Post No. 1 What are we talking about?
When I introduce myself as a food scientist and food researcher there is often a very interested reaction from the people I talk with. I get asked a lot of questions.. What does a food scientist do? Do you know about food safety, allergens or sustainability or pesticides or animal welfare, the list goes on. Do you know about carbon footprint, net zero, sustainability? Do you know what all the strange named ingredients are in my food that I have never heard of? There is a genuine interest in food, what we eat, how it is produced, and what impact that has on our health, our communities, the world we live in.
This book/blog is introduces that conversation about some of these contemporary themes associated with food, what people are saying and where there are contested issues what the evidence is that supports, or does not support each perspective. These issues include concern over how our food consumption decisions affect the climate, increasing levels of non-communicable disease such as obesity, thinking about how what we eat affect our health and the health of our children.
Global meat consumption has doubled in the last thirty years from 154 million tonnes in 1990 to 324 million tonnes in 2020 (1) whilst global population has changed from 5.33 billion to 7.79 billion over that time (2).
Food production is a major contributor to global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and the global population is being urged by many influencers, groups, and governments to change their diets especially to reduce or eliminate their consumption of animal sourced proteins such as meat or dairy products. At the same time in many parts of the world as incomes grow communities are seeking to eat more animal protein.
The calls for this reverse transition describe a move to flexitarianism (reducing meat and dairy products in a particular meal or in what you eat across the week), vegetarianism (excluding all meat products), being a pescatarian (only eat fish) or a vegan where all non-plant based food sources are removed from the diet. In this time of increasing societal focus on food choice including the health implications of consuming excess calories and energy dense food products, reduced consumption and diet restriction of foods or food ingredients that are resource hungry or have high carbon, nitrogen, phosphorous or water footprints, our conversations about food become more important.
This blog is going to consider all this and more, but we are also interested in your questions and thoughts. What do you want to know about? What do you want to find out about your food?
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