Thematic Paper
Food
For this thematic paper we talked to: Bram Bamps, Project Engineer, Packaging Technology Centre/IMOIMOMEC, Hasselt University
Rony Swennen, Professor in Tropical Crop Improvement, University of Leuven
Yves De Bleecker, Coordinator at the Centre of Expertise in Agrotechnology and Bio-technology at VIVES University College
Lien van den Broeck, Project Assistant at the Research Group Food, VIVES University College
Frank De Vlieghere, Head of the Laboratory of Food Microbiology and Food Preservation, Ghent University
Mike Vanderroost, Scientific Coordinator CheckPack-project, Ghent University
Veerle Fievez, Researcher at the Laboratory for Animal Nutrition and Animal Product Quality, Ghent University
Thematic papers Bart Geurden, Researcher and Healthcare Lecturer, Karel De Grote University College
The goal of the thematic papers is to present Flemish scientific research internationally. They focus on fundamental and applied research.
Liesbeth Jacxsens, Researcher Veg-itrade, Ghent University
The thematic papers are published by Research in Flanders, a project run by Flanders Knowledge Area. The project Research in Flanders is funded by the Flemish Government, Department of Foreign
Wouter Meeus, Aquaculture Researcher Aqua-ERF, Odisee University College
Affairs. Flanders Knowledge Area supports, through different projects, the internationalization of higher education in Flanders, Belgium.
Bart Nicolai, Director at the Flanders Centre of Postharvest Technology, University of Leuven
www.researchinflanders.be www.flandersknowledgearea.be -2-
Food
More than just eating The food we eat is under pressure from all sides these days. Despite researchers expecting the demand for food to rise by 70% by 2050, we are still throwing away one third of all the food we produce for human consumption. Climate change will impact on food safety and security, while populations will quickly get older, with 30% of elderly people already undernourished as we speak. Flemish researchers are tackling these issues by designing smart packaging, getting lost food back into the value chain, breeding extinct species of fish again, working on solutions for malnutrition and looking into cows that could produce healthier meat. So Flemish research into food is very eclectic indeed. And although there is of course much more to be told than could fit on these pages, we will be exploring four different themes in this dossier: 1. Food for the Elderly 2. Meat and Fish 3. Food Safety and Security 4. Packaging and Storage
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Food for the elderly -4-
‘And don’t forget to eat properly!’ That’s what grannies all over the world tell their grandchildren, though strangely enough they often struggle with their own diet: research among elderly people in Antwerp showed that 29% is at risk of undernutrition. That portion even increases to 51% on hospitals’ elective surgery wards! With an increasingly ageing population, then, it is important that we find out why this is the case and what we can do about it. ‘There were almost no figures in Belgium about malnutrition among elderly people when I started out,’ says Bart Geurden, Researcher and Healthcare Lecturer at the Karel de Grote University College in Antwerp. This prompted him to start a study with 500 patients on the elective surgery ward, which ended up showing that an astonishing one in two elderly people on the ward were undernourished. And that’s a problem, because after surgery, undernutrition increases the number of infections, slows down the healing process of the surgical wound, increases the chance of relapse and results in higher use of antibiotics. On top of these post-operative disadvantages, malnutrition also reduces someone’s daily resistance against infections, so they become ill more easily, because they haven’t got sufficient reserves. They are not able to move around as easily as they used to, which can in turn lead to social isolation.
