Food for thought: the foodtech trends to look out for

Alongsidethe regular bingeworthy dramas and festive films that can be found on Netflix,I’ve recently discovered a new series of 20-minute documentaries called‘Explained’ that are a perfect short watch now that the nights are drawing in.

Witha new topic each week, the show investigates trends from cults and pirates todreams and psychedelic drugs. One of the most recent episodes was about thefuture of the meat industry and how technologies in food could help curb theplanet’s unprecedented and unsustainable appetite for meat products with plant-basedalternatives.

Thisgot me thinking about food technology in general and what the future holds foran industry expected to reach $250 billion by 2022. So,as we edge closer to the end of this year, what can we expect to see more of inthe future of food and technology?

The complete package

With consumers already used to having access to information attheir fingertips, the future of food is likely to be no different. Imaginebeing able to summon up calorie content or see how local and fresh the producein your fridge is with just a simple tap of an NFC-enabled smartphone.

Ultra-low-cost flexible electronics company, PragmatIC, is aiming to do justthat. The company creates low-cost, thin and flexible radio-frequencyidentification (RFID) integrated circuits (ICs) that can be integrated seamlessly intopackaging to make it smart. So, you could tap the side of a product to getquick and easy access to recipes or dietary information, for example. It couldalso help reduce food waste, with a low-cost inlay and a unique ID in thepackaging allowing consumers to access clear and localised recyclinginformation or incentivising consumers to recycle.

Inthe future, these super flexible integrated circuits could become integratedinto all sorts of products all across the world, to help both consumers and theplanet!

Riseof the machines

Whetherit’s picking fruit, waiting tables or flipping burgers, robots are increasinglybecoming a key part of the food industry to help automate processes. Forexample, Hands Free Hectare is a project by Harper Adams University that looks intoautomated alternativesto farmingthat allow for ultimate crop yield with minimum worker input. The team’s three-yearproject is investigating whether a fully automated cropping cycle is possible.

Earlierthis year, diners in Scotland’s Yamm World Buffet in Dundee were served by the country’s firstrobot waiters.While such sights can often be found in restaurants in China, the popularity ofthis new technology will be tested and, if proven popular, could become a morepermanent fixture in restaurants across the globe, bringing a whole new meaningto grabbing a ‘byte’ to eat…

Elsewhere,the world’s first autonomous robotic kitchen assistant, Flippy, from Miso Robotics is a short-order cook with adifference. The cloud-connected mechanical arm can learn from its surroundings,acquire new skills over time and is capable of grilling 2,000 burgers a day. It even has thermal-scanningeyes to see whether the patty is cooked… That’s pretty flipping cool!

Hungry for change

But, while companies may be creating new and more excitingproducts and innovations, what do consumers think of the growing use oftechnology in food?

New research has shown that younger generations are more open totry foods grown using technology than older generations, with gen Z (peopleborn in the mid-90s onwards) indicating that they would be more likely to tryfood grown by technology (77%) than millennials (67%), gen X (58%) and babyboomers (58%).

This represents a huge opportunity for brands to plan how theymarket their products to different generations. It also indicates that, in thefuture, innovations in food tech are likely to be increasingly common andaccepted. Personally, I’m excited to see what’s next.