content tagged as Sustainability

Tamar Haspel, Washington Post columnist, moderates a discussion on how shifting diets to more plant-based food might impact the environment. Panelists include: Mary Christ-Erwin, Taylor Wallace, Adam Drewnowski, and Jessica Fanzo.

More and more consumers are gravitating toward increased consumption of plant-based foods, and health and diet research supports the many benefits of doing so.

IFT and the Feeding Tomorrow Foundation have announced a new program called Food Technologists Without Borders to leverage the technical know-how of the IFT community to address critical global food needs.

The IFT17 screening of Food Evolution drew an enthusiastic audience response. The film uses the debate around GMOs to further the dialogue about the role of science in the food system.

Environmental concerns over conventional meat production is stimulating R&D of cultured meat products.

This year’s Scientific Programming will include four Hot Topic sessions—curated, scientific sessions focused on impactful, current trends and issues facing the science of food. 

This session will address food waste analysis, give a roadmap of priority waste reduction solutions, highlight developments relating to food donation and food recovery, stress the importance of measuring food loss and waste, and give participants insight into tools and standards for measurement.

Food security, as defined by United Nations (UN), exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and, nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. As the world population continues to grow, the challenges in managing limited resources to feed them will require significant improvements in technology, management strategies, and policies that enhance food security. While contributing factors to food insecurity are debatable, increased use of farm commodities in biofuels, increased oil prices, global population growth, climate change, loss of agricultural land to residential and industrial development, rising food prices, environmental stressors, high losses and waste, and growing consumer demand in developing countries have an impact on food security. In order to ensure sufficient, safe, and nutritious food globally, strategies and policy responses to global changes in land-use patterns, food trade, pre- and post-harvest food processing, food preservation, and food safety are urgently needed. Enhanced food safety is key to improvements in health and nutrition, both of which are goals of enhanced food security. Therefore food safety, nutrition, and food security are inextricably linked. This symposium session will bring subject-matter experts together as panelists to discuss issues on (1) priorities and challenges from government and private sector’s standpoints on food safety and food security in various parts of the world, (2) policies and strategies leading to robust food-safety control programs at country level, (3) effective recognition of women's actual roles and responsibilities in global food security, and (4) the role of research and development strategies on reducing food losses and expanding markets for improved food security and economic growth.

The human population will grow quickly over the next 40 years, which creates a need to be sustainable in terms of food production. However, today’s production exceeds environmental limits and food production has a significant influence on greenhouse gas emissions, the use of land and water resources, pollution, and on the reduction of food production due to climate change. In addition, there are losses in the food production chain from farm to fork. Therefore, efforts need to be made to reduce these losses and intensify the use of side streams of food production and value add the production of co-products (e.g. extract highly bioactive compounds or other compounds of nutritional value, or transform the whole by-product into a co-product without any residue)

To ensure the world population is fed with healthy foods produced with only minimal effect on the environment, a long-term, intensified effort is needed on all levels, including: country-led transformation, global cooperation, and community action. In this session, we will underline and highlight the underlying causes for food loss along the value chain and introduce opportunities at a global scale to reduce food loss and waste and improve the sustainability of food chains from farm to fork. The speakers selected for this symposium, one from the industry, one from government, and two from academia, will share their experience and knowledge of what is currently done on the industry and research sides to tackle the challenges introduced.

The symposium is being organized and moderated by Dr. Robert Sevenich (Technische Universität Berlin), Dr. Pablo Juliano (CSIRO-Australia) and Myriam Loeffler (Universität Hohenheim).

Insects are an attractive alternative source of high-quality animal protein for the food industry with a substantially lower environmental footprint than vertebrate livestock. Insects can be raised very naturally compared to other livestock, without the use of hormones, antibiotics, steroids; and very cleanly, free from hazards such as pathogens. Insects from farms in the US and Europe do not appear to contain foodborne pathogens such as Salmonella, Listeria, E. coli or Staphylococcus aureus. Although billions of pounds of insects have been produced for the pet food and animal feed industry, a huge global potential exists for viable food and ingredient production from insects. Research is proving that insect farming, processing, and consumption are viable options both economically and nutritionally. The private sector is recognizing insects have potential for alleviating problems related to food security and are looking to them for food ingredients, fish meal, emergency food relief, and domestic animal feed.

This session will provide the audience with historical, current, and future research on the business of utilizing insects as viable food ingredients for both feeding the world and providing new functional and nutritional options for the food industry.