Why crickets, GM tomatoes and lab-grown meat could soon be tumming up on a dinner plate near you.
Demand for food is set to double in the next 40 years, according to World Health Organisation figures. Yet we’re fast running out of space in which to grow it. A booming population and rising prosperity are fuelling the spiralling demand, and the situation is particularly dire when it comes to meat. Our appetite for animal flesh is set to double by 2050, and with close to 70 per cent of the world’s farmland already devoted to raising livestock, the prices of conventional meats are widely expected to spiral. Henning Steinfeld of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has gone as far as saying that beef will become “the caviar of the future”.
The environmental costs of today’s burgers and steaks are considerable too. Keeping livestock for food produces 39 per cent of all emitted methane and five per cent of carbon dioxide. “It is just not sustainable from an ecological point of view,” says Professor Mark Post, a physiologist at Maastricht University. “We have to come up with alternatives.” Post is among a band of researchers around the world working to avert the looming food crisis using science. His research could lead to a future in which our meat is grown in labs rather than on farms.
Other solutions are just as radical. As seen in the recent BBC Four programme Can Eating Insects Save The World? with Stefan Gates, many experts predict insects will start creeping into Western diets. What’s more, ingenious techniques are being developed that would allow our fruit and veg to be grown in deserts.
Here Focus has brought together leading solutions to the impending food crisis. Take a look to see which of them you find the most palatable.
INSECTS
Six-legged food is marching towards your dinner plate.
With demand for meat escalating, how are carnivores of the future going to get their fix? How about some grasshopper tacos, caramelised locusts or mealworm minestrone? Some scientists believe entomophagy, the consumption of insects, will play a significant role in providing alternative sources of protein.
“When it comes to the conversion of feeds into meat for humans, insects are many times more efficient than traditional sources,” says Professor Arnold van Huis, an entomologist at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. “This is because they are cold-blooded and so don’t have to expend energy maintaining their body temperature.” Crickets, for instance, produce a kilogram of edible material from just 2.1kg of feed. For poultry, the figure is 4.5kg. It’s 9.1kg for pork and 25kg for beef.
Then there are the environmental benefits. Livestock accounts for 18 per cent of manmade greenhouse gases: for every kilogram of beef farmed around 2,850g of greenhouse gases are released. For mealworms and house crickets, the figures are 8g and 2g respectively, according to a 2010 study led by van Huis.
A diet of bugs seems like a no-brainer, so a research group at Wageningen University is investigating what is likely to be the biggest stumbling block to getting them on plates – public perception. It is carrying out tasting sessions to see how willing consumers are to eat insects and whether presenting them whole, grinding them up or extracting the protein is the best approach. “We found nine out of 10 people preferred insect meatballs to conventional ones,” says van Huis. “Disguising the protein in this way is the angle we’ll need to take.”
Even those in the industry realise it’s going to take a lot to change our aversion to sixlegged foodstuffs. “In the West we are going to need to overcome historical psychological issues,” says Ernest Papadoyianis, president of Organic Nutrition Industries. “I think it’ll go viral through high-profile chefs picking it up.” His Florida-based company is about to produce 1,000 tonnes of dried, ground black soldier flies per year for aquaculture feed. Realistically, it’s as a foodstuff for animals we are keen on eating that insects are likely to rise to prominence. From June, insects will be allowed in aquaculture feeds in the EU.
As well as issues of perception, there are likely to be other complications. For instance, some of the proteins contained in edible insect species are the same as those in house dust mites, which can cause asthma.
However, if Papadoyianis is right that celebrity chefs are the key to Western diners’ hearts, we may not have long to wait for the insect food revolution to start. Van Huis claims representatives of a well-known British celebrity chef have recently been in touch about a Dutch insect cookbook he co-authored. It’s due out in English in September.
ARTIFICIAL MEAT
You could be eating flesh grown in a test tube rather than on a farm.
