Insects : the sustainable and delicious food of today.

An excerpt from a 2017 TEDx talk: “Food to Feed the World”.

I’m lucky that I have the opportunity to travel quite regularly. For both business and pleasure, I have visited some of the greatest cities in the world. But one thing I notice every time that I travel to these cities, is that they seem to begetting bigger and bigger…and bigger.

It is estimated that by 2050 there will be over 9 billion people living on the earth — that is 2 billion more than today!

Cities across the globe are growing upward and outward in an effort to accommodate more businesses and homeowners. Sprawling cityscapes demand extra land for construction and these growing populations demand greater sources of food production. In fact, by 2050 we will need to increase food production by an estimated 60 percent. But land for agricultural use is depleting, and quickly. It is becoming increasingly hard to source natural, sustainable food, particularly in concrete jungles such as the cities we build and inhabit today.

By the end of this century, the average global sea level is expected to rise 7–23 inches. While 7–23 inches does not sound significant, you may want to consider that half of the world’s population lives within 37 miles of the sea while three-quarters of all large cities are located on the coast, according to the United Nations. Sea levels are in fact rising three- to four-times faster along parts of the United States’ East Coast than they are globally.

Unfortunately, the meat and dairy industries are one of the biggest drivers of pollution and climate change. As countries like China grow wealthier and adopt more of a Western diet, the demand for meat is expected to increase rapidly, putting even more strain on the environment.

Furthermore, in a world that is driven by capitalism, our lives have become extremely fast paced. Our environment and careers require us to move at an alarming speed. We rely upon, and seek out, convenient options to help us get through the day. Convenience, often, in the form of highly processed and fast-foods.

Scientific and medial studies show that processed food can significantly increase your chances of developing heart disease, obesity, and type II diabetes.

Scariest of all, traces of additives and toxins that are often used in cleaning solutions such as Sodium bisulfite are often detected in processed foods! We’re putting this inside our bodies and back into the environment — a pretty scary thought, don’t you think.

Simply put, for Western society to sustain and progress we need to find and create better, more viable models of food production. Our society requires new answers to the “wicked problems” we are all faced with such as population overgrowth, climate change, and poor health & well being.

In 2013, the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations) published a report entitled Edible Insects. The report set out to assess the viability of insects as a global food supply to end world hunger in the face of these global issues.

When I first learned about the term ‘entomophagy’, meaning the practice of eating insects, I simply couldn’t imagine myself or anyone I knew for that matter chomping down on a plate of crickets or mealworm any time soon. Insects, to me, were creatures of the earth, of damp dark corners! They didn’t belong on my plate, never-mind in my mouth. But considering all of these looming, wicked problems, I was curious…so I continued to research.

Surprisingly, the FAO Edible Insects report revealed that:

1. Edible insects improve and sustain many local diets due to the high nutritional values found in many species.
2. Western society is not averse to edible insects. Although insects are treated as ‘novel’ food types in the West, they are still accessible.
3. Edible insects provide new business opportunities in the mini-livestock sector and so they can enable economic growth.

If we look even closer we can also learn that insects convert organic waste such as grass, leaves, legumes, fruit pulp, and vegetables into edible protein. Meaning less food waste, packaging and antibiotics or hormones often used in traditional farming production. Insects release far fewer greenhouse gases, too. A pound of protein from mealworm has a greenhouse gas footprint 1% as large as a pound of protein from cattle.

Insects, including crickets, grasshoppers and mealworm are high in protein, calcium, iron and low in saturated fats. They are healthy for you!

If you visit Cambodia, Thailand, South America or parts of China will find street vendors roasting, frying and selling tasty insects to locals and tourists alike. Edible insects are part of many diets across the world. In fact, over 2 billion people worldwide eat them every day.

Insects can be consumed in a myriad of ways but when it comes to edible bugs, people’s initial thoughts and reactions are often psychologically driven. The visual component — actually seeing the insect in its entirety (wings included!) as something you can eat — can be so powerful, but not always in a positive way.

Cricket powder is a fun, accessible and healthy way to win this mind-over-matter battle. Gram for gram/pound for pound, insects can provide similar and sometimes more protein than beef, pork, chicken. We need protein — it’s an essential compound to our diet. And here we have it in the form of cricket powder. It’s a natural, versatile alternative to meat that can be used to bake bread and cookies, to make pasta and chips or protein shakes.

There is a movement happening across mainland Europe and America today. Startups in the food and innovation industry are launching energy bars, pasta and other food products, in an effort to introduce insects as part of our daily diet.

Believe it or not, insects are regularly served to adventurous, curious gourmands in fine-dining restaurants all across the world. For example, Alex Atala, head chef of D.O.M fine-dining restaurant in Sao Paulo, serves up raw ants in one of his dishes featured in the Netflix series Chefs Table. Yum.

Edible insects have, for hundreds of years, provided billions of individuals across Asia, Africa and South America with a rich source of protein, iron and calcium. However, when we look at Western Society — who are responsible for urban development, mass deforestation, food production, industrialisation, pollution — we are somehow behind with adopting this food source. But we have a responsibility to pay attention and consider these facts and alternatives. The onus is on us to make a positive change.

Not only are insects scientifically proven to provide the nutrients we need as part of our daily diets, they also provide us with opportunities in food innovation and development — an opportunity to improve economies in rural and urban areas around the world.

In the end, if we all work together to overcome the cultural taboos associated with insects as food, we would collectively help to create a healthier society and happier planet. Sounds good, right? So why not start that journey together and #eatbugs!

Lara Hanlon is a Designer at IBM Design (most of the time) and a passionate insects-as-food advocate at éntomo (the rest of the time). You can view Lara’s latest TEDx talk in full here.

Food to Feed the World was originally published in foodofthefuture on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Humans evolved to eat meat — we don’t have those pointy little canines for nothing. However, many people nowadays choose vegetarian diets, including an estimated 12 percent of Millennials in the United States. There are multiple reasons people choose this lifestyle, including the support of animal rights causes and the reduction of environmental footprints. It may be surprising to learn that consumption of meat is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. According to the Washington Post, “Global livestock contributes an estimated 14.5 percent to annual greenhouse gas emissions. In raw numbers, that’s more than emissions from every car, train, ship and airplane combined.”

“Global livestock contributes an estimated 14.5 percent to annual greenhouse gas emissions.”

Yet some people just can’t give meat up. And that’s okay. However, if you’re going to continue to enjoy sizzling hamburgers and roasted chickens, you may want to know more about what your options for meat products are and where they come from. The more sustainable products are not only better for your health — they also taste better. The same goes for egg and dairy products. This will be more expensive than purchasing non-sustainable farm animal products, so you may want to consume less but better quality meat, dairy products and eggs.

If there’s one meat to cut back on, it should be red meat.

