EDITORIAL
12213
The future of food
What will food be like in the future? This question can
be looked at from many different perspectives. From
that of science and technology we might ask, ‘Will sci-
entists develop foods in the laboratory?’, or ‘Will every-
thing we eat be genetically modified?’. From the
perspective of the food supply we might ask, ‘What raw
ingredients will go into our food?’ or ‘Will we be eating
unfamiliar protein foods such as insects?’. And from
that of convenience and pleasure we might ask, ‘Will
we buy all our food online?’ or ‘What will our food
taste like?’. The speculation is endless.
Past visions of the future of food
Wondering about what food will be like in the future
has been a human preoccupation for over 100 years.
In contrast with today’s desire for natural ingredients
and natural foods (Rozin et al. 2004; Evans et al.
2010; Dickson-Spillmann et al. 2011), our predeces-
sors around the turn of the 20th century were fasci-
nated by the idea of synthetic food.
For example, in 1893 Mary E Lease considered the
future of food from the perspective of convenience. As
a feminist and activist, Mary E Lease was concerned
about women’s issues and she predicted that synthetic
food would spare women from the chores of food
preparation and cooking (Novak 2013). In 1896
Marcellin Berthelot, a French chemist, predicted ‘meal
pills’ based on then current science. He considered
that in the future these pills would be dispensed
according to a prescription (Novak 2007). The ‘meal
pill’, as such, has never materialised, not least because
pills cannot provide sufficient volume or energy to sat-
isfy human appetites.
A different Victorian vision of the future of food is
provided by The Boston Globe (Novak 2011). In an
article published in 1900, the newspaper predicted
that, by the year 2000, each house in Boston
would have an electro-pneumatic switchboard that
would conveniently allow food to be delivered
through pneumatic tubes. Pneumatic tubes have prob-
ably never been used to deliver food at home but two
Correspondence: Dr. Hilary Green, Senior Expert, Corporate
Technical Department of Nutrition, Health and Wellness and
Sustainability, Nestec SA, Vevey, Switzerland.
E-mail: Hilary.Green@rdls.nestle.com
192 © 2016 The Authors. Nutrition Bulletin published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Nutrition Foundation Nutrition Bulletin, 41, 192–196
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium,
provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.
DOI: 10.1111/nbu.
enterprising restaurants have used them to deliver
food, either as consumers drive through (Ouellette
2011) or to the table (Napier 2013). In a more ambi-
tious endeavour, Noel Hodson’s Foodtubes project
proposed that food could be delivered to retailers via
an underground capsule-pipeline system, thereby sav-
ing energy and reducing pollution (Hodson 2012).
According to the project, the capsules could be driven
either by linear induction motors or air pressure.
The examples above were based on emerging or
new science and technology of that time. However, in
the literary world, science fiction has predicted future
scenarios before the technology was invented. For
example, written in 1961, Clifford Simak’s novel,
Time is the simplest thing, describes so-called butcher
plants. These plants were said to be found on other
planets and grew chunks of protein, similar to meat.
Such a plant, if it existed, could be useful for address-
ing protein deficiency, especially in developing
countries. Currently, the only way to produce a plant
with extraordinary protein levels would be to use
genetic engineering. However, Simak wrote his novel
30 years before the first genetically modified food was
approved for human consumption, which was the
‘flavr savr’ tomato (Center for Environmental Risk
Assessment 2015). It was a further 50 years before
transgenic techniques were used to develop the first
protein-rich potato (Chakraborty et al. 2010).
In the 1930s, Sir Winston Churchill called for meat
cultivated in vitro, long before we had the technology
to make this a reality. In 1932, for the magazine Popu-
lar Mechanics, he wrote that meat cultivated in vitro
would eliminate the need for rearing chickens that are
used only for their meat. He predicted that this would
happen in the next 50 years (Churchill 1932). This
would have been as early as 1982. In reality, the science
was still a long way off, with embryonic stem cells hav-
ing only just been isolated from mice (Evans & Kauf-
man 1981; Martin 1981), and it was not until 2013 that
the first meat from stem cells was eaten (Ghosh 2013).
Even if, or when, stem cell technologies can be fully
commercialised there would still be challenges in over-
coming potential reluctance of consumers to eat meat
cultured under laboratory conditions. Nevertheless, it
promises to have a variety of benefits including a
reduction in the use of ‘factory-farming’, health
benefits for consumers stemming from its better

nutritional profile, as well as environmental benefits
including reduced pollution (greenhouse gas emis-
sions), and water and land use (Sharma et al. 2015).