‘So we must do something about this,’ he says. ‘GPs and nurses sadly pay too little attention to the issue and it’s difficult for them to accurately assess it.’ Eating alone How do people become undernourished in the world of today? Everything evidently comes down to decreased food intake, but that might have lots of different causes. Say a man is suddenly widowed and he has never seen a cooker before. He won’t start cooking for himself the second his wife has died. Or if he has always been used to eat at a well-stocked table, he won’t start eating an elaborate dinner all alone... And there is also an economic aspect to it all: pensions are low and good food is expensive. Combine all these factors with a decreased sense of taste and smell as we age, and there is a major chance you will be eating less than you should on a regular basis and slowly lose weight until it’s quite obvious. Tackling malnutrition is not easy, however. Just give them more food doesn’t do the trick, unfortunately. Someone is not going to start eating more, simply because you give them more food. So the issue has to be dealt with in another way. Tailoring taste Project assistant at the research group Food at VIVES University College Lien Van den Broeck is a believer of food tailored to the taste of the elderly among us. ‘Businesses approached us asking how they -5-
could adapt their products to the over-65s. They had often tried some things out themselves already, like grinding up their food, but that on its own is not enough. Eating is a complete experience: it’s not only about the nutritional aspect of it. The texture, taste and smell of food products is important too.’ So researchers went to talk to companies and the healthcare sector, and surveyed 2,000 elderly people about their biggest problems and questions to do with food. It soon emerged that senior citizens are not really worrying all that much about ‘healthy food’. Those who live at home would rather make their own food for as long as possible and choose themselves what they would like to eat, which is not always easy, because those who need to be cared for often get food on their plate they have not made or even chosen themselves. Meals on wheels and catering companies often provide fewer choices than the shop. You feel like pasta? Shame, today it’s leek and mash for dinner. Then it’s perfectly normal you don’t feel like eating much. The issue could be tackled in several different ways, like Bart Geurden, who wants to go the way of selective taste steering. ‘You could survey people about what they like in terms of food and then put together a personal taste profile to adjust their meals to.’ Less should be more Lien Van den Broeck’s approaches matters from a different angle: she’d like to change the food itself. Old-
age pensioners don’t feel hungry very easily and feel full more quickly. Still, they need as many vitamins and essential nutrients as you and me. This moved her research group to focus mainly on the mantra less is more: eating less is fine, but what you eat should then contain more nutrients. Food could be enriched with fat, for example, and have added proteins, fibre, calcium, and vitamin D or the texture and taste of it could be changed, like bread with easy-to-eat crusts. For her research Van den Broeck works together with lots of different companies: from the meat industry to bakeries and dairy businesses. ‘We know what the nutritional questions and needs of elderly people are now, but there are still a few technological issues to conquer. The companies making the products should be technologically able to change the texture of a particular product, for example, while keeping it pleasant from a sensory point of view. That’s why our follow-up research focuses on very specific foods, like bread, biscuits, dairy, soup and readymeals.’ The study done by Van den Broeck and her colleagues also showed new products are rarely tested on older target groups, yet it is terribly important to involve them in this, as precisely their experience of taste and smell tends to change. ‘Now we work with tasting panels made up of older people to test new products under development and that’s pretty innovative,’ she says.
Everyone needs to learn Nearly everybody knows about the problem, but they don’t all do as they should or don’t know how to. For this reason, Van den Broeck is contributing to a manual and e-learning course for catering companies, businesses and the healthcare sector. ‘We’d like to hand them practical solutions that tell them what they should do if they notice someone’s undernourished. There’s much too little being done about these people at the moment.’ Mainly nurses notice malnutrition among their patients much too little, finds Bart Geurden, so that should become more important for them. But why nurses and not anyone else? Well, unlike dietitians, they come in contact with all their patients every single day. And if they don’t notice someone is undernourished, then what chance has anyone else got? ‘It’s because the reason why somebody goes to hospital is most often very different,’ he continues. ‘A typical example is an elderly man or woman who is admitted to hospital with a broken hip. In such a case their bad eating habits will only stand out if they’re either very fat or very thin. Of course their broken hip will be treated properly, but they won’t get the nutritional treatment they actually need as well. This is a blind spot in the system, even though the financial impact of malnutrition in Belgium might well be as high as € 400,- million a year!’ Let’s get cracking So what’s the most important advice our researchers have for us? Eat -6-
healthy and varied, and eat enough. The sooner you start, the easier it’ll be later to keep it up. Chronic weight loss or reduced appetite are always a sign that something’s up, so keep an eye on it and go to your doctor early enough. Carers are also in a good position to take action, as they are often the ones who make the food and can see whether it really gets eaten.