There are several ways that raising livestock contributes to global warming. Cows, for instance, release methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Even though methane does not stay in the atmosphere as long as other greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide (CO2), it’s still a big part of climate change. For this reason, if there’s one meat to cut back on, it should be red meat. The Washington Post has written that, “Pigs and poultry contribute only 10 percent of total livestock emissions.” Additionally, one-third of the world’s land is devoted to the raising or feeding of livestock. Much of the land devoted to livestock has been clear-cut and is absent of trees to create grazing pastures for cattle. This speeds up climate change because trees take in CO2, which is a long-lasting greenhouse gas. With fewer trees in the world, more CO2 gets into the atmosphere, which raises global temperatures. According to Farm Forward, “The chair of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports that the best and fastest way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is to reduce meat consumption.”

“The chair of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports that the best and fastest way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is to reduce meat consumption.”

Animal rights abuses are another critical problem within the food industry. According to the environmental organization Friends of the Earth, industrial farms often keep their animals in cramped conditions and inject them with synthetic hormones and routine antibiotics. They do this so the animals don’t get sick from the unsanitary conditions and also to quicken growth. As a matter of fact, 80 percent of antibiotics sold in the U.S. go to farmed animals, most of which live in filthy and cramped conditions — a regular occurrence that makes bacteria resistant to antibiotics and contributes to the emergence of drug-resistant superbugs.

According to the website BuyingPoultry, egg-laying hens have the worst conditions of all the livestock animals as they “have less than a sheet of paper on which to spend their entire lives.” Not only is that an animal rights violation — it’s unsanitary. Use BuyingPoultry’s helpful search engine to find local, sustainable chicken products near you.

It’s difficult to know which meat, dairy or egg products in the supermarket come from well-treated animals because many of the phrases on packaging — such as “free range/roaming” or “natural” — can be deceiving. Just because the packaging has those phrases on it does not mean the animals enjoy a high-welfare life. Recommended terminology to look for in the supermarket includes words like “grass-fed” and “pasture-raised,” which indicate better standards of living for the animals. While the U.S. Food and Drug Administration provides some oversight for label claims, third-party verified standards provide greater assurance that the claims being made are robust. You can find those verifications in the form of stickers or seals. The “Animal Welfare Approved” seal or the “Global Animal Partnership” (tiers 4, 5 or 5+) are important to look out for. Recently, President Obama signed the DARK Act, which allows industrial food and chemical companies to withhold the labeling of certain GMOs in food products. This is just another example of how little American consumers know about the food that goes into their mouths. For more information on different food labels and seals, so that you are cognizant of where your food comes from, click here.

Many of the phrases on packaging — such as “free range/roaming” or “natural” — can be deceiving.

For the greatest assurance that the meat you buy matches your values, get to know local farmers and ranchers who raise their animals on pasture and do not use routine antibiotics or synthetic hormones. You might be able to buy their products directly and find them at farmers’ markets or at stores like Whole Foods.

Don’t forget that as a consumer, you have the ability to demand better products of your local supermarket or butcher shop. Ask questions: “Are any of the meats sold here organic or sustainably-raised? Are they from local farms?” If the answer you receive is “no,” ask that they start to carry those types of meat products.

Don’t forget that as a consumer, you have the ability to demand better products of your local supermarket or butcher shop.

And remember, the most impactful action you can take to better the environment is to reduce your meat consumption. Animal products are unbelievably resource intensive — even if they are sustainably raised! Friends of the Earth U.S. lists some of the global problems related to the meat industry as, “deforestation, habitat destruction, water scarcity, climate change, water pollution, diet-related disease, antibiotic resistance, intolerable animal cruelty and more.” Even if you cannot imagine living without meat, attempt Meatless Mondays which would not only be better for your health — it would also benefit the Earth! Besides, the less meat you eat, the better quality meat you can afford to eat.

The most impactful action you can take to better the environment is to reduce your meat consumption.

Things to consider the next time you hit the meat aisle was originally published in foodofthefuture on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Ava Winery is creating a “synthetic” wine without grapes, yeast, or fermentation. We analyze the molecular profile of wines and recreate them from their molecular components. You can read more about how we’re hacking wine.

Artisanal. Hand-crafted. Gluten-free. Organic. These are the indispensable buzzwords of the foodie marketer. The best marketing campaigns get you to pay as much as possible for as little as possible. It’s time to be intellectually honest about the organic movement. It’s not about nutrition. It’s not about objective quality (yes, an artisanal brand won… but Dunkin’ Donuts took 2nd). And no, gluten probably has no effect* on you whatsoever. We’re paying for mythology.

Cultural lag is the phenomenon where social adoption trails technological innovation. This lag causes friction, but that friction doesn’t last forever. If history teaches us anything, it’s that those who bet against technological innovation lose. The beauty of mythology is that it changes when a new, compelling narrative emerges.

Today we’re on the cusp of significant technological breakthroughs in food production the likes of which have never been seen before. It took humanity nearly 10,000 years of agriculture to develop many of the crops and animal herds we consume today. It took only a few centuries to develop the farming tools that have culminated in large-scale, efficient mechanized farming. And it only took decades to marry science with food allowing us to directly manipulate the genetic constructs of our food.

The next frontier is our ability to produce food from its molecular components and replace the need for resource-intensive, often unethical food-growing practices. These “synthetic” foods aren’t just possible, they’re inevitable.

*Of course, a small percentage of the population are sensitive to gluten.

The veggie burger problem

Diehard meat-eaters aren’t sticking to their guns because they love the thought of tortured animal flesh. If a perfect replica of meat were available on the market at a price point equal to or less than natural meat, it’s hard to believe that industrialized animal farming would continue.

Food technology has a credibility problem, and rightly so. Food replacements, like veggie burgers, simply can’t match the quality of their natural counterparts… yet. In parallel, the flavor industry has long suffered the stigma of only existing to help make unpalatable foods passable. True widespread adoption of a technology requires that the innovation surpass its replacement.

Many of today’s food technology startups — Hampton Creek, Clara Foods, Memphis Meats, Muufrii, Gelzen, New Wave Foods — are targeting their niches in recognition of the veggie burger problem. As these technologies come online, the quality of available replicas will increase and the costs will decrease. Adoption will rise as the public sees the cost, sustainability, and ethical benefits of engineered foods.

Wine is the beginning

Wine seems like an odd bedfellow of the food technology revolution. Synthetic wine won’t solve hunger and it won’t end animal suffering. Still, there are strong reasons for using wine to build momentum and credibility for food engineering.

• Wine is technologically low-hanging fruit. We’ll be able to rapidly bring products to market that not only match but surpass the quality of their natural counterparts.
• Wine has deep cultural significance and a high perception of complexity. People are willing to pay a premium for great wine, which makes the unit economics work from day one and creates a strong platform for future products.

Because wine is so widely distributed and fast-growing in markets like China where sustainability and transparency are hot-button issues, wine is a perfect opportunity to gain momentum in the food tech revolution.

But it doesn’t end with wine

Land, water, and energy are increasingly precious. If we don’t resolve the increasing demand and decreasing supply of these resources, our descendants will fight wars over their control. Having total control over the molecular construct of our food will have widespread positive impacts on the food chain. If we and our descendants play our cards right, I see a future where any food we want is available at a moment’s notice at the touch of a button. It’s the ultimate manifestation of the locavore movement.

But adopting these technologies will not only benefit future generations — they’ll impact us today.

