocados in depth, London-based Arina Shokouhi thinks she has the answer. Avocados without avocados.
The Ecovado is Shokouhi’s brainchild. It was developed in partnership with University of Nottingham food scientist, Jack Wallman. Wallman studied exactly what chemical properties made avocados just so creamy. Then, he and Shokouhi set out to produce a similar looking and tasting food from alternative ingredients This turned out to be a bean, apple, rapeseed oil, and hazelnut mixture pressed into a beeswax, spinach, and charcoal shell (designed to mimic the avocados peel). In the center of the “fruit,” a chestnut stands in for the pit.
All the ingredients used are sustainably produced and sourced, and the Ecovado costs approximately the same as the authentic, original fruit does. It also has a similar nutritional profile. The Ecovado is an amazing innovation for making avocado more sustainable.
4. Food – At the Touch of a Button
This idea started as a NASA venture to feed astronauts. Imagine conceiving of a dish on a computer program and selecting the ingredients and shapes. Next, you press the print button, and out pops a vegan fish filet. Not only is 3D-printing a feasible method of combining food, but companies are already using this method to create dishes.
3D-printing is a printing method that produces a real-world, three-dimensional item, from a digital file. Although it’s traditionally used to make plastic items, there is really no limit to what material you can feed into the printer. When a 3D-printer is loaded with hygienic, food-grade syringes containing foodstuff, the printer can layer the food in the syringes in extremely controlled ways to make geometrically beautiful and tasty foods. And, since 3D-printers can deposit food layers into the finished product in a very accurate way, 3D-printed food-tech produces dishes more sustainably, with much less waste than conventional techniques.
5. Have Your Cake and Eat The Box Too
While growing fruits and vegetables and cereal crops is a big contributor to pollution and deforestation, some Earth-friendly food start-ups are thinking “inside the box” when it comes to food sustainability. Rather than focus on the food inside, they focus on the box itself. If you’ve seen the pictures of turtles stuck in soda rings, you already know that plastic waste from food packaging is a major environmental issue. In addition to harming wildlife, since plastic doesn’t degrade, it ends up in landfills, or worse, in microplastics clogging up the oceans.
There are a number of initiatives to create biodegradable packaging, including degradable plastics, paper, and even using banana leaves to wrap foods. But the latest packaging idea is not only 100% waste-free, but also fun and tasty — edible packaging. Food-tech companies are re-imaging all foods as ice cream and cone partnerships. There are a number of different options being tried for edible packaging, but the main idea is that it has to be taste-neutral and has to protect the food, especially if shelved in the packaging.
Edible Packaging
Here are some of the ways edible packaging is already being used:
- Edible coffee cups: nobody doubts that coffee and biscotti are dining partners. What about if your cookie was the cup itself?
- Sweet, flavored, gelatin cups that can house juices and soft drinks.
- Cupcake wrappers made from flavored potato fibers or rice paper.
- Packaging made from casein, an edible milk protein that has similar properties to plastic and can be used to make an airtight seal.
- Citrus pectin is an additive that is used in some edible packaging because it’s strong enough to outlast heat and humidity.
- Edible straws that come in fruity flavors and fun designs.
- Food film made from starch, cellulose, proteins, and konjac flour. It’s edible and biodegradable.
A bag made from the starch of a cassava root. - Edible spoons made from rice flour and sorghum.
- Biodegradable and flavorable seaweed pouches that work like plastic.
Soon, it may be possible for your food business to order and use edible pizza boxes, casein takeout containers, and edible straws and silverware too!
6. Food Spoilage Sensors
Whereas edible packaging cuts down on packaging waste, packaging with embedded sensors cuts down on food waste. The consequences of eating food, especially meat, that’s gone bad can be dire. Consequently, meat tends to get tossed as it nears its sell date, even if it’s still salvageable. It’s estimated that 40% of all food in America ends up in the trash. This amounts to more than 400 billion dollars of food waste, some of which could have been saved.
Smart sensors may be able to help people figure out if the foods have really started to spoil or not. A few years ago, MIT engineers produced a sensor attached to silk microneedles. When meat is pierced by these needles, they draw a sample of the fluid into the sensor, which changes color if it detects E. Coli or other pathogens in the meat. Another sensor changes if it detects that the meat’s pH is within a range that indicates that it’s gone off. The silk needles are non-toxic and biodegradable, and they can penetrate deep enough into raw meat to probe out spoilage that surface sensors cannot. Other food-tech companies are working to integrate sensor technology into packaging. Imagine a package that changes color to warn users if harmful bacteria have been detected inside. This has the potential not only to reduce waste and improve food sustainability, but also to help food businesses save money.
7. Lab-Modified Crops
GMO is a technology that is as old as the hills. But it also gets a lot of bad press, and sometimes organic foods will proudly declare themselves GMO-free. What is GMO anyway?
GMO stands for Genetically Modified Organism. Since the dawn of the Agricultural Revolution, farmers have been selectively breeding crops to produce varieties with the most beneficial genetic structures, and selectively breeding livestock to domesticate them. However, what is controversial nowadays, is that a portion of the genetic selection in the modern world takes place not in the fields, but in the labs. There, researchers modify crops to grow bigger, produce more, resist pests, contain more nutrients, and outlast severe weather. And, despite some bad press, GMO crops have not yet been shown to have any harmful effects. In fact, far from harming the world, some scientists are betting on GMO to feed the growing population.
Some GMO Facts
Did you know that wheat is one of the world’s biggest staple foods, with bread being a cultural staple for thousands of years? The wheat genome is even bigger than the human genome and it took scientists years to sequence. Using this data, researchers can now modify wheat genes to make them hardier, and even possibly include iron, a vital nutrient that women and girls are often deficient in.
Corn is an entirely man-made food that was first domesticated by native peoples in southern Mexico about 10,000 years ago. It has no counterpart in nature. Researchers have used GMO to increase this staple crop’s yields by 10%, give it pesticide relief, and make it healthier to eat. The pests that feed on corn introduce toxins called fumonisins that are linked with esophageal cancer. Pest-resistant corn doesn’t carry this health risk.
Have you ever heard of scuba rice? GMO’s bred so-called scuba rice that can withstand total flooding. It can also produce rice that grows with less emissions and requires less water. There is no question that GMO is a game-changer for producing more food and doing it in a healthier and a more environmentally friendly way. Even though it may look futuristic, we can literally play with crop genetics in a lab, something that humans have done in nature for millennia.
Summing it Up
Ten thousand years ago, mankind first learned how to farm the land and produce the food needed to keep the world growing. The development of cities, countries, and all future technology is thanks to this Agricultural Revolution. Now, in the age of modern technology, computers, microengineering, and bioengineering, food scientists and designers are in the process of kicking off the second greatest Food Revolution in history. If the Agricultural Revolution allowed us to produce food from the ground, this astoundingly futuristic one will let us produce food from the air and the lab, custom design what comes from the Earth, and radically reduce food waste. What yet-to-be-invented foods do you think you will be serving up in your restaurant in a century?