A convenience food makeover

With the help of molecular science and gene-editing, the convenience food industry is shedding fat and becoming more environmentally friendly.

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Every convenience brings its own inconvenience.That’s certainly the case with food.

As more of us are dining out or ordering in to make our lives that bit easier, we take risks with our health and damage the environment.

The data underscores a radical change in our eating habits. For the first time ever, Americans are spending more on food away from home (FAFH), whether that’s eating at restaurants, grabbing a snack at a shop or having meals delivered, than on home-made food. US households collectively splash out more than USD730 billion a year on eating out – which is the biggest chunk of their total food budget.1

And the same phenomenon is occurring in other developed countries as well as in emerging markets, which are home to a growing urban population with higher disposable incomes.

But here’s the inconvenient truth. The time saved by outsourcing our diet translates into extra inches to our waistlines.  Academic studies have found that FAFH is full of sugar, salt and saturated fat. For the average adult, one meal eaten away from home once a week increases daily energy intake by about 134 calories, adding two pounds to our weight each year.2

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There is also an environmental price to pay. Research shows that FAFH contributes to food waste, whose carbon footprint is bigger than that of India, the world's third biggest emitter of carbon dixoide.

In the UK alone, food outlets throw away more than 1 million tonnes of food. To produce that amount, it requires around 1.2 billion cubic metres of water, a third of what every household uses in a year.3

Despite the health and environmental benefits, convincing people to eat more at home may be a futile exercise given changing household structures and lifestyles.

Instead, the food industry is turning to innovative technologies – harnessing processes used in pharmaceutical, biochemistry and medical labs – to increase micro-nutrients, extend shelf life and reduce the environmental footprint of meals and snacks prepared and consumed away from home.

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Nutrition label of an Impossible Burger. Source: Impossible Food

I can't believe it's not beef (or tuna) 

Burgers, chicken nuggets, pizza and tacos… These popular take-away dishes tend to be served up in outsized portions and also contain high amounts of fat and sugar.

Research by Lisa Young, New York University’s Adjunct Professor of Nutrition, has found that portions at fast food chains are two to five times larger than they were two decades ago. “There’s a clear-cut correlation between the obesity rate and portion sizes,” she explains.

What is more, convenient meals tend to feature more meat, the production of which is a major ecosystem stressor: livestock farming is responsible for 15 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions (bigger than transport’s 13 per cent) and accounts for some 29 per cent of the world’s freshwater use.

Meat production is also a major contributor to deforestation, land degradation and water pollution, as well as being the biggest source of antibiotic resistance and epidemic viruses such as avian flu.4

Trying to wean the world off meat is Silicon Valley-based start-up Impossible Food. It uses a new scientific process to serve a plant-based burger, which “bleeds” and sizzles like any beef patty. Its key ingredient is called “heme” – a protein molecule that makes meat taste uniquely like meat.

Impossible Food produces heme by fermenting genetically engineered yeast from soy protein, and a large-scale production makes it possible to sell its burgers at a competitive price (restaurants around the US are offering them for around USD16 each).

Such burgers take a smaller toll on natural resources: academic research based on Life Cycle Assessment found one Impossible Burger uses 25 per cent of water, 5 per cent of land and 13 per cent of CO2 emissions compared with its beef counterpart.5 It is also healthier, with zero cholesterol.

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Cultured beef burger. Source: Mosa Meat

A similar experiment is under way at Dutch start-up Mosa Meat. It cultures cow cells to produce meat that is molecularly the same as beef but with a much smaller environmental footprint. A small cell sample of a cow can generate 800 million strands of synthetic muscle tissue, enough to make 80,000 quarter pounders.

Mosa plans to deliver its slaughter-free burger in the next few years at USD9 each. 

It’s not just meat that’s getting a high-tech makeover. San Francisco’s Finless Foods use cellular-agriculture technologies to grow marine-animal cells to produce fresh bluefin tuna, which is free from mercury and other contaminants. Swiss biotech firm Evolva, meanwhile, is tackling the shortage of vanilla – producing the real stuff contributes to deforestation – by culturing the spice with petrochemical yeast.

Elsewhere, plant scientists are deploying a cutting-edge gene editing method known as CRISPR-cas9 to reshape food crops, editing wheat to reduce gluten or editing potatoes to eradicate bacteria and extend shelf life.

It was Winston Churchill who said in 1931 that the world would one day "escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing" by producing "synthetic foods that will from the outset be practically indistinguishable from natural products". It might have taken longer than the Britain's wartime leader envisaged, but the day has finally come. 

[1] US Department of Agriculture
[2] USDA, The Impact of Food Away From Home on Adult Diet Quality, February 2012
[3] Waste and Resources Action Programme
[4] Food and Agriculture Organization
[5] Goldstein B, Moses R, Sammons N, Birkved M (2017) Potential to curb the environmental burdens of American beef consumption using a novel plant-based beef substitute. PLoS ONE 12(12): e0189029. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0189029

About

Mega

Mega seeks to energise and enrich the debate over how to create a better-functioning economy and society.

Megatrends are the powerful socio-economic, environmental and technological forces that shape our planet. The digitisation of the economy, the rapid expansion of cities and the depletion of the Earth’s natural resources are just some of the structural trends transforming the way countries are governed, companies are run and people live their lives.

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