A Snapshot Of Future Food Progress

To address a growing global population, an increasing demand for protein, and issues related to Climate Change, there has been active discussion of and innovation around options for “Future Food.” This has included concepts ranging from from “Vertical Farming” to “Lab Grown” meat.

As with any significant new development there are challenges, particularly as the technology reaches the stage of regulation and/or commercial scaling. This article will consider a few examples of innovations going through such processes.

A Plant Example

“Indoor Agriculture” and “Vertical Farming” have been promoted as the way to make fresh produce a more local and water-use-efficient option. Thus far, the energy demands of “vertical farms” make these options prohibitively expensive, but increasingly sophisticated “greenhouse” production systems are definitely making a positive contribution to our food supply for things like tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and berries. There is a promising and futuristic indoor vegetable option based on Wolffia, the world’s smallest true plant species -also known as Water lentils or Duck Weed. These are tiny spherical plants that are only a few millimeters in diameter and in nature grow on the surface of ponds.

Tsipi Shoham, an Israeli scientist with a cancer research background, started a company called Green Onyx which is beginning to market a Wolffia-based product called “Wanna Greens.” They have developed an intensive approach to grow these plants indoors under sterile conditions. This growing system is extremely efficient in terms of water use but also much more energy efficient than indoor growing systems for more complicated plants like leafy greens. It is pest-free and avoids any heavy metals. The Wolfia lines are unmodified selections from natural populations. The little plant “balls” duplicate themselves every 42-78 hours and can be grown in stacks of identical lighted bins that Shoham describes as “Quantum Farming” – a capital efficient, space-flexible, year-round growing system suitable for ultra-local production, often in existing buildings.

Their unit economics now achieves 40% EBD and an ROI of less than 3.8 years. Wanna Greens have a refrigerated shelf-life of 4-6 weeks because of their low metabolic rate and because of the breathable packaging which GreenOnyx has developed.

The Wanna Greens product packs a healthy dose of minerals, vitamins and antioxidants, but it isn’t just going to be a “foodie” option. It has a very mild taste and a slightly crunchy texture and makes an excellent garnish for something like avocado slices. It can also be added to just about any meat or starch dish. Children who have gotten to try it like to have these added to their peanut butter and jelly sandwiches upgrading their lunch nutrition. After pilot sales in 2023, GreenOnyx will soon be selling Wanna Greens in specialty stores in Israel. They are seeking partners elsewhere, particularly in the US and conducted a very successful focus group tasting in Boulder, Colorado.

A Conference about Future Food Tech

The 2024 Future Food Tech conference was held in London on October 2^nd and 3^rd . There were 601 in-person attendees and 30 virtual participants. The fundamental goal of this emerging sector of the food industry is to move the global food supply towards one that is “affordable, nutritious and sustainable”. The overall tone of the meeting was energetic and optimistic, but there was a thread of realism about the time and effort that will be required to bring many of these concepts to the market.

Speakers on several of the panel discussions acknowledged that a transition to “Future Food” still faces significant technical, political, regulatory, and consumer acceptance challenges and that there had been a tendency among a “first wave” of players to over-promise about what they could deliver and when. Instead of implying that “future food” is just around the corner, a “second wave” of ventures and partnerships is making more realistic projections – often in the 5 to 10 year range or longer. In terms of overall impact at least one speaker argued that the narrative is shifting towards “complementation” or “supplementation” of traditional food categories as opposed to some of the language that had been used in terms of “replacement” or “elimination.” That makes sense particularly as innovation continues within the animal agriculture sector including multiple approaches to reduce enteric methane emissions and environmental and nutrition enhancements through “Regenerative Grazing.”

Processing – A Good Kind

But coming back to “Alt-proteins,” Plant-Based products are the most advanced category to-date. However, what we experience with the foods we love is a complex combination of appearance, flavor, aroma and texture. Indeed the “mouth feel” of food is a particularly significant part of what makes it enjoyable. That tends to be a limitation of the appeal for plant-based foods because textures are part of the attractiveness of animal-based products, and those have been difficult to replicate. A Spanish company called Heura presented it’s solution to the texture issues of plant-based foods at the 2024 Future Food Tech event. Heura was founded in 2017 by Marc Coloma who has channeled his social and environmental activism background into this venture.

Heura has identified specific, creative and non-scary “processing steps” that can greatly improve the eating experience with products made with protein from peas and soybeans and with lipids based from Olive and Rapeseed oils (the latter having the more attractive name, “Canola” in North America) and on some shea butter. Those sources avoid the high carbon footprint and vascular health issues that can be associated with animal production, but the texture advantages of their products is created in the specific processes Heura has developed. Several speakers at the London event defended the importance of many kinds of “processing” because the term “hyper-processed” has become the common derogatory description of choice for what has been called “junk food.” There is not any consensus definition of what that hyper-processed means and there are many processing steps that have been used for many traditional and perfectly healthy parts of the food supply.

Heura describes their proprietary tools as “process-controlled microstructure design.” That involves “controlling ingredient interactions” in order to create specific product “microstructure”, which is “designed to deliver targeted functionalities and sensory attributes.” The emphasis is on those interactions of ingredients, not sourcing new ingredients through “biomimicry” or other approaches which have regulatory complications. The technologies they use are “based on physical techniques” (e.g. hydration, mixing, heating, cooling, with no chemical modifications). Heura is confident that these methods can be scaled cost-effectively and that they can be applied to make many different products.

Their original offerings were substitutes for burgers and meat balls, but they have recently expanded into their offerings to provide high protein, healthy fat, plant-based options for other very popular food categories such as deli meats, cheese and pasta. At Future Food Tech the company presented its first prototypes of these innovations that represent the first wave of Heura’s new product generation designed to reshape health standards of the food industry. In short, healthier, nutrient-dense alternatives using plant proteins and healthy lipids, avoiding additives, carbohydrates, and saturated fats to create product matrices. (see the infographics below).

Heura has a major market presence in Spain and is expanding in Europe. Their intention is to license their technologies for other food companies aiming to drive meaningful change across the industry through partnerships and collaborations with category leaders to maximize the impact of these solutions

Another “reality check” being experienced by the Future Food movement involves the regulatory landscape. Official approval was required to even conduct legal consumer tasting of cell cultured meats . For the more novel products approaching commercialization the path to approval varies greatly from region to region and even from country to country in the EU. The pioneer cell culture product in the EU is a pet food and it was recently approved for sale in the UK. It is not yet clear what terminology will be used for product labeling for cell culture and fermentation products. For instance should the organism used for the fermentation be named and is “Protein Powder” the best descriptor? Is “lab-grown meat” a viable label for consumers?

It is always challenging to work out the regulatory process for a new category. In Australia the applicant companies have the opportunity to submit a preliminary application which is a good model for this new regulatory territory. At this stage the issues with EU regulators include the need to build trust, uncertainty about which “hazards” need to be considered, and inadequate funding to provide the needed staff do work this through. In the UK the FSA (Food Safety Authority) is said to have a reasonable “Novel Foods Framework” in place, but it is considered to be a very slow process.

In some European countries whose political leadership has become more conservative, there is now some pushback driven by the tendency of the early, “alt-protein” players to demonize the livestock sector. Realistically the environmental footprint of animal agriculture could be considered in a more nuanced manner because there are significant mitigation options being applied and realistically the livestock sector will continue to play a significant role in the food supply.

So, while “future” will continue to be an accurate term for this technology sector, it will continue to attract investment and spur innovation as it is working through some important stages to do with regulation and scale-up