Transparency

Scarcely an item in the grocery store is unadulterated. In wine, there is a long list of additives winemakers can use without any labeling. Even in the produce section we’re not free of processing. Ethylene is used to ripen fruit in storage. Pesticides are used on farms. Food is wasted en masse so that we can have picture-perfect fruits year-round that get dumped as soon as they start going bad.

Food companies try desperately to hide what they do because the organic food industry’s propaganda against the health and safety of food engineering has been very powerful. The irony is that safety of all of these processing methods is empirical — food engineering has been happening for years without any notable detriment to our health (fast food and high-calorie foods are another issue entirely).

Soylent grabbed the bull by the horns and has been completely transparent about their formulations and the presence of GMOs. In fact they advocate for GMOs, as any scientifically-literate company should. If Ava is successful in its mission to bring synthetic wine to the masses, brands like Soylent and Ava will show the rest of the food industry that it’s not scary to be transparent about what happens to our food.

Sustainability

We estimate our wine can be produced using 50 to 100 times less water than natural wine. It will probably be much less energy intensive as well. Lab-grown meats will dramatically reduce the environmental impact of animal farming and suffering. Efficiency begets sustainability, and the efficiency of synthetic foods is undeniable. If you have a problem with overuse of the freshwater supply, if you have a problem with the global transportation of food from growing regions to consumption regions, and if you have a problem with modern slavery, then you should love synthetic foods. Organic foods don’t solve any of these problems.

Safety

I get this question a lot. How safe is our product? Answer: as safe or safer than the natural counterparts. In what soil were the grapes grown? With what pesticides? In the vicinity of what industrial pollutants? Even if the plants are free of these contaminants, there are still risks associated with natural production. Botulism is both perfectly natural and lethal. Listeria is a problem of insufficient food engineering, not over-engineering. There are many compounds found in natural wine that are toxic and/or carcinogenic. We have little incentive to add them. When we deconstruct food to its molecular components and reassemble it molecule by molecule, we have the luxury of not adding some components that pose a risk to human health.

Price

Making cheaper wine isn’t about cheap booze. It’s about proving that products that are highly resource- and labor-intensive can be produced with a fraction of the resources at a fraction of the cost — safely, reliably, and ethically. Global food security requires us to solve the cost problem for the future. I can’t reveal just how cheap we can make our wine (partly because we don’t even know yet until the formulas are finalized) but I can say that we’ll be able to undercut the vast majority of the wine industry on production cost from day one.

Flexibility

There are two flexibility problems in the food industry and particularly with wine. Grape vines take years to grow, which means wineries have to make very long-term forecasts about planting. Every year, farmers are at the mercy of both the climate and the market. Synthetic foods will allow us to produce what foods are needed, when they’re needed, in the quantities needed.

The second flexibility problem is the product itself. In wine, being at the mercy of the crop and fermentation means an entire year’s worth of work can go down the drain (literally) if the conditions are poor. Some bad vintages are just unsalvageable. But even when a vintage isn’t an abomination, it’s rarely perfect. Wineries often have to work hard to alter their products to keep them tasting consistently. Like Sisyphus, they must roll the boulder of quality back up the hill year after year. Synthetic foods allow us to have infinite control over texture, flavor, and aroma. They offer us infinite scalability and infinite reproducibility. We’ll only ever change the product to make it better than the previous version.

Is the timing right?

Modern food and flavor engineering have been around for decades. Yet manufacturers are terrified of admitting this to the public because most of the applications have been to make bad food better. And the thing is… it does make the food better. These methods have demonstrable benefits and are empirically safe. What they lack is transparency and someone willing to step up and take these methods to their ultimate conclusion: that we can not only improve imperfect foods but we can make foods entirely synthetically.

Betting against the organic movement is undoubtedly crazy. The path to progress is littered with the dreams of those who had the right insights at the wrong times. But at the same time, the biggest winners make their bets when nobody else is willing to make them. As millennials become more scientifically literate, the merits of synthetic foods will be acknowledged and become a staple of the human diet.

The future of food is synthetic. was originally published in foodofthefuture on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In November of last year I resolved to attempt vegetarianism for a second time. My previous effort had been as an angsty teenager. Dismayed by the killing of innocent animals for food, I announced my intentions to my parents and embarked on what was to be almost 2 years of refried beans, Quorn mince, Linda McCartney sausages and of course lots of vegetables. My mother tells me I was very determined but after a 24-hour charity wake-a-thon I came home to the smell of spiced chicken and the other members of my well-rested family licking their fingers and devouring the crispy, well-done thighs of some unfortunate bird. I caved, HARD.

In the succeeding years, food became something of a passion. I come from a multi-cultural, multi-faith background. Family gatherings have always centred around food, and the running joke was that the minute we would all sit down to eat, conversation would inevitably turn to what we would be eating the following day. Vegetarians are well-catered for in the Hindu faith and many of my favourite meals growing up could be described as plant-based. While Ireland is not renowned for its culinary culture, in the years since the bottom dropped out of the Celtic Tiger, the country has been undergoing its own food revolution. During the recession, bleak austerity policies curtailed household spending but inexplicably, small independent cafés, delis and restaurants began to spring up and thrive on every street corner and in many of the empty retail units dotted throughout the capital. Smart marketing made affordable casual dining a reality. There were pop-ups and retreats, street feasts and festivals and neighbourhood food initiatives. Even today the appetite for our expanding food culture (excuse the pun) shows little sign of slowing down.

At the same time, concerns about our ever-growing global population and climate change have come a long way since Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. Serious questions are being asked about the rise in resource-intensive global beef production and the practices therein. Intermittently over the past 30 years, the agriculture industry has been — quite literally — plagued with disease: swine flu, avian flu, BSE and foot-and-mouth disease have caused economic losses and in some cases led to human infection. Factory farming conditions have come under intense scrutiny and the practice of using high levels of antibiotics on livestock has contributed to building antibiotic resistance in both animals and humans.

All this added up to an impending sense of urgency, on my behalf, to make some small effort to reduce my contribution to our stressed eco-system and prompted my second attempt at cultivating more principled eating habits. Being a firm believer in the power-of-one I made a new year’s resolution to cut meat from my diet. My resolve was strengthened by one thing, a proviso. The all-or-nothing premise would not work for me. My new lifestyle had a get-out clause allowing me to indulge the meateater within on the occasion of going to a restaurant. Not an everyday or every-week scenario, maybe a monthly extravagance — or less … But could I really call myself a vegetarian?

I’m not alone in this lifestyle change and while it’s not a modern phenomenon, there are some new buzzwords that satisfy our hashtag culture and appease the vegetarian and vegan groups that would not want a sometime-meateater counted among their number. Was I a flexitarian? The implication that I was merely flexible about when I ate meat didn’t seem to embody the struggle and the principles upon which my new diet was founded. Reducetarian failed to cut-it either nor does it elegantly roll off the tongue. Climatarian seemed a better fit. According to Biba Hartigan co-founder of the London-based Climates, a climatarian diet strictly speaking only involves cutting out beef and lamb, but to me it could equally refer to someone who considers the threat of climate change a factor in their daily eating habits. Maybe I’m just a really flexible, meat-reducing climatarian! That said, I probably won’t be bandying the term around my local pub for fear of rolled eyes, barely-stifled snorts and sheer ridicule.

