June 2, 2022 – Sixty years ago The Jetsons imagined that in the longer term we might eat Meals in pill form. That didn't occur – stillSo what (and the way) do experts think we will probably be eating in 30, 40, 50 years?
The last six a long time have seen tremendous advances in innovation in agriculture and food processing. Since 1960, the world's population has greater than doubled – yet global food production has greater than tripled, despite using only 15% more land. That may sound great, however it has taken a toll on each our health and the planet. More than 300 million adults all over the world suffer from obesity, which has a major impact on human health. Cancer mortality rates have increased by 17% since 1990. And the way in which we grow, process and transport food is a serious contributor to climate change, which could soon overwhelm the planet.
“We got exactly what we designed our food system for. We optimized it for low-cost, mass-produced calories,” says Scott Bowman, co-founder of The Nourish Movement“Now we need to optimize the health of people and the planet.”
To achieve each, experts say three things are crucial: sustainability, food technology and food as medicine. This special report examines how each of those aspects will help us achieve this goal.
Feeding the world sustainably
In 2020, 811 million people worldwide didn't have enough to eat, and the world population is anticipated to grow by one other 2 billion people over the following 30 years. Experts estimate that we are going to need to supply as much as 56% more food to feed everyone, but this can't be achieved sustainably without fundamental change.
But we're making progress. If everyone does their part – scientists and farmers, manufacturers and retailers, governments and nonprofits, and in fact consumers – we will save the planet. And have enough nutritious food for everybody.
“Farmers are operating much more sustainably today than they were in 1980,” says Jack Bobo, JD, director of world food and water policy on the Nature Conservancy. “It's not that things are bad and getting worse – they're good and getting better, just not fast enough. Historical trends are not going to get us where we need to be by 2050. We need to do things differently.”
Governments, organizations and the private sector all over the world are addressing the challenges from a wide range of directions, including:
- Transformation of agriculture through recent approaches akin to vertical farming, Precision agricultureand genome editing
- Reducing food waste through government measures and recent technologies
- Production of other proteins, including plant-based “meat”, cultured meat, insects and algae
- Innovative food packaging reduces damage, prolongs freshness and fights bacteria
“These are pretty bleak, challenging times, but the young people I meet are so enthusiastic and committed to solving these problems that it gives me hope,” says Dr. Pamela Ronald, whose lab on the University of California, Davis, uses plant genetics to breed more resilient crops with higher yields.
For more information on what a sustainable food plan might seem like in a number of a long time, click here.
Innovations in food technology
Since the turn of the twenty first century.st The twenty first century has seen the arrival of various recent concepts, akin to plant-based meat that “bleeds,” agrorobots that automate labor-intensive agricultural tasks, and compostable food packaging. Each of those concepts has the potential to make our diets healthier or more sustainable if the technology works as hoped and enough people adopt it.
Many science and technology-based firms have to date focused on the science needed to realize their goals. “And now they're getting to the point where they can detach themselves from the science and say, 'We're also a food company – how do we make sure we're living up to that role, too?'” says Sarah Sha, a researcher and strategist at KitchenTown, a food industry consulting firm in Silicon Valley.
“They're partnering with chefs and better understanding how and where people eat, what they want their food to taste like, and how they can help them transition to a healthier, more sustainable diet that doesn't feel like a big compromise. They're trying to make healthy eating an exciting celebration, rather than a deprivation.”
The challenge, say some experts, will not be to repeat the mistakes of previous innovations. Many of those innovations have achieved their goals but created recent problems in the method.
“For the past 50 years, the focus has been on producing more for less,” says Raj Khosla, PhD, professor of precision agriculture at Colorado State University. “Many agricultural practices that we thought were the best turned out to be not so climate-friendly or good for human health.”
Take a take a look at the most recent scientific findings that experts say could change our eating habits in the longer term.
Food that heals you
The concept that food has medicinal properties will not be recent, but modern life has shown that the alternative can be true. Food can kill, and never just if you eat the moldy leftovers in the back of the fridge. In 2019, a serious study found that poor food plan was chargeable for one in five deaths worldwide.
“If things continue as they have for the last 20 or 30 years, we will be eating more or less the same thing, just with new extras, and we will be incredibly sick,” says Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, dean of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University.
But if we recognize the damage poor diets do to our overall health, our diets could look very different if we make a concerted effort to drive innovation in nutrition, equity and sustainability, he says.
Some signs suggest that we're moving in the appropriate direction:
- In recent years, firms like Chobani and KIND Snacks have had great mainstream success with minimally processed, nutritious ingredients.
- Health programs all over the world are experimenting with “food recipes” for nutritious items like fresh vegetables and fruit.
- Congress has just funded a White House conference on hunger, nutrition, and health to be held in September of this yr. It will probably be only the second conference of its kind—the primary was held over 50 years ago, in 1969.
- The recently founded Coalition for school mealsa gaggle of greater than 60 countries, is committed to making sure that each child on the planet receives a nutritious meal in school day by day.
“Over the last five years, and accelerated by COVID, there has been a realization that the status quo is unsustainable,” says Mozaffarian.
Consumers, firms and investors are beginning to think more about nutrition and sustainability.
“We are on the edge of the abyss and can either fall or back down. I think right now we are 50-50,” says Mozaffarian.
Learn more about how the concept of food as medicine could shape our diets over the following 50 years.