My Eco Talk Five

Future of Food: Feeding People in a Sustainable Way

Chiara Cecchini narrates the problems of food that motivated her to start a food tech company. She moved to Moscow for her studies, and she found out that her surrounding was changing, more pollution, colder, and at that moment she had an idea. Starting a company that could track physical metrics to reward people for healthy behavior and healthy food.

Food was her problem, and food became her purpose. At a young age, she had food disorders, but later, food became her mission.

The Temet in India is a fantastic foodprint organization spread globally, touching thousands of lives every year to make the planet more sustainable. Their food system is more accessible and more understandable by everyone through study, research, and food solutions in the food system.

One of their main initiatives is a worldwide journey; called the Food Innovation Global Mission. This initiative takes students to study from Italy and go west and return to Italy after 60 days from East.

The idea is to stop in the central locations that are making changes in the food sector worldwide; food innovation hubs. The company’s staff and students meet with people who put great ideas in the food system to the ground. Food makers, innovators, entrepreneurs, institutions in the food sector.

They take ideas, interviews, and documentaries. Coming back, they document the discoveries they have made.

Proteins are the Future Commodity

Plant-based proteins, plants made to taste and smell like proteins, are enormous.

Insects are one of the most sustainable sources of proteins on the planet. For instance, to produce 100 pounds of chicken proteins, we need 2,000 gallons of water. To make the number of egg proteins, we need 400 gallons of water. To produce the same amount of cricket protein, we need one gallon of water.

As you can imagine, from Asia and parts of South America, where insects are part of their culture, now it’s coming to the Western world.

Protein Manufacturing

In ten years, we will be able to grow meat at home. A company in Japan is already building technology to enable core growing without causing pollution and going shopping or killing animals.

Waste

We waste 1/3 of all food we produce. And to change the paradigm, we must recycle waste as the new value. For instance, using barley from the brewery, mill it to have baking flour. Taking oranges peals to make textile.

We are missing technologies that could plug food in the fridge to tell the expiry date automatically detected or have the fridge on your phone and tell you what you should eat to avoid this waste.

Waste is about our sense of beauty. 1/5 of the food we waste is wasted because it’s not beautiful enough. France was one of the countries to start a movement for “how to make ugly the new beautiful.”

City are the Next Farms

Cities host 65% of the world’s population.

So how do we make cities food sustainable and accountable?

• Growing food inside our homes, e.g., hydroponics, boxes. Even the rooftops, vertical farming, etc.
• Using robots to leverage labor grows the food faster.

Food is the problem but can be the solution. Food is responsible for 2 Billion worldwide who are obese or overweight and 800 million people starving.

And this calls for all of us to eat with purpose consume with a goal.