Š Veerle Fievez
Meat and fish -7-
Meat and fish are important pillars in our food supply and the way we manage them has a major impact on the environment and the food we eat. This is why scientists are looking for ways to make the meat we eat healthier, or to (re-)introduce old and new species of fish.
Efficient cows
Veerle Fievez of Ghent University examines animal feeds for dairy and beef cattle. She mainly focuses on cows’ digestion processes to improve the quality of their meat and milk and reduce the amount of methane they send into the atmosphere. Healthier end products Strange but true: a cow’s digestion can affect the quality of the meat or milk it produces. Cows break down unsaturated fatty acids into saturated ones in the first of their four stomachs, for instance. That’s a shame, because unsaturated fats are healthier than their saturated cousins, so the question is how to keep the cow from breaking down those unsaturated fats, as this way its meat will become healthier. The answer seems to lie in the food we give our cattle. ‘We did a study with red clover,’ explains Fievez. ‘When cows eat it, they break down fewer unsaturated fatty acids.’ An important bonus of red clover is that it does not compete with food for human consumption, which means it
can grow in places where we can’t plant human food. That’s entirely different to soy, for example, which we give to animals too, but eat at the same time. Fievez and her colleagues are also looking into additives like sunflower and linseed oil that could make our milk healthier. ‘More Omega-3 gets into the milk when farmers mix these oils into their animal feed,’ explains Fievez. ‘They’re doing so already, but they could do it more efficiently. The question is how we can add less oil to the fodder, but still get the same amounts of Omega-3 in our milk. We also investigated if we could use red clover to get more Omega-3 fatty acids into the milk in a natural way.’ Less methane Cows also affect the environment. There are about 300,000 dairy cows in Flanders emitting 500 to 600 litres of the aggressive greenhouse gas methane every day. This is the equivalent of 600,000 small cars driving 15,000 km every year! That’s a lot of greenhouse gasses -8-
and it would be great if we could eliminate them. We can do so by giving our cattle easier-to-digest food or by looking into natural feed additives that shift the microbiological flora in our cows’ stomachs to a population of fewer methane-producing bacteria. That way cows will start producing less methane. ‘We can reduce emissions of the gas by about 10% with this technique,’ says Fievez, ‘but we can do better.’ Babies who were given a course of strong antibiotics during the first months of their lives, have a different microbial flora later in life, for instance. So the question now is whether we could do this with cows as well: could we influence the microbial population of the cows and their calves in the long term? She continues, ‘On the face of it, exploratory research suggests the answer is yes, we can program the microbial flora of a cow at birth, as it were, and impact in a major way on how much methane they’ll emit when they’re fully grown.’
Catering for elite athletes Lastly, the research group is looking into whether they can follow the cow’s wellbeing by the milk she produces. ‘Belgian dairy cows are like elite athletes,’ clarifies Fievez. ‘Through the years they’ve been genetically selected to produce as much milk as possible. They even give so much milk sometimes that they can’t eat enough to keep up and start using their reserves. The cow won’t die from this, but she won’t feel all that well and that will affect her immune system.’ Researchers would now like to develop an easier method of checking up on cow’s wellbeing by assessing certain biological factors in her milk. So there’s a lot going on in the research department when it comes to how our cows are faring, but what about fish?
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Aquaculture in Flanders
Let’s be honest: aquaculture in Flanders isn’t very big. Yet Flanders’ waters have a whole host of interesting inhabitants that could go well on our plate. Think of the European crayfish or burbot, for instance. We don’t see either of them in our regions very often anymore, but Wouter Meeus, aquaculture researcher at Odisee University College and head of Aqua-ERF (Aquaculture Education and Research Facility) would like to do something about exactly that. However, the question is how we can make aquafarming profitable in Flanders. European countries face a lot of competition from Asia, as 50% of all the fish on our plate is farmed and a whopping two thirds of all that reared fish comes from South East Asia. It is difficult to compete with these countries, because they have different working conditions and better environments with large open ponds to breed fish in the first place. On the other hand it’s difficult for the Belgian fishing industry to increase its production. Meeus continues, ‘Don’t get me wrong, we’re still catching more or less the same amounts as we used to, but we need to go ever further and put in more hours to do that.