Today’s societal concerns and challenges
Today’s societal issues, which include climate change
and population growth, coupled with advances in
science and technology, are shaping our visions for the
future of food. In the broadest sense, some societal
demands of food science and technology have not
changed. For example, just as Mary E Lease did over
100 years ago, consumers are still demanding conve-
nience and fast food. And, like Sir Winston Churchill,
we are still trying to find ways to reduce food waste.
Indeed, according to the Waste and Resources Action
Programme (WRAP), UK households throw away
86 million chickens every year (WRAP 2013).
The 21st century has been described as the ‘century
of the environment’ (Lubchenco 1998). Arguably, one
of the biggest global challenges that we face today is
how to deliver food and nutrition in a sustainable way
to an ever increasing number of people. This topic has
been addressed in detail by the Foresight project
report on The Future of Food and Farming (Foresight
2011). The report puts food security, and related
issues such as sustainable practices in agriculture and
fisheries, as well as efforts to reduce food waste, as a
matter of priority for various stakeholders. Without
doubt, there will need to be changes in the food sys-
tem, across the value chain from the sourcing of raw
materials to the purchasing decisions of consumers.
This is unquestionably complicated, and finding the
solutions will require a multi-sectorial approach.
Food in the future: A value chain approach
As food companies develop foods for the future, they
will plan to add value between the steps from ‘farm to
fork’. What would consumers like to have on their
Figure 1 The food value chain whereby science and technology help to add value at the different steps along the path from ‘farm to fork’. For the sake of
simplicity, and to illustrate the principle, only three steps in this chain are depicted – farmers, the food industry and consumers. In reality, there are many other
stakeholders along this path, including ingredient suppliers, transporters and retailers.
© 2016 The Authors. Nutrition Bulletin published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Nutrition Foundation Nutrition Bulletin, 41, 192–196
Editorial 193
plate in the future? Can foods be developed to deliver
unmet nutrition needs? Could we use innovative pack-
aging that keeps food even fresher?
Asking how to add value is a fundamental business
proposition. Clearly no value is created for a company
(or for the society in which it operates) if consumers
feel no benefit or are not interested in the proposition.
Value chain theory is a business management concept
that has been useful for a variety of different industries
for over 30 years (Porter 1985). The theory explains
how different sectors benefit during the process of con-
verting a raw material with relatively little value into
something that has relatively more value. For example,
milk straight from the cow has less value than a yogurt
from the supermarket. Value is added to raw milk
through processing (e.g. pasteurisation, extending shelf
life and improving the sensory profile) as well as
through making products conveniently packaged and
available in supermarkets. This requires investment in
science and technology. At the same time the various
sectors expect to make some profit during the ‘farm to
fork’ process, including farmers, dairy companies,
transport companies and retailers. Ultimately, there-
fore, the consumer pays more for yogurt from the super-
market than the same amount of milk straight from the
cow. However, in exchange for paying more, he/she will
have a product that is more desirable. In other words,
the consumer is at the end of a process that converts
raw ingredients into products that meet consumer val-
ues, needs and/or desires (Fig. 1).
Concerns about environmental and nutritional sus-
tainability render a simple value chain model somewhat
outdated. Today, food manufacturers are considering
not only consumer needs and desires but also those of
society, as well as the environment. For example, foods
that are lower in salt, free sugars and saturates are bet-
ter for society, even if consumers may not prefer the
taste of these foods. In other words, the simple value
chain depicted in Figure 1 must be expanded so that
science and technology are used to meet not only
194 Editorial
Figure 2 The food value chain whereby science and technology help to add value at the different steps along the path from ‘farm to fork’.
consumer needs and desires but also societal needs and
address environmental concerns (Fig. 2).
Farmers can help ensure sustainable nutrient secu-
rity, for example, by producing nutrient-rich crops,
together with appropriate use of fertilisers and water.
Food manufacturers can help to protect the environ-
ment by improving manufacturing processes as well as
finding methods of packaging and transportation that
make efficient use of water and energy. In addition,
manufacturers can help to make society more health-
ful by developing products that are lower in energy,
saturates, free sugars and salt. In the longer term, the
scientific advances in molecular research are paving
the way for personalised nutrition, developed to meet
individual consumer needs. This research includes
‘omics’ techniques such as genomics, proteomics and
metabolomics that provide a deeper understanding
of how nutrition influences health in individuals
(Badimon et al. 2016). Consumers can also make a
contribution to the sustainability agenda by using
cooking methods that require less water and energy,
as well as reusing or recycling food and packaging
waste and making healthier food choices.
Genetics and the future of food
The scientific and technological advances being made
in today’s post-genomic era have had a huge impact
on our understanding of biological diversity. This
knowledge has generated new ideas around food,
including innovation in raw materials as well as man-
ufactured food products.
