Food glorious food
7 Oct 2014
At my daughter’s birthday party recently I found myself in conversation with a number of her friends’ mothers about the dangers of processed foods.
The dominant view was that they were “awful” and responsible for ailments ranging from obesity to cancer.
The irony that we said this while eating shop-bought pizza and drinking off-the-shelf fruit squash did not escape me.
Consumers are now not only demanding products that are healthier, they also want to eat food that doesn’t look as if it has been processed
There is a strange cognitive dissonance that seems to prevail among the majority of the population, whereby we all consume processed foods, yet at the same time believe they are somehow the work of the devil.
This distrust is made clear in the cover feature for the October issue of Process Engineering, which points out that one in two people doubt the food industry’s ability to meet the most basic requirement of selling food that is safe to eat.
As a result, consumers are demanding both products that are healthier, and food that doesn’t look as if it has been processed. Those with deep pockets may choose a radical approach of adopting a vegan or “paleo” diet – one where you attempt to mimic the diet of Palaeolithic man and only consume fresh produce. However, for most, our diets will still include a daily intake of processed foods in one form or another…we just don’t want them to look processed.
This has challenged the food industry to go against its traditional goal of products that are uniform and consistent in appearance to create products with that irregular “homemade” feel.
Some of the solutions are ingenious, and it is this kind of ingenuity that marks out the food and beverage industry as a fascinating career destination for process engineers.
The government seems to agree: hot on the heels of the creation of the National Centre of Excellence for Food Engineering at Sheffield Hallam University, a government-backed competition has been announced by Innovate UK (formerly the Technology Strategy Board) for food engineering businesses to win a slice of £11 million.
The funding competition, Improving food supply chain efficiency, will seek to support collaborative research and development projects that improve the resource efficiency and resilience of the UK food and drink supply chain.
Among the areas that could be considered for funding are projects that seek to improve the “productivity of food manufacturing and processing operations”. Hats off to anyone who can square the circle of improved productivity and irregularly shaped foods.