Insects are considered to contain equal — and in some cases — more protein and less fat than conventional meats

All things considered then, how should I feel about entomophagy? While having long been common practice in some Asian and South-American countries, eating insects is now being touted as the way forward for western diets. I was first introduced to the concept when I encountered éntomo, a new food perspective and online resource that seeks to promote insects as a sustainable and exciting global food source. The evidence put forward for entomophagy is encouraging. Considered to contain equal — and in some cases — more protein and less fat than conventional meats, insects also thrive in what would be considered poor farming conditions for agricultural animals. In an article entitled “Crickets vs. chicken? We’re missing the point” by Daniel Imre Situnayake it’s claimed that crickets need less space, prefer heat (which as a colony they can generate for themselves) and as natural recyclers they can live primarily on food waste. They require no antibiotics or pesticides and Situnyake goes on to describe how flexibility in location, ease of harvesting and the benefits of the by-product “frass” as a fertiliser are compelling arguments for crickets as a sustainable crop. What’s not to love? The much-evidenced claim of insects being a sustainable global food source should fit in nicely with my newly-acquired soapbox. However, I have found that I’m re-discovering my original aversion to eating animals, perhaps because of the agenda put forward on the vegetarian and vegan food blogs I have started to follow in search of recipes and adorable pig videos. Many people who follow plant-based diets do so because they don’t believe in killing sentient beings for food but is veganism the answer? In an essay entitled “Bugging the Strict Vegan” author Bob Fischer suggests that even the strictest plant-based diet may not be as ethical as its proponents might have hoped. He argues that for all its good intentions, the harm caused to definitely and probably conscious beings in plant production, i.e. those creatures that we know to be or are probably sentient — field mice, voles, rabbits, toads and songbirds —compromises the argument of the ‘least harm’ principle of the strict vegan diet. He proposes that because we have no clear evidence of sentience in insects that a diet based on bugs — the perhaps conscious — trumps the plant-based diet that definitely causes harm to the aforementioned definitely conscious and probably conscious beings. It’s food for thought and may well satisfy the qualms of a flexi-reducey-climatarian.

Studies investigating whether invertebrates can experience pain in anything like the human understanding of the word have yet to yield conclusive proof. ‘Pain and Suffering in Invertebrates’ by Robert W. Elwood (Professor of Animal Behaviour at the School of Biological Sciences, Queen’s University Belfast) looks at the distinction between nociception (“the neural processes of encoding and processing noxious stimuli”) and pain experience, defined in humans as “an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage.” Some invertebrates display behaviours analogous to human responses to noxious stimuli. They may tend to the site of a bodily injury or learn to avoid the source of the stimulus. Some undergo physiological change responses, others withdraw protectively. While one researcher felt confident to say that fish feel pain but invertebrates do not, Elwood claims to be hesitant to share his confidence. He concludes the essay by recommending that it should be considered a possibility that at least some invertebrates might suffer pain and as a precaution these animals should be subject to humane standards of care.

So perhaps until we know further, it’s best to progress with these considerations in mind. The question remains: can a balance be found that benefits the human global population while showing due care to the other living species with which we share the planet? For my part I intend to continue my endeavours to eat more responsibly and if that means entrusting my future meal plans to a bunch of science guys, then so be it!

Winner winner, cricket dinner was originally published in foodofthefuture on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Introducing The Moley Robotic Kitchen Chef

What do we do?

Imagine dishes from top Michelin-starred restaurants, cooked by a master chef in your own kitchen — whenever you want.

Moley Robotics has created the world’s first fully-automated and integrated intelligent cooking robot. It learns recipes, prepares and cooks them and clears up after itself. It’s like having every master chef in the world on hand in your kitchen, ready to cook fabulous dishes at your command.

Our plan is to offer a digital library of recipes from around the world.

Your Moley will create dishes for you or even teach you how to make them. You can share your own favourite recipes with Moley, too. Consumers and professional chefs alike will be able to demonstrate, share and sell their own recipes via the digital library platform.

Select your menu remotely, then let Moley take over — so you can arrive home to a delicious meal that’s exactly what you want, when you want it, cooked to perfection. Hassle-free and effortless. All you have to do is enjoy.

Peers, professionals and consumers voted the Moley Robotic Kitchen ‘Best of the Best’ at the Consumer Electronics Show in Shanghai in May 2015, beating the likes of Audi, IBM and Samsung. Moley has been heralded in the press, too. From March 2015 to January 2016, Moley was featured in many media outlets including The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg News, CNN and the BBC. In just 10 days in January 2016, one clip about Moley on Business Insider received over 6.5 million hits.

Who created this and why?

Moley Robotics was founded in 2014 by London-based computer scientist, robotics and healthcare innovator Dr. Mark Oleynik. Mark Oleynik is the CEO of the company. Moley has delivered a successful prototype and is now commencing work on developing a production model for launch in 2018.

The company’s aim is to produce technologies that address basic human needs and improve day-to-day quality of life. The Robotic Kitchen is its first product.

‘How can I have any delicious food at home that I want at any time? That’s how I’ve invented the Moley robotic kitchen,’ says Mark Oleynik.

Moley Robotics Kitchen is supplied complete with appliances, cabinetry, safety features, computing and robotics.

What is the technology behind Moley Robotics?

Two highly complex, fully articulated hands comprise the kitchen’s enabling technology. With ability to faithfully reproduce the movements of a human hand, they give the Kitchen the capability to cook anything a human chef can. This goes to the heart of the design philosophy underpinning this technology.

The Moley Robotic Kitchen does not cook like a machine — it captures human skill in motion.

Tim Anderson, culinary innovator and winner of the prestigious BBC Master Chef competition (2011) played an integral role in the kitchen’s development. He first developed a dish that would test the systems capabilities — a crab bisque — and was then 3-D recorded in a special studio cooking it. Every motion and nuance was captured, from the way Tim stirred the liquids to the way he controlled the temperature of the hob. His actions were then translated into digital movement using bespoke algorithms created with the collaboration between Moley and teams from Shadow Robotics (UK), Universities of Stanford (USA) and The Sant ‘Anna School of Advanced Studies Pisa (Italy). The robot doesn’t just cook like Tim — in terms of skill, technique and execution it is Tim producing the dish.

This motion-capture technique will be used to generate an ever-growing digital library of recipes for the Moley Kitchen to cook. User-friendly motion-capture and translation systems will allow consumers and professionals alike to record and share their recipes on an a digital library across multiple markets.

This will not only provide fantastic utility for the users, it will actively promote interest in high quality food and international cuisine.

As The Economist newspaper commentated: “the service…will let a user select not only a dish but also its creator — in effect bringing a virtual version of a celebrity chef into the user’s house to cook it for him.”