Aquaculture could be a solution to this problem, or at least contribute in a valuable way.’ Breeding burbot Several Flemish research organisations therefore joined forces a few years ago to give aquaculture in Flanders a push in the right direction. The University of Leuven took the omega bass and is now farming about 200 tonnes a year of it, research organisation Inagro looked at possibilities to do with pike-perch and University College Odisee got going with burbot. ‘It all starts with looking at the breeding process itself,’ clarifies Meeus, who is working with burbot. ‘We only know very little about this fish, because it’s extinct in Flanders and no-one farms it, but once it was an indigenous species that flourished here. It even used to be a staple ingredient of the famous Gentse Waterzooi. So it’s really just a matter of finding out what circumstances it likes best.’ Breeding research starts with questions like ‘How many fish can we put in one tank?’ or ‘What’s the best food and temperature?’ At Odisee they have already jumped that hurdle and are now onto the first small fish of about 5 cm long - 10 -
which they have recently brought from the lab to the farmers who will grow them into fish with a suitable weight to be sold on the market. Sustainable aquafarming? But is farming fish really more sustainable than fishing in the sea? ‘Of course there always are extremes,’ admits Meeus. ‘The one extreme is overfishing, so natural populations can’t keep up. The other is farmed fish that can only be fed with fish meal, which is often and for a large part made of anchovies, caught in Peruvian waters.’ One of the disadvantages of aquaculture is that almost all highend fish, which customers pay the most for, are carnivorous. ‘Burbot are carnivorous too, so you have to feed it with higher amounts of fish meal,’ concedes Meeus. Though this can be improved a lot. For example, salmon used to be fed with a mix containing 50% fish meal. But that has come down to only 20% thanks to a number of innovations. ‘You can’t make a fish herbivorous in one second, but what you can do is adjust the food they eat and make it more sustainable,’ he says. ‘Another factor is the energy and water needed for fishfarming. Whether
that’s sustainable or not depends on where all your energy comes from and how you (re-)use the water.’ Difficult to farm So the most important aspects in terms of breeding are accounted for, but there are still lots of other challenges. Procreation, for example, is not a given for burbot in captivity. The fish only does this when the temperature of the water goes down to 2 to 4 °C and that’s very cold for the microbiological population purifying the water as well as for the energy that’s necessary to cool it down. Meeus continues, ‘To mitigate the issue, we have bred larvae that can procreate at 8 °C.’ Meeus’s special burbot might well be on our plate by next year. Mainly in restaurants, though, as they are prepared to pay the right price for the innovative fish. But is it nice to eat? ‘Yes,’ he says, ‘It’s a nice white fish, firmer than your usual cod. But you don’t have to take me at my word! We asked the tasting panels of the East Flanders Provincial Tasting Centre for Vegetable Growing to do a blind tasting and our burbot came out on top.’
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© Wouter Meeus
Food safety and security - 12 -
How can we make sure there is enough food for everyone if global demand will increase by 70% by 2050? And will we be able to even guarantee that our food will stay safe when climate change starts affecting us as well? These three researchers deal with precisely these questions each in their own way.
Safe food Our food is safe, that’s logical isn’t it? Unfortunately things are not so straightforward. Liesbeth Jacxsens, scientist at Ghent University, was primarily responsible for the computer simulations and risk analyses in the European Veg-i-Trade project which looked into the impact of our climate on food safety. She explains, ‘We studied three things to do with the climate: the impact of flooding on food safety, how increased temperatures affect the growth of fungi during the production of fruit, vegetables and derivative products and the influence this has on the use of pesticides.’