In vitro burgers laboratory-grown steaks or engineered beef patties? Scientists haven’t quite settled on the right name yet, but whatever you call it, artificial meat appears to be coming our way. Last year, Professor Mark Post of Maastricht University unveiled the world’s first artificial burger. With a price tag of €250,000 (£211,000) these high-tech feasts are not yet commercially viable, but Post predicts they will quickly become affordable as the world struggles to keep up with the demand for meat. Post’s famous €250,000 burger was grown from bovine muscle stem cells, harvested through biopsy and cultured in a medium containing foetal calf serum – essentially blood with the red cells removed. The serum contained the nutrients required for the cells to differentiate into mature muscle cells.
The slivers of muscle were then stretched between two Velcro anchor points such that their innate tendency to contract caused them to bulk up into small strands of meat. Electrical impulses were also passed through the muscle to increase its protein content. Three thousand small pieces were fused to create one standard-sized burger.
Post’s is one of an increasing number of groups aiming to bioengineer meat. The US start-up, Modern Meadows, run by Professor Gabor Forgacs and his son Andras is using 3D-printing technology to produce living tissue, ultimately aimed at creating artificial organs as well as meat.
Here, thousands of live muscle stem cells are loaded into a cartridge – a sort of biological ink – and once printed into the desired shape, the cells naturally fuse together to form living tissue. The pair describe the taste of their most recent production as “not unpleasant”, but admit it still needs refinement.
But will consumers be willing to eat artificial meat? “We manage to get over the ‘yuck factor’ of slaughter houses and factory farming feedlots,” says Andras. “The process behind cultured meat is much cleaner, much more transparent and much better for the environment and animals than conventional animal farming.”
FRUIT & VEG
We’ll need new technology if we want to keep eating five a day.
GM GREENS
In the global production of staple foods, potatoes come in fourth (after corn, wheat and rice) with an annual production of around 314 million tonnes. But in terms of yield, the humble tuber is the easy winner, producing nearly six times as many tonnes per hectare as wheat. With more than half of the world’s potatoes grown in developing countries, the UN is promoting the potato as a more efficient crop that could improve global food security. But there is a major stumbling block: blight.
The fungus-like organism, Phytophthora infestans, which caused Ireland’s famine of the 1840s, continues to decimate crops today. Last year, up to 20 per cent of European potatoes were lost to blight and many farmers were forced to spray crops with fungicides 15-20 times at a cost of around £500 per hectare.
Scientists at Britain’s Sainsbury Laboratory are working on a cheaper and potentially more sustainable solution. Behind an alarmed fence near Norwich, they are testing potatoes genetically modified to be blight resistant. Professor Jonathan Jones, the lead scientist, describes GM as equivalent to adding an app to an iPhone. “It’s still the same phone, but you’re giving it extra functionality,” he says. After screening hundreds of varieties, Prof Jones’s team isolated genes that give blight resistance to two wild, inedible potato species from South America. Early results suggest that inserting these genes into a Désirée variety can successfully confer blight resistance, without the need for fungicides.
GM can not only improve the hardiness of crops, but also their healthiness. Professor Cathie Martin at the John Innes Centre in Norwich has developed a variety of purple tomatoes with high levels of pigments called anthocyanins throughout the flesh and skin. These compounds, normally found in berries such as blackberry and blueberry, appear to offer protection against certain cancers, cardiovascular disease and dementia.
Tomatoes are so widely consumed that they represent a vehicle to introduce beneficial properties to those who can’t afford, or don’t have access to, expensive, seasonal berries. “You would need to consume only one or two tomatoes to get equivalent levels of anthocyanins to those in a punnet of berries,” says Prof Martin.
In a preliminary study, with cancer susceptible mice, a diet supplemented with purple tomatoes rather than standard ones increased lifespan by nearly a third. Martin is now planning a randomised controlled trial to test their health benefits in humans.
