future foods: sustainability and obesity NZ
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It’s not easy predicting the future, even with science on your side. Witness the contention associated with the climate change debate – Is it natural? Man-made? Or even occurring at all? Even scientists can’t agree, and under these circumstances it becomes difficult to formulate the most appropriate means of tackling the problem. Predicting the future focus of food is no less challenging, if less contentious than observed for climate change. In thinking about the future of foods we need to consider exactly how far into the future we need to look. Can we realistically anticipate what our diets will look like in 100 years time, let alone 1000? Certainly it might be considered that, based on little or no change to our biological makeup, our future nutritional requirements will be little different from that of today, just as our dietary needs don’t appear to have changed much over the past few centuries. We will still need a certain proportion of basic macronutrients – protein, carbohydrate and fat – as well as micronutrients – vitamins, minerals etc. – as part of our daily intake for maintaining good health.
Fighting obesity For developed and affluent societies food supply is not currently a problem. Most of us continue to have access to low cost, readily available and safe food products. Indeed, one recognised problem is the over-availability and overconsumption of food. Based on an increasingly sedentary way of life our energy requirements are actually less than they would have been 100 or 200 years ago, and yet we have more choice, more spending power and far easier access to food than we did then. The statistics showing rapidly elevating populations of overweight and obese individuals is, at its simplest, a consequence that for many people energy intake is regularly being allowed to exceed energy expenditure.
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) show that, at least in the short-term future, the incidence of obese and overweight individuals will continue to be a steeply upward trend for many countries (Figure 1), with projections showing no indication of plateau by 2020. These are genuinely worrying statistics, with over 1 billion people in the world now being classified as overweight. Whilst obesity might at first glance seem a relatively trivial and cosmetic issue, there are profound social and economic consequences associated with the problem. For example, a report issued by Diabetes Australia indicated the financial costs associated with obesity to be in excess of AU$3.7 billion for the year 2005. Looking at the projections highlighted in Figure 1, it would be considered a fair assumption that developing new approaches to better regulate energy intake will be one of the priority areas for food manufacturers in the near future. What needs to be done to make this approach successful? Well, at its simplest this approach requires a tangible reduction in energy content across a substantial range of food products, such that the net calorie intake can be lowered on a daily basis.
Challenges reducing fat and sugar in food
futurefocus–food,sustainabilityandobesity
Future food scientists focus on addressing the twin issues of obesity and sustainability, as Matt Golding, Massey University explains:
One could argue that this is already the case for many fat or sugar reduced foods, and indeed the market sector for reduced energy food was estimated to be in excess of US$70 billio for 2010. However, an established low energy market seems to be having little impact on the observed trends shown in Figure 1, so why is this approach not more successful and how can innovation be used to improve this approach going into the future? Part of the problem is palatability. Both fat and sugar contribute to the pleasurable eating experience of many foods, and their removal is invariably associated with a loss of quality. A considerable amount of innovation has been developed and implemented by food companies in recent years, as part of trying and compensate more effectively for the removal of fat and sugar from food products. By better understanding the roles of these ingredients in the microstructure of a product, it is becoming increasingly possible to manipulate product structure to achieve improvements in the sensory performance of that product. Some nice recent examples included the use of encapsulated water to reduce the fat and sugar content in chocolate, and the use of small stable air bubbles to mimic the sensation of fat in emulsion type products such as creams, ice creams and mayonnaises. Future developments in the ability to manipulate product microstructure will continue to allow for improved sensory performance, allowing for not only high quality low energy products, but enabling other enhancements, such as salt reduction and potentially reducing raw material costs.
Controlling energy intake Figure 1: OECD data for incidence and projection of overweight populations. In many respects this is a remarkably recent phenomenon – indeed the word obesity did not really enter the public consciousness until after 2000. However, projections by the
Solving quality is only half the issue with improving the effectiveness of reduced energy foods. The second aspect is in relation to the eating behaviour of such products, to ensure that energy intake remains at or below acceptable limits. In this respect there are additional problems to be overcome, such as misdirected consumption (e.g.
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