The recorded recipe can be cooked by robotic kitchen an unlimited amount of times, featuring a ‘human IP’ that can be transmitted through the generations. As Mark Oleynik says: “Imagine your grandmother’s dish that you love. Now you can have it cooked by the robot anytime you want. And also your great -grand children can watch the ‘grandmother’ preparation and taste the same dish. I think it’s a nice option to save family traditions for the future generations, isn’t it? ”

Once the recipe is chosen, pre-portioned ingredients will be delivered at home, so user will only need to place them onto the special containers in the kitchen for robot to begin cooking.

Ease of use is fundamental to the Moley approach and careful consideration has gone into the ‘human — machine interaction’.

The design, by an international team including Sebastian Conran, DYSEGNO and the Yachtline company, is modern and attractive without being too ‘science fiction’ or unfamiliar. Being modular it can be configured to fit regular kitchen spaces in a wide variety of homes worldwide and the fitments (hob, sink, refrigerator, dishwasher) are of professional quality.

The robot chef moves at human speed, rather than that of a machine. This helps users connect with and enjoy the system: it does not feel like a piece of industrial technology or threatening artificial intelligence.

The kitchen can also be used by human cooks when required — with the robotic arms folding away out of sight to present a clean, ergonomic workspace with utensils shaped for a human hand. The system can even be used as a teaching aid — showing users how to prepare a recipe far more effectively than a book or video.

As the Moley Kitchen cooks perfectly every time, food waste will be reduced and, by providing a viable alternative to ready meals, it could also reduce our dependence on pre-packaged food: highly manufactured items requiring a great deal of energy intensive processing, packaging and transport.

How big is the market?

The Moley Robotic Kitchen is designed to be a mass-market proposition.

By 2021, the company hopes to sell Moley for $35,000 — comparable to average sums spent on kitchen refurbishment.

This creates a potential market of 5,95 million homes in 17 countries. Moley has been approached by some of the world’s biggest property developers, keen to install the technology in the homes they are building, which will accelerate the early adoption process. Major restaurant chains, hotels and airline catering firms have also expressed great interest in the Kitchen — presenting further opportunities to embed and develop robot technology.

What is the plan for the future?

First of all, read here what our CEO Mark Oleynik says about the nearest future. We’re making 2% shares in Moley Robotics available to the public, via the Seedrs crowd funding site. Second, a series of funding rounds are planned over the next two years to complete the technology programme, prepare for launch and accelerate roll-out. $3.5M has already been invested by the founder, his family and friends, together with partner participation with in-kind investment and development.

“It is not just a labour-saving device — it is a platform for our creativity. It can even teach us how to become better cooks”, says Mark Oleynik, Founder & CEO.

How can you get involved?

This part is easy. You are already following us on Medium, right? Sign up to our newsletter to read all the latest company news. Explore our website. As we mentioned above, check out our upcoming crowd funding campaign on Seedrs.com. Become a member of our growing community. Follow us on Twitter, talk to us on Facebook and LinkedIn.

Finally, if you have any questions or you would like to write a nice note, send it to info@moley.com.

Subscribe to Moley Robotics newsletter

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed it, hit that heart button below so more people would discover Moley Robotics and join the kitchen revolution.

Who Are Moley Robotics and Why We Will Change Your Future was originally published in foodofthefuture on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

It turns out that because our produce has to navigate a complicated supply chain and travel thousands of miles to get to us, there are consequences to it’s taste and nutrition. Farmers have to select crops for hardiness instead of taste and nutrition, then the crops are picked well before they’re ripe so they can survive the trip, and then they’re refrigerated until they’re put on the shelves for sale. All of this results in produce that looks great but tastes essentially like nothing. And this is not even mentioning the emissions required for transport.

So it’s easy to just say, well I’ll eat local. And, in concept, this is fantastic, but once you start trying to do it you’ll realize how hard it is. Not only because trying to find local produce can be difficult, but it requires you to eat seasonally which, living in Canada, is essentially impossible.

But at least we produce things like strawberries and tomatoes in greenhouses in the winter, right? Well, yes, but the majority of greenhouse gas emissions come from the production of food, and the reality is that it’s often better for the environment to import tomatoes from Mexico than produce them here during the winter.

So needless to say, it’s complicated. But I’m someone who likes to make informed decisions and likes to know the impact of their actions, so I decided to go a little deeper. I quickly realized that this is just the tip of the iceberg. Our food system is a fucking mess.

After learning this little lesson about our fruits and vegetables, I took the logical turn to meat. Doing this made my research into reducing my environmental impact through fruits and vegetables seem completely trivial. By only shifting the consumption of one day of red meat per week over to vegetables, you have the same impact as buying all of your fruits and vegetables from local producers. Livestock and their byproducts are responsible for 51% of all greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. To put this in perspective, transportation exhaust is at 13%. We hear so much about the benefit and need for hybrid and electric vehicles, yet it’s impact on the environment is a quarter of our livestock production, which we hear very little about. Weird eh?

Then comes the water consumption, the precious resource that we owe all of life on earth to. Agriculture is responsible for 80–90% of US water consumption, and a whopping 70% of this consumption is to grow feed crops for livestock. And the problem with this is that animals, especially cows, consume a huge amount of calories and protein to produce a small amount of calories and protein for our consumption. In other terms, animals are extremely inefficient meat machines. If we redirected some of this animal feed into human food, we would have more than enough to feed the almost 1 billion that are undernourished.

So world hunger has nothing to do with scarcity, but everything to do with poverty and inequality. We’re wealthy enough to be able to convert lots of calories and protein in the form of corn into a few calories and protein of animal meat, because we prefer it that way. It’s a nice position to be in but I think we can do better.

I’m sure the animals would be on board with a reduction in our meat consumption. I don’t want to get too much into the animal abuse that occurs in the industry, but trust me when I say that it’s widespread and extremely fucked up. If you’re interested in learning more about it, which you should be if you eat meat, read this book. Or head to youtube and look up factory farming. But I warn you, you’ll be wishing you didn’t.

But animal abuse is just the start of it. There is widespread use of antibiotics in livestock production which is threatening our ability to use them and is creating antibiotic-resistant superbugs. There is the spreading of contagious diseases because of livestock population densities at factory farms which are threatening our health. Air and drinking water is compromised in communities around the country due to pollution caused by poor manure control techniques. The issues go on and on.

I wish I could say that having everybody go vegetarian, or vegan, would solve all of our problems but that’s definitely not the case. It would be a significant improvement, but fruit and vegetable production also has some huge issues. Here are a few of them. Due to our use of monoculture (single crop) farming techniques, we are losing huge amounts of the topsoil we rely on for food. This results in us having to use increasingly more fertilizers and pesticides, which in turn further degrades the soil. This leaves us with crops that have half of the amount of micronutrients that they use to have, resulting in us having nutrient deficiencies that lead to a variety of health issues. And if that’s not enough, while the soil is being washed away it carries huge quantities of agrochemicals that pollute the drinking water of many communities around the country and is creating a huge dead-zone in the gulf of Mexico.

As well, massive deforestation, to the tune of 22 million hectares, is taking place in the Amazon and other South American ecosystems to make room for the production of soy. This is killing and displacing huge populations of wild animals and harming nearby communities. This was also the case with wheat production across the US and Canada, and is the same situation with many other crops around the world that we rely on.

