IMX Seminar Series - Engineering Food for All

The food system faces global socio-economic challenges. Population growth, environ­mental pollution, climate change and water scarcity put pressure on the agro-food system globally and hence food security and access to nutrient dense food for all are at risk [[i], [ii]].

If larger parts of the global population shift towards plant-based nutrition, the environmental footprint of food and agricultural production will shrink significantly, and public health concerns will reduce. However, this pathway is only viable if consumers accept and can afford healthy plant-based diets on the longer term.

We present challenges related to the sensory unpleasantness of high-protein plant-based nutrition solutions. From the interaction between food and the human perception physiology, we engineer back to product processing, formulation [[iii]].

We also highlight challenges from a process engineering point of view of such formats based on yet not fully characterized and mastered ingredients, when produced on established processing unit operations.

While established processing and manufacturing operations are key for affordability and deployment of products at large scale, the food engineering domain requires innovation. Hence, we present two novel pathways for product formulation and processing:
We illustrate challenges and progress made for the use of gas hydrates as a means concentrate liquid foods as an alternative to thermal concentration which requires high inputs of thermal energy and induces alterations in an otherwise native protein structure [[iv]].

Beyond this we see significant potential in “search driven” discovery approaches, which still require development, as their degree of automation is low, the batch size of each trial is big, and analytical methods are slow, as will be shown in our contribution [[v], [vi]].

The use of robotics, high-throughput assays, artificial intelligence will significantly accelerate this approach and open new opportunities for discovery and development of new nutrient-rich and affordable products.

[i] World Economic Forum: Meat: the Future series, Alternative Proteins, 2019
[ii] World Economic Forum: Innovation with a Purpose: The role of technology innovation in accelerating food systems transformation, 2018
[iii] Assad-Bustillos M., Cázares-Godoy A., Devezeaux de Lavergne M., Hartmann C., Schmitt C., Windhab E., Assessment of the interactions between pea and salivary proteins and their possible role in astringency perception, Innovative Food Science and Emerging Technologies, Volume 83, January 2023, 103290
[iv] Sutter R M, Meunier V, Ruiz S, Doebelin J, Milo M, Rauh C, Hartmann C: Process-Controlled Gas Hydrate Formation in Coffee Solutions for the Application of Cold Concentration, Innovative Food Science and Emerging Technologies, Volume 96, August 2024, 103748
[v] Becker D, Schmitt C, Bovetto L, Rauh C, McHardy C, Hartmann C, Optimization of complex food formulations using robotics and active learning, Innovative Food Science and Emerging Technologies, Volume 83, January 2023, 103232
[vi] D'Oria G; Bredie W. L. P.; Hartmann C.; Limbach H. J. ; Gunes D. Z., Ahrné L. Designing gel coatings for oral soft perception of fiber particles, Food Hydrocolloids, 2024

Bio: Christoph holds a degree in mechanical engineering and a PhD in Computational Fluid Dynamics. After his PhD studies, he worked in the automotive industry developing computational mechanics methods for car-crash and occupant safety simulation. In 1998 he started at Technische Universität München, where he pioneered computational engineering methods in food processing, biomechanics and life sciences. He was appointed Associate Professor at Technische Universität München in 2004, and full professor at the German University in Cairo in 2005.

Christoph joined Nestlé in 2006, doing research on the biophysics of in-mouth food breakdown. From 2012, he set up the Nestlé Food Safety Institute in Beijing, and, in 2016, took over the Consumer Science department in Nestlé Research. Since October 2018, Christoph leads Academic Alliances and Expertise Development. He has global responsibility for strategic academic partnerships, internal expert networks, and subject matter expert career development.

In Nov 2019, he was appointed Honorary Professor for Food Process Engineering at the Institute of Food Technology and Food Chemistry of Technische Universität Berlin. In this role, Christoph is active as lecturer and scientist and pursues own research projects in the area of food materials and digitalization.