Lab-grown foie gras, edible insects and 3D-printed chocolate are among the food innovations likely to reach the UK public within 15 years, experts have said.
A new report by the Food Standards Agency (FSA) and Food Standards Scotland (FSS) highlights the innovative food technologies that are most likely to transform UK plates by 2035 – and the steps they take to make sure they are safe.
Among the technologies that could arrive on British plates soon are foods grown from animal and plant cells in a lab, such as steak, chicken and duck foie gras, with two products already being risk-assessed by regulators and others preparing for the process.
Edible insects can be sold as whole insects or used as ingredients such as powders added to familiar foods, with four species already on sale in the UK for food or animal feed, under temporary arrangements while they undergo safety assessments.
The FSA said allergen proteins in crustaceans can also be found in edible insects, which means people with a shellfish allergy could have a similar reaction to eating bug products – making it one of the things that needs to be considered as part of safety assessment for the novel foods.
Another food innovation that is already here and becoming increasingly mainstream is “vertical farming”, growing plants such lettuce in highly-controlled indoor spaces, with nutrients delivered precisely, to provide crops all year round.
Further off in the future the UK could see technologies which use plants as tiny factories to produce specific food ingredients, and “gas fermentation” which uses microbes to convert captured carbon dioxide into single-cell proteins for use in food.
The report also looks at “largely conceptual innovations” such as 3D-printed foods, which would allow manufacturers to build foods such as chocolate or mashed potato out of layering edible ingredients from a printer – though these are not expected to reach a broad market in the next five to 10 years.
But such technology could help create personalised foods, for example for people who have difficulty swallowing for medical reasons, the experts said.
Dr Thomas Vincent, deputy director of innovation at the FSA, said: “The food system is always evolving, and as a regulator, we need to keep pace with that and keep pace with the industry so that we can help ensure that new products are safe.”
He said there was a need to ensure new production methods meet food safety and hygiene standards, allergies are considered as part of safety assessments, and nutrition and diet are considered – so if a lab-grown food is replacing meat it provides what consumers would expect nutritionally.
And amid concern about the long-term health impacts of ultra-processed foods that are already commonly consumed, Dr Vincent said safety assessments looked not just at what the products are made of, but also how they are made, “what is the production process and is it safe”.
“What we do is a really thorough, holistic safety assessment that looks at things like allergenicity, but also at toxicology, at microbial contamination of foods.
“It looks at acute risks, so things that might happen once you eat food, but also at chronic risks, so there’s longer term potential risks, and that includes things like carcinogens, for example,” he said.