So the earth and it’s ecosystem makes a huge sacrifice to feed our growing population and growing diets, yet we throw half of it away. Huh? Can you believe that close to half of all the food produced in the world is wasted? We go through all this trouble and destruction to produce food, and then we throw half of it away. That’s fucked up.

And this is honestly just the beginning. The consequences of our food system seem to continue infinitely. This is not sustainable. Feeding 7 billion people obviously isn’t an easy task, but if we don’t clean this up feeding 10 billion in a couple of decades will be an impossible one.

Yet for some reason we just don’t hear about these issues. Our food system is constantly ignored in talks about climate change. And that’s exactly the problem.

The only way this is going to change is through consumer awareness. We need to start demanding food that is free of toxic bacteria, drugs, and chemicals. We need to start demanding that livestock are treated ethically with attention to their well-being. We need to demand that plant breeding is done to improve taste and nutrition, instead of focusing on looks and hardiness. We need to start thinking about our food again.

We have become so disconnected with our food to the point where many see eating as something that gets in the way. It’s not something we think or care about like the previous generations. It almost seems like it competes with our other past times for attention. And as a result, is competing with our other purchases for our money.

North America spends the lowest percentage of their income on food of any other country in the world. It’s supposed to be one of the most important aspects of our lives and something we take great pleasure in, however, most of us head into the grocery store looking to spend as little money as possible. This started because of subsidies helping farmers produce calories as cheaply as possible, but it has become our expectation for food. It has made us think that food is food. If I can buy a frozen meal for $3, why should I cook a meal with raw ingredients for $5?

The problem is that these calories are terrible for us. The reason these foods are cheap, is because the costs are externalized. We’re paying for them in all the issues I described above, with the inclusion of diet-related chronic diseases and brutal labor conditions I failed to mention. This is the food system we get when we try to spend as little as possible.

All of this is why I opted-out and started producing some of my own food. I wanted to see if I could do it, and how much I could grow. I wanted to see whether relying on this system was the only option. I wanted to do it to teach people to think about what they’re eating and where it’s coming from, and to not take it for granted.

So I’ve built a hydroponic system (there will be a post coming about it) so I can grow some of my food year round in my Montreal apartment. It isn’t going to solve any of these problems, but it’s a commitment to being conscious about what I’m putting in my body and the impact that it’s having on the rest of the world.

It has also had some unintended consequences. I’ve always felt some kind of disconnect from nature while living in cities. However, I also love urban life and definitely don’t want to go back to living in the country. This has proved to be a great way to reconnect the dots.

This was just my foot into the door of the food system and I understand that it’s not for everyone. But there is something that everyone can do, and it’s so important. Shop at farmers markets if it’s possible and buy organic food if you have the means. But at the very least, avoid the middle aisle of the grocery store and cook your own food. Your body, mind, and the earth will thank you.

Why I Started Growing My Own Food was originally published in foodofthefuture on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This past May, I spent more days in a Ram 1500 pickup on dirt roads than in my apartment. I had the incredible opportunity to traverse the American heartland for just over two weeks, seeking out interesting stories from some of America’s most progressive farmers. Since I moved to California just about a year ago, my view of the endless acres of black soil and satellite-straight rows of corn and soybeans has changed, but not in the way I expected.

Farming in the Midwest: farming for the farmer’s market as scuba diving : sky diving. Same basic direction, but otherwise, literally different elements.

We live in an Instagram-ready, organic cold-pressed hemp milk age. To us, the word “farm” brings to mind a rustic (yet modern) retreat where a cornucopia of lusciously crisp fruit and vegetables are picked daily by weathered hands (body optional) and perfectly clean eggs are laid in perfectly clean straw in reclaimed wood barns with just enough dust in the air to create a flawless #nofilter “eggstra” special post.

After making my way from Iowa, through Minnesota, over to North Dakota, down through South Dakota and Nebraska, and back (stopping off in Illinois and Montana in between), I can safely say that the idyllic, pastoral daydream we cling to (and pay for) bears no resemblance to farming in the heartland. Or, frankly, to most farming, anywhere.

There is a number of reasons, I think, that this is true.

1. Farming isn’t growing fruits and vegetables.

Obviously, some farming is growing fruits and vegetables. But consider your local grocery store. When we walk into the produce section (which is probably 1/5th or so of the store) 90% of what we can see was likely grown in either Florida, California, or abroad. California and Florida combined make up less than 1% of total US cropland. Thus, most farmers are not vegetable farmers. The vast majority of farmers are grain farmers- they grow corn, soybeans, wheat, or barley, which makes sense when we consider that grain is what makes up much of the other 4/5ths of the grocery store.

It also makes sense because most of the US (and the world) simply isn’t fit for growing many of the fruits and vegetables we expect to be continuously available. Not only do fresh fruits and vegetables require warm weather, ample sunlight, and limited wind and pest exposure, they also require hand-picking which, in talking to farmers who couldn’t even find one hired man in their area to bring on part-time, is a laughable idea. Which brings me to:

2. Farming isn't done by hand. 

I probably wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for tractors. I wish that was true because my parents had some awesome, tractor-based love story. But the reality is that tractors, sprayers, combines, and other farm machinery are the reason why the human race can scrape enough calories out of the dirt to feed billions of people. On our new age Insta-farms, we like hands. We like to think that our food passes only from plant to human to our mouths. If a human handled it, we think, it must be more wholesome, more nutritious, more real.

In the Midwest, that idea is comical. Mostly because it is so clearly a lie. Unless those soil-dusted, hard-working hands are your own, pulling the produce from the plant yourself and putting it directly in your mouth sans wash, it touches plenty of machines before it gets to you. Our produce is sorted by sorting machines, stored in refrigerators, transported in trucks, preserved with wax, bathed in special lighting and displayed on brand new checkered table clothes in roughed up wood baskets to make us feel like it was always just water, soil, sunshine, and hands. But farming in the 21st century, real farming, requires machines. And more importantly for not going out of business while farming in the 21st century requires very savvy and strategic use of machines. Which brings us to:

3. Farming is not forgiving.

The Ugly Fruit Movement has made farming vegetables more forgiving. Being an organic farmer makes farming more forgiving. Being a farmer who works or earns some kind of off-farm income makes farming more forgiving. Being a farmer who could be happy pursuing other things makes farming more forgiving.

Being a commodity farmer, particularly a commodity grain farmer in 2016, is not forgiving. A few million dollars on a farmer’s balance sheet (that’s money they’re personally liable for) might net a farmer $50,000.00 in a good year. While producing a commodity good that sells for the same price today that it did in the ’80s (not adjusted for inflation, the dollar-for-dollar same price), farmers pay a premium for the world’s most advanced mechanical and biological technologies, without which they will certainly go out of business. But by using these technologies and pursuing growth (a natural endeavor for small businesses), they are brutally criticized, both nationally and locally. Why? Because they’re moving farther and farther away from our fantasy farm, and their actions look more and more like those of a rational business entity. We don’t want our food grown by rational people. WE JUST WANT DISEMBODIED HANDS THAT HAVE TOUCHED DIRT.