“Acceptance of any food of a new colour can be problematic,” says Martin, citing the failed green ketchup marketing ploy, but she remains optimistic that consumers will react to purple tomatoes in a similar way to coloured salad leaves. It might just be the GM bit that’s a problem.
SEAWATER GREENHOUSE
Greenhouses trap the Sun’s heat to produce greater crop yields and allow unseasonal growth. So why would you put them in the desert? British inventor Charlie Paton has turned the concept on its head to allow farmers in the driest and hottest parts of the world to grow fruit, vegetables and herbs. More extraordinary still, the water piped to the growing plants by his system comes from the sea. “The potential for food growth is practically unlimited,” says Paton. “We can grow crops such as tomatoes, lettuces and cucumbers in places such as Oman or the UAE where it would otherwise not be possible.”
For the process to work efficiently, air must be constantly sucked through the greenhouse. In some locations this requires fans. The technology is most effective in sites by the sea and in hot, dry deserts such as those in North Africa, the Middle East, Australia, Mexico and China. Energy for pumping and fans can be generated using solar power.
Pilot seawater greenhouses have been built in Tenerife, Abu Dhabi and Oman. The most advanced project is at Port Augusta, 200 miles north of Adelaide, Australia. Paton says that tests at the 2,000 m2 greenhouse show the process can match the 80 kg of tomatoes per square metre per year grown in modern agricultural greenhouses in Holland. This site is due to be extended 40-fold this year.
INDOOR GROWING PODS
There's no need for a large plot of land or a spade if you want to grow veggies – a new piece of kit enables anyone to become a smallscale farmer. With the SproutsIO Microfarm there’s not even a need for messy old soil – plants grow in a nutrient mist that wafts over them. The brainchild of Jennifer Broutin Farah, a graduate student at MIT’s Media Lab in the US, she hopes SproutsIO will become a ubiquitous part of the urban scene, with city dwellers growing the likes of tomatoes and potatoes in its planting pods. It would mean that veggies are grown where they are consumed rather than having to be transported hundreds of kilometres.
As well as replacing soil with the nutrient mist – an ‘aeroponic system’ – SproutsIO packs an array of sensors that collect temperature, humidity, pH and light data, adjusting settings automatically to keep plants in tip-top condition. The data is fed to an app, so urban farmers can keep track of their aubergines from their phone or tablet as they sit at their office desk, kilometres away.
“There are lots of benefits to growing plants in an aeroponic environment,” says Broutin Farah. “It uses 98 per cent less water and 60 per cent less fertiliser than soil production, and because it’s indoors, you can grow all year round.” She hopes SproutsIO will soon start popping up in flats and houses. “We’re currently at the prototype stage but our system could be ready in a year.”
ALGAE
How the green slime will become a foodstuff.
Rising oil prices have led to a boom in research into growing algae as a fuel source. But in the future we may be using it to fuel our bodies too. In the hot, semi-arid outskirts of Karratha, Western Australia, are six acre-sized ponds surrounded by 38 smaller satellite ponds, each gently bubbling away. According to Aurora Algae, the US company that owns the site, this is what the future of farming looks like. Aurora Algae is pioneering the cultivation of green slime and says it could help to solve the future food crisis.
There are several points in favour of algae as a foodstuff. Fresh water and fertile farmland are already in short supply, with global demand for water projected to increase by 55 per cent by the middle of the century, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Algae is rich in protein, grows all year round and can be harvested daily. Not only that, it also consumes climate-bothering carbon dioxide. It is already on the market as a foodstuff, albeit a slightly niche one, in the form of green pasta and energy bars.
Paul Brunato, Aurora’s vice president of corporate affairs, concedes that “the mass market may not be quite ready to embrace. ‘whole’ algae as a food source.” He adds that the first commercial applications are likely to be mixing algal powder with other products, including animal feed, to supplement the nutrients including protein, omega-3 essential fatty acids and carbohydrates.