Flooded vegetables More flooding means more polluted water on farmers’ fields and more bacteria like E.coli or salmonella, which can make us ill, attaching themselves to the
vegetables on these fields. That’s mainly a problem for produce we tend to eat raw, like lettuce, tomatoes and bags of ready-to-use vegetables. ‘We joined forces with a partner in Spain to investigate a region where they grow a lot of lettuce,’ explains Jacxsens. ‘The area was flooded during the study, so we were able to take samples and look how long the pollution stayed around for.’ The data showed that a large portion of the bacteria were killed off in 21 days due to the UV light. ‘But that wouldn’t happen in Belgium,’ she muses, ‘as we don’t have enough UV here.’
Shifting the problem The researchers also compared fields in Poland and Spain to see how increased temperatures affect the growth of fungi on tomatoes. Jacxsens explains, ‘Our research shows more fungi will grow as temperatures go up, but not everywhere. Spain will become too hot for fungi, so the problem will just move to a different place.’ A third and last aspect researchers looked at was the impact of increasing temperatures on the use of pesticides, because higher temperatures make it possible for insects to grow several populations in one season, so farmers need to use pesticides more often to protect their crops and harvests. - 13 -
Worst case scenario The most difficult aspect of the Veg-i-Trade study was the fact that climate change predictions are made for the entire planet, while food safety is obviously a micro concern. So the greatest challenge was to couple observations like ‘temperatures will increase by 2°C globally’ with the consequences of that in one specific field in Poland. ‘Our predictions mostly took into account the worst-case scenario,’ Jacxsens clarifies. ‘That’s the one where we don’t change anything at all about our emissions as they are now. We don’t know if that scenario will really play out or not, so the goal is to turn what we know into guidelines that communicate our findings clearly to farmers and other organisations, so they can take action and prepare themselves if necessary.’ Now, whether or not we take action to keep our food safe, one third of everything we produce still ends up on the rubbish heap. It’s clear that with increasing demand, that’s no longer sustainable, so it’s time we did something about it. How, then, can we make use of these losses and keep more food available?
Gone is all the waste
That’s the issue occupying lecturer Yves de Bleecker, co-ordinator at the Centre of Expertise in Agrotechnology and Biotechnology at VIVES University College. ‘There’s something like value preservation,’ he says. ‘Incorporating lost food in things you and I can eat is worth more than sending it off to be processed into animal feed. Companies can also ferment their surplus produced food to get energy out of it. Though if they don’t do that themselves or if there’s a fraction of meat in the process somewhere, they often make a loss.’ It’s all very logical, companies wanting to re-process their surplus food as high up in the value preservation chain as possible. Hence why researchers at VIVES University College are firm believers of re-using food for human consumption. There are decidedly great advantages to this: losses are more profitable that way, so companies will want
to invest more readily into new techniques.
We all do it We often discard food, because ‘it doesn’t look good’. It might look a bit strange, of course, but that doesn’t mean we can’t eat it. Other food is lost, because we do not see the value of it, like the green bit on leek, for example. So where does food get lost exactly?
1. In agriculture: at this stage it’s mainly fruit and vegetables that are lost. Fruit and veg is considered too small, too big, does not have the right shape and consumers don’t buy it, which in turn prompts supermarkets to refuse this produce. Farmers end up throwing these specimens away. 2. In the food industry: there may be a loss at the start and end of the production line, but it is - 14 -
also possible that the minimum preservation time of the product may just have become too short. This affects the sell-by date supermarkets ask for. So although the food can still be used and has not gone bad, it no longer fulfils sell- or use-by date criteria. 3. In the retail sector: shops buy a lot of food to meet customer demand, but they often have too much stock they can’t sell, which then ends up in their waste containers. 4. In our homes: at the very end of the whole process, we all throw a lot of perfectly edible food away at home. The food in the first three stages of the value chain (agriculture, the food industry and retail sector) is still perfectly useable, which has prompted a number of companies to appeal to VIVES for a solution. ‘Then we think up new recipes based on the requirements of our client,’ says De Bleecker. ‘This can
be things like smell, taste, texture, use- or sell-by date, but also the use of additives and colour.’ Two examples of ways to re-use food are the green bit on leeks and misshapen pastries.
