Future Foods: How Modern Science Is Transforming the Way We Eat

by David Julian McClements

We are in the midst of an unprecedented era of rapid scientific and technological advances that are transforming the way our foods are produced and consumed. Food architecture is being used to construct healthier, tastier, and more sustainable foods. Functional foods are being created to combat chronic diseases such as obesity, cancer, diabetes, stroke, and heart disease. These foods are fortified with nutraceuticals or probiotics to improve our mood, performance, and health. The behavior of foods inside our guts is being controlled to increase their healthiness. Precision nutrition is being used to tailor diets to our unique genetic profiles, microbiomes, and metabolisms. Gene editing , nanotechnology , and artificial intelligence are being used to address modern food challenges such as feeding the growing global population, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, reducing waste, and improving sustainability. However, the application of these technologies is facing a backlash from consumers concerned about the potential risks posed to human and environmental health. Some of the questions addressed in this book What is food architecture? How does sound and color impact taste? Will we all have 3D food printers in all our homes? Should nanotechnology and gene editing be used to enhance our foods? Are these new technologies safe? Would you eat bug-foods if it led to a more sustainable food supply? Should vegetarians eat themselves? Can nutraceuticals and probiotics stop cancer? What is the molecular basis of a tasty sustainable burger? David Julian McClements is a Distinguished Professor in food science who has used physics, chemistry, and biology to improve the quality, safety, and healthiness of foods for over 30 years. He has published over 900 scientific articles and 10 books in this area and is currently the most highly cited food scientist in the world. He has won numerous scientific awards for his work. The aim of this book is to highlight the many exciting advances being made in the science of foods, and to show their application for solving important problems related to the modern food supply, such as tackling chronic diseases, feeding a global population, reducing food waste, and creating healthier and tastier foods.

Genres: Food

395 pages, Paperback

Published May 8, 2019

Reviews

[Erika · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a tough one to review. The title is utterly misleading, and it is very hard to know who the book is written for. Other than me. It was written for me. McClements is a very serious academic, a scholar of food science, and ruthlessly evidence-based in his writing. The title makes it sound like he has a point to make, a thesis, that he is going to construct chapter by chapter. But no; really the book is a collection of subject-area chapters, into which he has crammed a series of thoughtfully written reports, discrete reports, on subtopics. It's almost as if he has taken his filing cabinet and distilled it into "everything real people might want to know about my life's work" and then written it out in highly readable (but very dense for a lay person) prose. Chock full of information. Based on the sections as to which I also have expertise, he is rock solid -- thorough, balanced, and scrupulously evidence based. It's not a book to read cover to cover, though, and it is so disjointed (microbiome here, 3D printing there, tissue engineering here, genetic engineering there) that it may well be unreadable to everyone who isn't already steeped in food law, policy, and science. But for the subpopulation of people like me that thinks in this area anyway, it's great fun to read. I just don't know what he was shooting for. Who was the intended audience? Or was he just cleaning out his filing cabinet?