In its six test ponds, Aurora is already producing 30 metric tonnes of dried algae per acre – that’s up to 40 times as much protein per acre compared to soybeans, using one per cent of the water soybeans need. The company expects to be producing on a commercial scale by 2015 at a new facility in New South Wales using 50, five-acre ponds.
While algae grows quickly, growing it commercially is tricky. It absorbs far more light than it can convert into chemical energy, meaning that layers close to the surface quickly block off the light required by those lower down. After a screening program, Aurora selected wild strains that absorb the least light, meaning they can be grown in dense blooms in shallow ponds.
The company is now looking into how best to market it. “We are considering products ranging from protein powder for mixing with other foods and drinks, to protein-rich snack bars, and algal protein flour for baking,” says Brunato.
WHAT HAPPENED TO THE FOOD PILL?
Completely replacing meat and two veg with tablets is impossibly complex.
George, Jane, Judy and Elroy no longer had to bother with cooking and washing up; in the year 2062 they got all the prime rib eye steak, fried chicken and pizza they wanted in the form of a pill. The Jetsons were fictional characters of an animated series, first broadcast in the 1960s, and despite the best efforts of numerous science fiction authors and futurologists, scientists have long dismissed the notion of whole meals in a pill.
There are some formidable barriers. The average British man needs to consume around 2,500 calories a day, while the average daily requirement for women is closer to 2,000 calories. Nutritionists recommend a variety of ratios of different energy sources. UK athletics coach Brian Mackenzie, for example, recommends 57 per cent carbohydrates, 30 per cent fats and 13 per cent protein. Fat, the most concentrated food source, has around nine calories per gram, while carbohydrates and protein contain about four calories per gram.
Large pills weigh around a gram, meaning that using this calorie-source ratio, the average man would need to take at least 521 pills and the average woman 417 pills daily, just to meet their basic energy requirements. This does not include the vitamins, minerals and other key nutrients that play important roles in our diets.
To get enough of these and the other things you need in pill form, you’d have to spend most of your day taking them,” says Marion Nestle, the Paulette Goddard Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies and Public Health at New York University.
It would take a radical breakthrough to bypass these problems. It’s no surprise then that instead of trying to make food redundant, the US military’s research arm DARPA has been funding research that would mean that soldiers would be able to operate for long periods without eating.
In 2004, DARPA offered grants under its ‘Metabolic Dominance’ programme. Its launch document described how the agency wanted to achieve ‘continuous peak physical performance and cognitive function for three to five days, 24 hours per day, without the need for calories’.
Ways to achieve this, according to DARPA, might include making soldiers’ bodies temporarily metabolise their own fat reserves. No such solutions have so far been developed... or at least none have been made public.
ALTERNATIVE MEATS
Can’t wait for artificial flesh? Tuck into these in the meantime
OSTRICH
This bird produces meat with similar protein and iron levels to beef. It also has a tiny fat content of 0.5 per cent – less than half that of chicken breast. Ostrich produce 30 to 60 chicks a year for 40 years, making them a high-yield livestock.
DEER
Thanks to a collective case of ‘Bambi syndrome’, Britain’s deer population is spiralling out of control. According to University of East Anglia scientists, who published a recent survey of the deer population, around 750,000 need to be killed each year to contain the population. “We’re talking about pest control, but it’s also about putting venison on the family table,” said Dr Paul Dolman, who led the survey.
HORSE
Horseburgers may have gone down badly with the public, but they could be a healthier choice. Horsemeat is leaner than beef, pork and lamb, and a study by nutritionists at the University of Milan published earlier this year found that people who ate horse regularly had higher levels of iron and healthy omega-3 fatty acids in their blood and lower levels of cholesterol than a control group. Although relatively poor converters of grass and grain to meat compared to cattle, horses are working animals and meat is a bonus by-product.
By Hannah Devlin and Nic Fleming in "BBC Focus Science and Technology", issue 255, June 2013. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.