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NATURALLY HEALTHY www.gourmetnews.com n MARCH 2018 n GOURMET NEWS N H 8 4 Food Values, Technological Innovations, Savvy Consumers Will Power Major U.S. Food and Nutrition Trends Food waste, digital and online innovations, and consumer values are expected to drive some of the major food and nutrition trends in 2018, according to the International Food Information Council (IFIC) Foundation. "The rise of the connected consumer and technological advances will help redraw the food landscape in 2018," said Joseph Clay- ton, Chief Executive Officer of the IFIC Foundation. "As our values move to the fore- front in our decisions about what to purchase and consume, we will find a marketplace that is enhanced by innovation and is more aligned with our individual needs and de- sires." Drawing from its in-house survey research and health professional expertise, along with other data and observations, the IFIC Foun- dation has identified several hot topics: Waste Not, Want Not By some estimates, about 40 percent of food produced for our consumption never reaches a human stomach. IFIC Foundation research suggests that food waste is both an educa- tional challenge and opportunity among con- sumers that more players in the food system appear poised to embrace, with food purvey- ors stepping up their own commitments to address the problem. Growing awareness and concern about sustainability in general and the impacts of food waste in particular — environmental, economic, humanitarian — are indicative of broader interest in food values. Seafood sustainability is a specific area of concern, as consumers better appreciate the health benefits of seafood but also want it to be produced responsibly and sustainably. Virtual Shopping an Increasing Reality While the food sector as a whole notes rela- tively modest gains year over year, business is booming online. There are more ways than ever before to buy groceries. New players and familiar retailers are rushing to meet the demand. Vertical integration and consolida- tion, along with the startup culture and a strong economy, will yield new choices and added convenience for consumers. Some of the key trends include more di- versity and continued evolution in home-de- livered meal kits; the use of connected, voice-controlled digital assistants to facilitate consumer decisions and purchases; the in- creasing speed of food deliveries with a wider variety of options from packaged to perishable; and even recipes on demand. Blockchain Promises Total Transparency "Blockchain" is an emerging buzzword in the digital realm. The technology leverages data to improve business efficiencies and supply chains, and it holds great promise for the food system, especially food safety. Harvard Business Review calls it a "foun- dational technology" that is poised to remake many of our financial and social transactions and industries. Blockchain will help give consumers unprecedented information about where their food comes from. Nutrigenomics: The Impacts of Food at the Molecular Level Nutrigenomics, broadly speaking, studies how our diets influence our genes. A grow- ing body of evidence and scientific interest in the field have put us on the brink of revo- lutionary advances in personalized nutrition. Nutrigenomics has begun giving us an- swers about why people respond differently to different diets — especially why some people and not others become obese — which are factors that have long bedeviled nutrition research. New insights will help improve the quality of future scientific stud- ies – not to mention the quality of our diets and health. Flavor Savorers Take a Walk on the Wild Side Taste has been the top driver of Americans' food purchases for the entire history of the IFIC Foundation's annual Food and Health Survey. In 2018, our palates will be treated to ever more exotic and esoteric options. Restaurants and retailers in urban areas in particular are seeing the proliferation of choices from areas in the world where taste is abundant but Americans' familiarity is lacking. As social media and our daily lives become more and more inextricable, expect to see your friends and family chasing the "next big thing" when it comes to flavors. Less Is More: Clean Labels and Clean Packaging While the clean label movement will reach new heights, the food system will continue to grapple with exactly what the term means and how it will affect claims being made about foods. In a possible backlash to label clutter, in- cluding the proliferation of certifications, as well as marketing and health claims, some food producers are developing minimalist packaging to help set them apart and reduce consumer confusion. Warming Planet Threatens Food Supply By Lorrie Baumann Climate change is real – the uncertainty among scientists is no longer about whether the Earth is warming but about what's going to happen as a result. Climate change is con- sidered to be a threat to livestock production worldwide due to potential impacts on the quality of feed and forage crops, water avail- ability, livestock diseases and the effects of heat on animal metabolism that could mean smaller animals that are more expensive to raise. "Among climate scientists, there's a very strong consensus that not only is the climate changing but that the changes we are seeing go beyond what could be expected through natural activity alone," said James Hurrell, Director of the National Center for Atmos- pheric Research, in Boulder, Colorado. "I think it is a very serious issue that we have to take into account in our planning in many different ways." Scientists have been discussing the effects of human activity on our planet's climate since as far back as 1896, when Swedish physical chemist Svante August Arrhenius began publishing papers discussing his the- ories about the importance of carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas and the potential for in- dustrially produced CO 2 to warm the atmos- phere. In 1958, oceanographer Charles David Keeling noted increases in