Europe looks to make healthy food taste good, too

Picture courtesy USDOA

Research priorities for Europe’s food industry over the next 15 years were set out in a strategic agenda published last week. The crux of the strategy is to let European consumers have their cake and eat it, by making the most desirable food the healthiest food.

The research priorities for the food sector were drawn under the auspices of the European Technology Platform, Food for Life, which was launched in July 2005 by the Confederation of the Food and Drink Industries of the EU.

The strategy identifies the following research challenges:

• delivering a healthy diet;
  
  
• developing value-added food products that are of superior quality, quick to prepare and cheap; assuring foods are safe;
  
  
• achieving sustainable food production;
  
  
• managing the food chain; and
  
  
• communicating and interacting with consumers.

The overall aim of the Food for Life platform is to develop new production processes and deliver novel and improved food products.

Food quality has an obvious link to personal health, but it is closely linked also to Europe’s economic health – the agri-food industry is the largest manufacturing sector in Europe, with a turnover of €840 million in 2005. The sector processes over 70 per cent of the EU’s agricultural raw materials and employs over 4 million people, the majority in small companies.

But while it may be the biggest, the levels of innovation in the food sector are below the average for manufacturing as a whole.

A number of reasons are identified for this:

• although large, the sector is overwhelmingly made up of SMEs, with few large companies;
  
  
• its products are highly diverse and production methods are based upon craft rather than technology;
  
  
• the production and technology issues faced by the industry are diverse and impact not only on the end product, but also on public health and safety;
  
  
• in general food SMEs do not have R&D functions and do not appreciate the contribution innovation could make to their business;
  
  
• the resources for implementing innovation are restricted; and
  
  
• the timescale by which innovation must show a return on investment is short.

The strategy says the private and public resources available for food research at the national level are insufficient. “A step change in research intensity and investment, together with effective technology transfer, is a pre-requisite for ensuring that the European agri-food sector will remain innovative and competitive.”

For many, there will be a tension – if not a straight contradiction – between the ideal of good wholesome food, and the Food for Life vision of a research-driven industry. But while experience to date may have shown that increased levels of processing and lower costs in general translate into less healthy food, the ambition of the research strategy is to improve public health and overall quality of life.

“The nutritional sciences are now at an important turning point…With the recent advances in genomic and molecular technologies and know-how, a new paradigm is created in the interaction between nutrition and health,” says the research agenda.

“The ability to link the impact of food to health at a cellular level, as well as at a whole body level, creates a new horizon for the food industry and offers benefit to the individual consumer.”