Which brings us to the final isn’t:

4. Farming is not a choice.

I asked every farmer I met what he would do if he wasn’t a farmer.

Out of 23 farmers, not a single one could think of anything they would have rather done with their lives. Not a single one had ever even thought about it. Not even once.

All this is to say that it’s easy to sit in my favorite Bay Area cafe and bemoan our broken food system and discuss putting an end to Corn-porate Farming and bringing our local, bio-dynamic, community-supported farming way of life to the Midwest. But in reality, this is a false dichotomy. Conventional farming and farm-to-table farming exist separately and for very different reasons. They don’t even really compete.

I think part of our farm-to-table fantasy involves a tipping point beyond which the sheer gravity of urban gardens and artisan prosciutto butcheries will overwhelm the centuries-old traditions of American agriculture and the problems; soil degradation, nitrogen leeching, food deserts, obesity, etc., will magically fix themselves. As much as I want to believe in the power of soil-kissed hands, I think we might also need alternative strategies.

We need to empower farmers, the farmers who farm the vast majority of our country, to make improvements that respect the very real economic and social constraints that they face. It’ll take our finest technology, potentially a few more machines, and undoubtedly a large number of very smart brains. And maybe, just maybe, we can zoom our iPhone cameras out a little bit from those glorious, dirty hands, and remember that there’s a person attached. The hands can remind us that farming isn’t just about food.

It’s about people.

Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed this, a click on the green heart below would be wonderful. Looking forward to comments from disagreers! Then, you might enjoy exploring what exactly it means to be a farmer/person. @sarah_k_mock

Farmers are People too

What Farming Isn’t was originally published in foodofthefuture on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

With a blogpost series for the jovoto creative community, I will explore the trends, characters, materials, settings, and methods that shape our way of consuming and purchasing food.

To kick off the series, in 5 Innovative Food Companies You Should Know About I am going to dissect the food marketplaces around the globe to highlight five innovative food companies and projects, including an app for food exchange, a biodegradable product, edible cutleries, a pop-up installation, and a web-based platform for community building.

5 Innovative Food Companies You Should Know About

The CowGum From The Slagerij de Hamvraag

The CowGum is a creative marketing strategy to draw attention to the opening of Slagerij de Hamvraag, a temporary conceptual butchery in Den Bosch, the Netherlands, launched by a team of multidisciplinary professionals that focus on improving the food system. The butchery doesn’t sell meat but includes questions about meat in their offering to raise awareness about the excessive consumption of meat, which negatively impacts not only the animals but also the environment and humans.

The CowGum, specially produced as a limited edition line of about 200, is a chewing gum with meat flavors, but without any animal ingredients. Unfortunately not for sale, the CowGum seems to make Willy Wonka’s dream of flavored chewing gums come true.

Why you should follow it: This concept is a symbolic way to address meat production issues in a clever and creative way. Whilst only being a temporary concept, this pop-up sets the ground for a democratic discussion about the issue.

PlateCulture

PlateCulture is a web-based platform that connects people who love cooking and hosting dinners with others who enjoy eating authentic home-cooked meals. Founded in 2013, the idea came about when founder Reda Stare spent a year travelling through Southeast Asia and India. In Kerala, where she had been invited to a traditional dinner, she had the chance to witness the South Indian culture from the inside out for the first time. Longing to provide similarly unique experiences to more people, she decided to create PlateCulture. Ever since its establishment, the community has grown from one country to 25, becoming very popular in Asia.

Why you should follow it: PlateCulture starts from understanding and sharing culture and has the potential to become “the AirBnB of food”, though it is in need of an improved interface.

Agar Plasticity Project by the AMAM Design Group

The winner of this year’s LEXUS Design Award, the AMAM Design Group, explores marine algae as an environmentally friendly alternative to plastic for packaging materials.

The team researched seaweed-derived agar, which is traditionally consumed as food in Japan, and used worldwide in scientific and medical applications, to use as packaging material. Agar is extracted by first boiling red algae and then dehydrating the mixture, which can then be frozen or compressed depending on the desired results.

After being used, agar products can be disposed of in an environmentally friendly way. It can serve to improve the water retention property of soil, and, should it reach oceans, it would not harm marine life.

Why you should follow it: It is a bold and ambitious project which aims to address one of the biggest pollution problems of our time: plastic waste. It also calls for multidisciplinary contributions from international researchers and professionals.

OLIO

OLIO is a free app which connects neighbours with each other and with local food businesses so surplus food can be shared and not thrown away. To make food available, one just needs to open the app, add a photo, description, price (if applicable), and when and where the item is available for pick-up.

The concept originated — as often is the case — out of founder Tessa Cook’s needs. On her moving day back to the UK, she found herself with some perfectly good food that she didn’t want to throw away. Unable to find somebody who could be interested, she wondered why there couldn’t be an app to exchange or sell it on. Despite being advised by many to abandon the idea, when she talked to friend Saasha Celestial-One, Saasha loved it and decided to pursue this adventure with Tessa. For now, food can only be added in the UK and Ireland, but the app is rapidly launching internationally.

Why you should follow it: This super easy app addressing the major issue of food waste by having a community approach to technology, is becoming very popular and starting a food revolution that builds on a more sustainable food future.

Eat Your Spoon by Bakeys

The future of eco-friendly utensils company Bakeys recently managed to successfully fund a Kickstarter campaign for their product line “Eat your Spoon”, the future of eco-friendly utensils. Raising $278,874, getting well over 10x the funding goal of $20,000 4.17 million spoons to be produced!), demonstrating an extensive interest and enthusiasm for the groundbreaking product line.

With the mission of starting a cutlery revolution aimed at combating both plastic and compostable cutlery waste, Bakeys is launching the world’s first edible cutlery line made of three flours: rice, wheat, and sorghum. The line is fully vegan, preservative free, trans fat free, dairy free, and fair trade.

Why you should follow it: It is not only an intelligent concept but is also maintaining its responsibility towards the environment.

Selecting only five was a hard job, as the food-related startup world has never been more prolific than today. One thing is for sure: quality is high, inspiration is everywhere, and opportunities are endless.

5 Innovative Food Companies You Should Know About was commissioned by jovoto and originally published on May, 10th 2016 on jovoto blog.

The future of food and drinks is now! was originally published in foodofthefuture on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

There was once a time, in the early part of the Twentieth Century, when companies could develop a technology, make a product out of it, and then go sell it. It didn’t matter much what their customers thought of it, as customers just didn’t have that many choices to choose from. So long as it mostly met a need, it got bought. As Henry Ford famously said, “you can have it in any color you want, so long as it is black.” And so it was that the marketplace was characterized by a few undifferentiated products that all more or less worked the same. The world was awash in a sea of black cars. The balance of power lay squarely with the producers. It was an era of indifference.

