We are on the precipice of a technologically-inspired food revolution. Lab-grown food and drinks are the latest innovation to reach the mainstream consciousness however, future advancements – centred on precision agriculture, a new generation of gene editing and carbon fermentation – have the potential to evolve us from imitation and compromise to the creation of entirely new forms of food. These will offer more sustainable and less processed mass production, nutritionally optimised and hyper-tailored foods that are cleaner, genuinely tasty and unique to our diets, rituals and preferences.
But, this is not a silver bullet solution. We are looking to brands to both harness technological advancement and play a part in helping restore and regenerate natural environments to help us all collectively create the next generation of food and tell a desirable story about its future.
In this latest Futures Feed – Culinary Biotech – we identify 5 areas of opportunity for brands and creators to bring innovation, biology, engineering and imagination together, to create this responsible and flavourful new food landscape which sees technology working in harmony with nature.
Four key themes of Change
1. Responsive Farming
Brands must consider a more agile and adaptive approach to agriculture, creating exciting new narratives about how and where our food is made, as the idea of the farm changes.
2. Micro Mimicry
Brands should seize the opportunity to move beyond direct mimicry; tailoring foods to our needs and desires, and making new formats, tastes and textures accessible and sustainable for the masses, or more special for the aspirational.
3. Microbial Masterpieces
Brands can help educate and change expectations by harnessing the huge benefits of using microbes, fungi, algae, yeast and bacteria to produce new and tastier alternatives.
4. Emission-to-plate
With waste still one of our most pressing issues, brands need to pull on existing and problematic resources and find innovative and inspiring ways to transform them.
5. Tech Textures
Brands need to think about how technology itself can become a key ingredient to seamlessly advance how we experience better health benefits or pleasure from our food.