atmospheric CO 2 , documenting that CO 2 concentrations have increased nearly 40 percent since preindus- trial times. "We know that it's due to human activity by measuring the the isotopic signa- ture of the CO 2 ," Hurrell said. "This is not a topic we're discussing about something that's going to happen in the future. We are witnessing this. We are beginning to experi- ence the impacts.... It's us. The changes we are seeing are going beyond the realm of nat- ural changes." Scientists around the world are in wide- spread agreement that climate change is oc- curring, it's having effects on the planet that can be observed, and it's primarily caused by the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation. The amount of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere is at its highest concentration in at least 800,000 years, according to analyses of air bubbles that were frozen into the ice at polar ice caps that long ago. While CO 2 lev- els do fluctuate naturally, particularly during ice ages, they hadn't exceeded 300 parts of CO 2 per million parts of air until recently. The current level is nearly 400 parts per mil- lion. "We've experienced 10,000 years of normal change just in the last century. By the end of this century, we could be almost 900 parts per million if we kept on with business as usual," Hurrell said. "This is something that's new, and the question is how is the planet going to respond to such a rapid change in greenhouse gases." As the climate changes, animal scientists are expecting it to affect livestock animals and the grasslands that provide their forage. One easily understood effect is that as the temperature goes up, animals need to drink more water. Livestock watering already ac- counts for about 8 percent of human water use around the world, and the expected in- crease in temperature has been predicted to increase animal water consumption by a fac- tor of two to three. Temperature creates other stresses on livestock that can result in re- duced feed intake and alterations in physio- logical functions that dictate how well they'll gain weight and how well they'll reproduce. Texas A&M PhD student Jeff Martin has been studying bison fossils and what they can tell us about how the size of the animals is affected by temperature differences in their environment. Bison have lived in North America for about 200,000 years, and meas- urements of their bones indicate that bison living in cooler climates tend to be larger than those living in warmer areas, partly be- cause bison require specific temperatures to optimize their ability to digest the grasses they eat, according to Martin. In addition, calves developing in utero feel the effects of climate even before they're born, as their mothers' bodies combat heat stress. This causes the calves to be smaller at the time that they're weaned, and these changes may stay with them throughout their lives. "Arti- ficial selection practiced by ranchers would affect this, but these animals that you're try- ing to get bigger might not be able to sustain that growth. Energy to dissipate heat has a cost," Martin said. "It may not even matter what you try to do as you select to get bigger and better." "As temperatures get higher, the bison get smaller," Martin said. For every degree of global temperature increase, bison lose about 129 pounds per animal. "What we can pre- dict now is a smaller bison throughout North America," he said. The United States livestock industry is al- ready losing between $1.69 and $2.36 billion due to heat stress, with about half of this oc- curring in the dairy industry. Since the best milkers are the most sensitive to heat stress, when heat stress goes up, milk production declines. This is true in goats and sheep as well as in cows. Poultry is also susceptible to heat stress, which reduces body weight gain, feed intake and carcass weight. Heat stress on laying hens compromises egg production by caus- ing reduced feed intake and interrupted ovu- lation. Even that doesn't take into account the ex- pected effects of climate change on the feed that's available to these animals. Increases in the amount of carbon dioxide in the air are expected to affect how the plants grow in fields, with different plant species reacting differently. Scientists have found that some plants grown in atmospheres with elevated carbon dioxide levels produce less protein and can provide less iron and zinc. That, in turn, will change the nutrition that's available to the animals, including humans, that feed on them. We can also expect to see falling crop yields in many areas, particularly in devel- oping regions, according to Hurrell. Weed growth is promoted and herbicides lose ef- fectiveness as carbon dioxide levels increase, creating more problems with weeds, diseases and insects. All of this means that global warming is a threat to our world food supply, although there's a lot of uncertainty about how serious a problem this is going to be, and it's very clear that some parts of the world are going to feel it more than others. While production of cereal grains is expected to increase in the world's higher latitudes as a result of increas- ing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, giving North American and Russian farmers an economic boost, food production in tropi- cal countries is expected to decline. Globally, the potential for food production is expected to increase with a temperature increase that's only about 2 to 6 or so degrees Fahrenheit, but if the temperature increases more than that, food production is expected to decline. Those numbers will be affected by changes in weather patterns due to climate change, such as increased frequency and intensity of droughts and flooding, according to the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which has also noted that food insecurity would be further increased by the loss of cultivated land and fisheries nurs- ery areas through coastal erosion and flood- water inundation in low-lying areas.

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