But then things changed. After World War II, competition, especially global competition, entered markets, and with it, many more choices. Suddenly, the balance of power began to shift toward the customer, and what customers thought began to matter to producers. Companies began to listen, and at least somewhat care, if for no other reason than their own survival. Those that didn’t listen didn’t survive. It was at this point that the market research industry came into its own. As time went on, companies became increasingly “customer centric”. By the time the 1980s rolled around, the concept of being customer centric was firmly entrenched. The mantra of the day was to listen to the “Voice of the Customer”. And as with all such things, an entire consulting industry sprang up to capture the VOC and promote its awareness. The focus group was in vogue.

This era — from the 1950s to the 1990s — was an era of listening. Unfortunately, it was not an era of thinking… of thinking deeply about the human psychology and motivations involved. It was what I refer to as “the golden age of gullibility”. As we wrapped up the Twentieth Century, and companies continued to rack up market failure after market failure, despite their listening, the evidence was mounting that something was still not right. Fortunately, a new era lay around the corner.

First off, a new wave of thinkers came along and demonstrated — via Outcome-Driven Innovation — that for existing product categories, instead of thinking in terms of demographics, we instead needed to think and talk in terms of jobs, outcomes, and constraints, allowing us to segment markets more effectively according to desired outcomes, which derive primarily from motivations and needs (functional and emotional). This often ended up being quite different from what traditional Voice of the Customer inputs were telling us. All of a sudden we realized that the customer’s voice was not always that reliable. Second, people like Steve Jobs came along and made it clear that, at least for new product categories, there was no basis for an explicit Voice of the Customer. We had to look beyond what customers were saying and doing, as those were rooted in the context of what they already knew. Instead, we had to place our focus on what jobs and outcomes were ultimately desired, as well as the motivations behind those, together with the experiences required to best deliver those outcomes. Combining these insights with emerging market and technology trends, we could then ourselves define what “might be”… something entirely new and different. This is a process known as Discovery-Driven Innovation. As a result, the world got iPods, iTunes, and iPads. This ushered in the era we are now in… an era of looking, listening, feeling, smelling, and tasting — and, most importantly, of thinking deeply about the outcomes people need and the underlying human motivations behind them (the essence of Design Thinking). I call it the “age of considered motivation”.

This all being the case, for at least the past ten years now the tools have existed — together with an understanding of how to use them — to feed an innovation pipeline with high caliber inputs. And yet, the sad fact is that most companies have never availed themselves to this. They continue to feed their innovation pipelines “junk food”… stuff that makes the outcomes flabby and ineffective. In fact, just as often as not, these inputs amount to random guesses.

I am not the first person to say this, and I probably will not be the last, but it doesn’t have to be this way. There are sound discovery methods for getting at the knowledge and insights a company needs to feed its innovation pipeline “health food”… stuff that will make its outcomes fit and effective. Part of the problem is that most MBA programs do not teach these discovery methods, because they do not know the methods. As a result, managers come out of MBA programs no better off than when they went in, in terms of having an ability to discern the right inputs for an innovation pipeline. This means they end up making the wrong investment decisions, putting their money in places where the market is already overserved, and missing many key opportunities in areas where the market is underserved. This is almost “anti-strategic”… their innovation portfolios and product roadmaps are full of things that simply do not matter, or that do more harm than good! Subsequently, their results are less than impressive, and their businesses suffer, falling well behind the market and the competitors who do get this.

So, the message is this… what are you feeding your innovation pipeline… “junk food” or “health food”? Are you using the right discovery tools and methods to uncover the insights you need to make “health food”? Make sure you are. Your customers will thank you. Especially if you happened to ignore their voice.

Anthony Mills is the Founder & CEO of Legacy Innovation Group, a growth strategy and strategic innovation consulting firm.
Learn more at www.legacyinnova.com.

Your Innovation Pipeline — It Is What You Feed It was originally published in foodofthefuture on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

FIVE WAYS WE’RE TRANSFORMING FOOD PRODUCTION

1. Cellular Agriculture

Not as scary as you think. In fact, the majority of lab-grown food is made using technology that we already use for products we consume every day. The most important part of lab-grown eating is that it addresses the need to develop alternative protein sources. Today, we are consuming animal proteins that require 70% of the earth’s total arable land to produce. The processes for producing meat are often inefficient and, at times, unsafe. Taking the pressure off mass production and diversifying our protein consumption has the potential to do right by our health and our environment. With the effort from organizations like New Harvest, the first forays into these products are coming in the forms of lab-grown meat — Modern Meadow, egg protein replacements — Clara Foods, and animal-free gelatin — Gelzen.

2. 3D Farming

Not all of us understand the difference between hydroponics, aeroponics and aquaponics, but technologies pushing each of these growing techniques are producing better and healthier produce in a faster, safer and more efficient way closer to home. Hydroponics is the cultivation of plants without soil in a mineral-rich solution, aeroponics technologies grow plants in air under mists of nutrients, while aquaponics combines hydroponics with aquaculture — the raising of aquatic animals such as fish. When we transform our farms into vertical structures, we reduce the footprints needed to feed our cities. When we bring these farms into our cities, we reduce the footprint of transporting food around the globe. Large-scale operations are steadily coming online fuelled by businesses like EdenWorks and Aerofarms. These technologies not only have the potential to transform how food is grown, but also can be tuned to produce the tastiest of produce.

3. Entomophagy

That’s right. We’re talking about eating insects. Some of the more popular ones are crickets and mealworms, but there thousands to choose from. This isn’t all that new, as people have been eating insects since early humanity, but now we’re realizing that feeding our cities with insect protein has the potential to transform the impact we have on our environment. Crickets require far less feed than traditional protein sources: six times less than cattle, four times less than sheep, and two times less than pigs and chickens. With these benefits, the United Nations has determined insects are an important solution to feeding the planet as our global population increases to 9 billion in 2050. In the meantime, insect farms are growing in the U.S. — particularly in the south — and insect proteins are finding their way into everything from from protein bars by EXO and pasta sauce by One Hop Kitchen, to reimagined tofu by C-fu.

4. 3D Printing

The on-demand printing revolution has definitely put out its fair share of Yoda heads, but just like printing in plastic has found a use in customized product creation and rapid prototyping, printing food is gaining traction. The novelty products were needed for the development of the basic technologies needed to extrude food products into 3D formats producing beautiful sugar structures, impossible chocolate formations, and customized pancakes. Now the technology is positioned to make inroads into nutrient customization, complex product construction, and even transform the way astronauts prepare food in space. We’re looking to companies like BeeHex, Natural Machines and 3D Systems to continue pushing the boundaries in printed food.

5. AgTech

At the end of the day, the majority of our food comes from the earth and farmers need the technologies to allow them to keep pace with the rapidly changing food market. Agriculture is seeing the impact of tech investment with the creation of drones for crop monitoring — senseFly, automated robots for crop maintenance — RowBot and CNC technologies for seeding and addressing individual plants — FarmBot. These technologies combine not only to better inform farmers on the condition of their crops, but also to give them a new generation of automated tools to farm 24/7.

*Get a peek at how food and technology will work together to revolutionize what we eat, how we eat, and where we eat at Food Loves Tech, June 11–12th at the Waterfront in NYC.

On the Future of Food Production was originally published in foodofthefuture on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.