The last post discussed the past and present trends within the food industry. This is a relevant introduction to this next post which will discuss the upcoming trends within the food industry. As explored in the last blog post, there has been a significant rise in veganism/plant-based eating. This is only expected to rise in the the future with an expected increase in the plant ‘meat and dairy’ industry sales of 29 billion USD in 2020 to a projected 162 billion USD in 2030. This is a huge five-fold increase in sales (Minassian, 2022).
Related to the plant-based food trend is trends involving environmentally conscious eating. One of these is innovation in lab-based meats. Although not plant-based, these lab grown meats do not cause the death of animals, nor do they contribute anywhere near the environmental damage that traditional meat does. The method in which this meat is produced is through a biopsy of the animal in which is going to be replicated as meat. The cells taken from the animal are cultured and when enough of these cells multiply, they are transferred into a bioreactor in which the cells multiply until there is enough produced to have a cut of the desired meat. Currently, there are many start-up companies that produce lab-grown meat however none which have been able to achieve a cost-effective, comercialised production. At the current stage in the lab-based meat industry, it takes alot of resources, time and effort to produce meat, however with increased areas of production and an improvement in infrastructure there is a huge opportunity for this food trend to become widespread (Phillip, 2022).
Another food trend which is emerging in the UK but has not yet reached popular demand is using insects as a protein source. Similar to the idea that lab-grown meat is more ethically/environmentally conscious, insects require much less land, water and resources than traditional meat. More specifically, crickets require 6 times less feed than cattle for the same amount of protein farmed and so with the rising world population, insects have been increasingly viewed as a viable food source (Fao.org, 2020).
Adding to the concept of more sustainable farming, there may be a rise in the usage of vertical farming. Vertical farming, as described by BBC Science Focus is the way of taking a controlled environment of a commercial greenhouse and stacking it, allowing for 10 times the use of the given land area. These commercial greenhouses allow plants to be grown in a completely enclosed system which means that the use of pesticides is not necessary as insects are not present within the greenhouses and the food grown is clean due to the fact it has not had contact with the outside environment. A further benefit of this type of farming is the ability to use artificial growing conditions like light so that any food can be grown all year around no matter the weather or country. There are however certain limitations to this method of farming as cereal crops are too tall to stack efficiently and so have a much higher cost per tonne than other foods like salad leaves and strawberries. It is
estimated that a loaf of bread that contains wheat from vertical farming would cost around £18 for the LED electricity alone. (Villazon, 2022)
These possible future food trends may seem alien to the modern consumer however the speed of innovation and change within the past 100 years in the food industry provides us with insight into how much change is possible for the future of the industry. (Koenig, 2022)
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