Future NZ: The future of food

Food producers face a number of major issues in the coming decades that will require current production systems to be challenged and new sources of nutrition to be discovered.

The planet is in an era of rapid population growth, with estimates that the global population will reach nine billion by 2040. This is two billion more, or more than 28 per cent, than now. Much of this growth is in Asia, where there is also a growing middle class, hungry for high quality protein. The consumption of animal protein per capita in Asia increased 225 per cent between 1961 and 2007.

People in the developed world are living longer due to improved medical care, and this will mean new food products will be needed that can deliver protein and micronutrients that are easily digested, bioavailable and that taste good. A mix of old and new foods and technologies will be needed to sate this hunger.

Functional foods

To ensure health people need to eat the necessary micronutrients and minerals required for a balance diet. But the diets of many people do not include the range and quality of food to meet these needs. To overcome this issue, food scientists are creating functional foods, where staple foods have healthful things added to them. Functional foods can provide health benefits to those looking to prevent the onset of lifestyle diseases such as diabetes, coronary heart disease, hypertension, osteoporosis and bowel cancer.

This is not a simple process - as a food's taste, texture and mouth feel change with the additives. But Fonterra has had phenomenal success with its Anlene brand of fortified milk, which contains calcium, vitamin D, zinc and magnesium to support bone health. Similarly, beneficial compounds such as omega-3 fatty acids have been microencapsulated to allow them to be added to food without the fishy taste. Functional foods will increase in prevalence as the population ages and people seek to improve their health through their diet.

Biofortification

Adding healthy ingredients to foods is one thing, but choosing strains of plants that have higher levels of nutrients and minerals is an alternative way to enrich food. In the past, crops such as corn and wheat have been chosen for their superior yield, but increasingly they are now being bred to have enhanced nutrient contents.

In the future we will increasingly be looking to varieties of commercial species that are already more nutritionally rich. These may have been eliminated from production over time because the yield was insufficient. Other types of plants such as quinoa and millet are also being looked at as alternatives to what we commonly consume.

Ageing

As people get older they start to lose muscle mass and their taste buds but key to long-term health is finding proteins that are easily digested and absorbed. Recently, the Riddet Institute has studied enzymatic breakdown of waste meat products to produce highly digestible liquid hydrolysates that have very high rates of protein utilisation. These can be consumed as high quality gourmet soups.

Novel protein sources

As well increasing the efficiency of animal protein production on our farms, new sources of animal protein are being investigated - from rabbits, insects and from aquaculture. Protein sourced from the biofuel and vegetable oil industries, algae and other plants are either already in production or being studied for efficacy and ease of production.

Products such as Quorn, a vegetarian meat substitute made from a fungus that is already on the market, will become more common in future.

Professor Paul Moughan and Professor Harjinder Singh of the Riddet Institute.