Lund offers good opportunities for food researchers
The food of the future must be enough for more and more people, while the entire food chain needs to leave a smaller climate footprint. A transition in the food sector is not an easy task because there are many parameters to take into account. Several of the speakers at the event Northern Lights on Food “Unlocking the secrets of food” pointed out that the place Lund has many advantages that make it a suitable area to develop food and work with food research. Here are Lund University with LTH, the facilities ACES and MAX IV and a tradition of innovative companies such as Oatly and Proviva.
The major research facilities MAX IV and ESS provide unique opportunities for research on different materials and structures. Within food, there are great opportunities to understand the raw material from the atomic to the macro level, and to develop everything from production and packaging to the sustainable food of the future. During the event, lectures were given on how increased knowledge about the structure of food can lead to new green and sustainable processes that create the food of the future.
Selma Maric made a presentation of MAX IV, which is one of the most powerful synchroton X-ray facilities in the world. MAX IV is a Swedish national infrastructure, but it is open to researchers from all over the world. The plant currently has 16 beam tubes that can be used by both industry and academia, and the plant can use many different technologies. Some beamtubes are funded by and specialized for certain actors, such as the beamtube ForMax in which the forest industry has made a large investment. With the help of the facility, structural and electronic details can be displayed in different materials in 2- and 3D. For example, through scattering techniques we can understand the 3D structure of materials and molecules with resolutions down to atomic details, and through spectroscopic methods understand the electronic structure and chemical state of materials. For researchers, there are great opportunities to get answers to a wide variety of questions — only you know how to formulate the question.
Andrew Jackson from ESS talked about the benefits neutrons can do for food and food technology research. The ESS, which is expected to open to users in 2026 or 2027, takes advantage of the fact that neutrons have properties that make them particularly suitable for certain studies. Neutrons are charge neutral, they have a unique capacity to detect magnetism, and they are sensitive to light elements such as hydrogen and isotopes. The food products available in the store are very complex and through the facility the researchers can focus on different parts of these systems to get an overall picture.
One example is that you can see through metal, which means that we can now become spectators to the process when water is boiled inside a metal coffee pot. You can also explore how to create good packaging that will last longer, examine how plants can adapt to climate change, how to find the perfect air pressure as an alternative to pasteurization for milk protein or remove turbidity to make vegetable drinks look appetizing.
An important but sometimes forgotten aspect in getting people to eat healthier is the taste, which is why Ole Mouritsen spoke from University of Copenhagen about “Science of Taste Drives the Green Transition”. He asked why it is often difficult for citizens to follow national food recommendations — and replied that it may be because the advice does not take into account the taste of food.
Of the five bass flavors sweet, salty, sour, bitter and umami, Ole Mouritsen has mainly been interested in umami and sweetness, which he holds out as keys to creating the food of the future. Umami taste is something that all humans evolutionary/genetically are designed to covet. This gives us the challenge when we need to eat more vegetables, because plants (not the ripe fruits) lack umami. Many of the molecules that are beneficial to us -- such as carbohydrates, protein, fat, water and nucleic acids -- lack flavor. At the same time, a relatively small amount of umami can mean that the taste is significantly improved. Foods with natural umami are, for example, eggs, oysters, air-dried ham, miso, sun-dried tomatoes, walnuts, soy, Parmesan cheese and dried algae. Then there are products that enhance the taste of umami and several classic combinations are based on these pairs, such as eggs and bacon, cheese and ham, and champagne and oysters. Ole Mouritsen wants to use this knowledge to create the food of the future. A green conversion with the help of taste can be done either by adding sweetness and umami to vegetables or by releasing the vegetable's own potential for sweetness and umami by, for example, fermentation with microorganisms or enzymes.
Niklas Norén participated in the panel discussion during the Industry session, RISO, Lena of the Sea, Tetra Pak and Kate Browning, Novozymes. The discussions dealt with the complexity of making the entire food chain more sustainable, so that the business community manages to produce products that are both climate-friendly and that consumers actually want.
Karin Wendin, Professor of Food and Meal Science at Kristianstad University It was titled “How does it taste?” on his presentation. She talked about her research on how we experience food, because it is not only the taste that is important, but also the sight, the smell and sometimes also the sound (how it sounds when we eat) and the feeling (what texture does the food have?). Physically, food should be adapted so that we can chew it, swallow it and break it down, but further challenges can be to work with our behaviors and attitudes.
Also Chris Celania from Exciscope talked around “The Next Generation of X-ray Microimaging” as a complement to the major research facilities.
The meeting was organized by Lund University, SLU, KTH, Aarhus University, University of Copenhagen, Chalmers and RISE together.