Plant genomics
Plants have always been a vital source of nutrition.
Traditionally, plants/crops with desirable attributes
(e.g. high yielding) have been developed through
© 2016 The Authors. Nutrition Bulletin published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Nutrition Foundation Nutrition Bulletin, 41, 192–196
selective breeding. More recently, marker assisted
selection has been used to accelerate the selection of
plants for breeding purposes (P
erez-de-Castro et al.
2012). The use of high-throughput DNA sequencing
and other genomic tools is helping plant breeders to
select plants with characteristics that address some of
the problems associated with the increasing world pop-
ulation and the effect that this has on the environment.
These characteristics include higher yield, drought
resistance and resistance to diseases and pests (Collard
& Mackill 2008). The techniques of marker assisted
selection in plant breeding can also be used to increase
the nutrient content of plants, such as beta-carotene-
rich maize (Azmach et al. 2013; Muthusamy et al.
2014). Such hybrids offer promise in helping to address
vitamin A deficiency in certain parts of the world,
including Sub-Saharan Africa and India. Indeed, a
recent trial in Zambian children has shown that biofor-
tified maize is as effective as a vitamin A supplement in
increasing liver stores of vitamin A (Gannon et al.
2014).
Genetic modification offers additional possibilities
for breeding plants that provide enhanced nutrition,
such as beta-carotene-enriched rice (Al-Babili & Beyer
2005), as well as traits that help plants to withstand
the effects of climate change, such as flood tolerant
varieties of rice (Dar et al. 2013). However, genetic
engineering is not only costly but also faces public
resistance (Lucht 2015). Therefore, new gene editing
technologies that produce plants without any foreign
DNA are potentially very attractive (Abdallah et al.
2015). Specifically, for example, clustered regularly
interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR), a
new genome editing tool, offers new opportunities for
modern agriculture, including nutritional enhancement
of crops, either by increasing the nutrient content, or
removing anti-nutrients such as phytic acid (Rajendran
et al. 2015).

Human genomics
An understanding of how different people respond to
nutrients according to their genetic make-up offers pro-
mise for developing foods and diets that are tailored to
the health needs of the individual. Potentially, this
means that the food industry could use nutrigenomics
research techniques to develop ‘personalised’ foods and
diets (Afman & M€ uller 2006; Neeha & Kinth 2013).
Another exciting advance has been the discovery
that maternal nutrition before and after conception
can cause epigenetic changes to her offspring’s DNA
that can have long-term consequences for health
(Dominguez-Salas et al. 2014; Blumfield 2015; Uauy
& Chambers 2015). Indeed, the EpiGen Global
Research Consortium recently announced a new study
to evaluate the impact of a nutritional intervention on
epigenetic mechanisms in the baby (EpiGen 2015).
Improving nutrition in women of child-bearing age has
positive implications not only for their health and the
health of their offspring, but also for society such as
through reduced healthcare costs.
Food preferences have been driving food choices for
thousands of years and are determined by both genetic
and environmental factors (Fildes et al. 2014). In
terms of genetics, we now have a scientific under-
standing of how genes contribute to inter-individual
variation in taste preferences. Companies that invest
in ‘omics’-based research and development, to gener-
ate high-tech personalised foods for the future, also
need to consider consumer acceptance and preferences,
as well as health. For example, foods in the future,
just like today, will need to meet consumer preferences
for taste, texture, aroma and affordability. Taste has
been described as our ‘nutritional gatekeeper’ (Spector
2015). Therefore, individual differences in sensitivity
to sweet, sour, bitter, salty or umami flavours could
influence food acceptance and choice and ultimately
nutritional status (Drewnowski & Rock 1995; El-
Sohemy et al. 2007). Potentially, this has implications
for the development of new foods that could be tar-
geted to the preferences of people with specific geno-
types genotypes, although in practice personalisation
could occur with very little recourse to science and
technology through the use of psychophysical evalua-
tions, such as taste panels.
Conclusion
Past and present predictions about the future of food
typically have been based on societal concerns as well
as new, and/or anticipated, science and technology.
© 2016 The Authors. Nutrition Bulletin published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Nutrition Foundation Nutrition Bulletin, 41, 192–196
Editorial 195
Present day societal concerns, such as population
growth, water resources and environmental sustain-
ability, will increasingly shape what and how much
we eat, as well as how we cook. At the same time, sci-
entific advances in the post-genomic era suggest that
future foods could be targeted towards specific and
individual nutrition and health needs, while also
increasing the pleasure of eating. Only time will tell.
H. Green
Senior Expert, Corporate Technical Department of
Nutrition, Health and Wellness and Sustainability,
Nestec SA, Vevey, Switzerland
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