Flavoured lettuce? The future of food is changing

A SALAD without the fat laden dressing, where the flavour has already been engineered into the food. Impossible, or a thing of the future?

GM foods

CAN YOU imagine a Caesar salad without the fat laden dressing, where the flavour has already been engineered into the lettuce?

The future of food is changing.

With consumer demand for minimally processed, fresh-like food, it is inevitable that food ingredient innovation will step up to meet our demands.

Evidence of the change to our food is already at our local supermarket, with new seemingly higher quality ingredients already available. Additive and preservative free, natural salt and sugar alternatives, sustainable proteins and microbiologically safe foods are already here and we can thank science for providing them.

Whilst a lab scientist may not conjure up the same feelings as a farmer surrounded by sprawling fields of crops and cattle, welcoming technological advances including genetically modified foods to achieve a long-term sustainable future may be our best option.

Why do we need GM foods?

New research by the CSIRO has predicted that we will only be able to feed our projected population until 2050. Competition for land use from mining, urbanisation, forestry and conservation are expected to play a part in reducing production between now and then.

Their solution? Australian farmers must explore new technologies including new crop varieties, both conventional and genetically modified (GM), in order to maintain our future production at existing levels.

And the Federal Government is listening - they have asked States to review their positions on GM crops by the end of 2014.

Are GM foods safe?

The green wave that has been responsible for an explosion in community fruit and vegetable gardens shows no sign of stopping - and neither do concerns over GM foods and food security.

But award winning British author and respected environmental campaigner Mark Lynas, a former sceptic of GM, believes that modern technology does not equal more risk.

"You are more likely to get hit by an asteroid than get hurt by GM food" he said.

Mr Lynas believes that major international deregulation is needed: "People have got their sense of risk back to front" he said.

Despite fears regarding the unknown environmental, economic and health risks associated with GM, such foods have the potential to help cure disease and fight poverty.

The World Health Organisation reports that Vitamin A deficiency is the leading cause of preventable blindness in children, especially in developing countries across Africa and South-East Asia. By embracing GM, scientists could engineer a Vitamin A enhanced grain that could cure blindness in these developing countries.

The Food & Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations estimates that in 2010, the number of undernourished people in the world was 925 million. But if crops are able to be grown in extreme climates from the largest hot desert in Northern Africa to the sub-zero temperatures of the Antarctic, it may assist in combating poverty and disease.

Whilst continued support of our local and national agricultural industries is paramount, accepting science as a means to achieving a long-term sustainable future may be our only viable option, particularly as a means to combat disease and poverty.

Like it or not, it's coming.