Viewing entries by
Allie Wist
By now, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the world is facing a global water crisis. What is less apparent is how this crisis is intimately tied food—how we source, produce, and consume what we eat. In the face of drastic warnings of reduced freshwater around the world in coming decades (UNESCO has explicitly warned that climate change will alter the availability of water and threaten water security), it is important to identify what, exactly, a lack of freshwater means. What are the most urgent risks, and where will it take its highest toll? What are our best areas for innovation? Freshwater
Sarah Smith is a Research Director with the Institute for the Future’s Food Futures Lab, where she works with many of the world’s largest food, health, and CPG companies to challenge their assumptions and identify emerging trends and discontinuities that will transform the global marketplace and global food system. We chatted with her about how to envision the role of impact-focused food companies in the future, and what types of values should shape our growing and eating. Sarah Smith Research Director The Institute for the Future’s Food Futures Lab What is futures thinking and what
Through the coming decade, what we eat will be shaped by new tastes, new innovations, and primarily, by new concerns held by consumers. Food businesses will have to offer more personalized food products, more sustainable packaging, and more international tastes (Japanese snack boxes, anyone?) delivered to our doorstop. Younger generations will be a driving force of change in food ways, and food producers are tuning into their concerns and habits. Our culture has shifted from considering food as an energy and sensory pleasure source to an accessible way to relate to culture, to nature, and to friends and communities.
Cooking is often an expression of ourselves—our values, our lifestyles, and our cultural traditions. The holidays present an opportunity to express these values as we attempt to weave them into our daily lives, including conscious eating and sustainable living. It is a time to reevaluate our traditions, and take a stand on practices that don’t contribute to a robust, healthy food system. It is also a time to reinforce and celebrate traditions that we can feel good about, from sourcing our food in an ecologically responsible way, to making recipes that repurpose food waste into soups, stocks, and preserves. By being
We’ve heard that the microbiome in our gut is of unprecedented importance—we have overlooked a hidden (and massive) world of organisms crucial to our health. The result has been an influx of foods and supplements tailored to the human microbiome, as well as initiatives to map the genome of the microbes in our stomachs and ultimately apply those insights to the medical industry. We have found ourselves the residence for quite a host of microscopic species integral to human health. It’s not a surprise that the most fervor in discussing the microbiome has to do with the most personal application, our bodies themselves.
We look at which innovations in technology have the potential to change our food system, and which ones might be more about novelty than sustainability. The future of our food system will inescapably involve technology. We are surrounded by tech-driven innovations in how we grow, produce, and consume our food—from 3D-printed pizza to blockchain-enabled traceability to ever-more flamboyant artificial flavors and eating experiences. (Think rainbow bagels). With a swell of new technologies on the horizon, which will cultivate a sustainable and productive food system? Some may prove to be passing fads, while others will