Food Scientists Will Become the Next Food Celebs

There is no doubt that the next generation of our food supply will have more science than ever.

They may well be coming from silicon valley or academia, but there is no doubt that the next generation of our food supply will have more science than ever as we move from farms to labs and we engineer our foods to be more tasty, healthy, sustainable and nutritious. 

Funding for the research and trials to accomplish these innovations, according to a report on Gizmodo, is important and while some food scientists are finding it difficult to attract funding, there are others like E. Allen Foegeding, professor at the North Carolina State Department of Food, Bioprocessing and Nutrition Sciences, who told Gizmodo—he noted that the fields of sustainability, microbiology and food safety have seen lots of attention. 

One issue is that federal agencies like NIH, NSF, and USDA and private funding sources supporting food science research in the United States don’t have a shared stated goal or direction. 

Federal funding—taxpayer money—goes mainly to nutritional, agricultural and food safety research, leaving a void for those interested in innovation.   

Which has opened a huge opportunity for private funding in Silicon Valley to change our food supply. Kimbal Musk has repeatedly told his northern California peers that the food opportunity is at least ten times larger than that of software – and food is where they should be putting their efforts and money. And much of that is going into cellular agriculture for meats, milk and chicken. 

The downside of this all is that when funding for these types of innovation are funded by the government or in academia they become public and the information is shared. Not so from our friends in Silicon Valley.