The green on leeks Tonnes and tonnes of this are thrown away by farmers. Figures for Belgium suggest this is about 38,400 to 57,600 tonnes every year! ‘So it’s not surprising that companies processing leek are looking for a profitable market to sell it all,’ De Bleecker admits, ‘though it’s difficult to process, because it’s so fibrous.’ So VIVES dries and grinds it to leek powder. ‘Then we can use it to make things like leek rolls, leek croquettes or leek cheese. So far the powder has attracted some interest from the short chain, i.e. local bakeries or cheese makers, but things are proving rather difficult when it comes to the
major food processing companies. Leek is a very Flemish thing, meaning there’s not much of an international market for anything with leek flavour.’
Pastries Another company produced about 1,000 tonnes a year of pastries with the wrong shape. Until recently they were processed into pig feed, but that’s not very interesting financially speaking, because pastries are made with reasonably expensive and basic ingredients like butter and flour. So our researchers tried to stabilise this ‘failed’ stock as quickly as possible, which was very important, because the food should not go off. However, putting it all in a giant, energyguzzling freezer was too costly. De Bleecker explains, ‘We decided to take all these losses directly out of the production process and to dry them, so they wouldn’t go off. - 15 -
Then we ground them to be reused later as ingredients in other products.’ But what do you make with ground down dried pastries? ‘Other pastries, for instance, or cakes and quiches,’ he answers. ‘But what this particular business asked us to investigate was if the powder could be processed into animal food,’ he continues. ‘Not really pig feed like before, but pet food: that’s financially more appealing, because people want to pay more for it.’ VIVES found a potential buyer, a company that makes niche animal food. The volume of rejected pastries was more or less the same as the amount of ingredient they needed. And what kind of animal is the food for? ‘I’m sorry, I can’t tell you that. It’s such a small niche that you’d be able to guess the name of the company if I told you what animal it was for,’ finishes De Bleecker.
Very Important Bananas The bananas we eat and see in the shops are not any old bananas, they are Cavendish bananas. And despite what you might think there are hundreds more varieties, though they are mainly eaten in the global south and cannot be found on our shop shelves. Rony Swennen, professor in Tropical Crop Improvement at the University of Leuven, believes bananas could be produced even better and faster to satisfy the needs of the ever increasing population on our planet.
of Rwanda eats up to half a kilo of bananas every day or ferments them into drink for later. Though these are not always bananas as we know them, but rather different kinds specifically for eating, cooking and baking. By the way, did you know Belgium is the largest exporter of bananas in the world? Not because it grows them, but because they are imported from Central America to the major transport hub that is the harbour of Antwerp.
The advantages of bananas The fourth largest ‘Bananas are the fourth most important food in the world after rice, wheat and corn,’ he says. ‘145 million tonnes of bananas are produced globally every year and only 15% is exported. The remaining 85% is used locally in West, Central and East Africa, South East Asia and South America.’ That is logical, because bananas are food source number one in many of these countries. Research has shown, for example, that the population
What makes bananas so popular, though? Well first of all, they are perineal plants, so they don’t need to be planted every year. Secondly they are relatively cheap. A third perk of them is that they grow in wet and dry conditions, and are fine with temperatures between anything from 14 to 45°C. And another not-so-unimportant fifth point: they produce fruit all year round. ‘That last bit is a very important plus,’ says Swennen, ‘because unlike most other things we grow, bananas even produce food in the dry - 16 -
season. So with a banana plant, people can easily get through the food shortage they face during that time.’
Banana bank Swennen has been improving plants for more than 35 years and at the moment manages the world banana collection in Leuven with seeds donated by more than 100 countries. The collection has made Leuven the banana capital of the world which has convinced Swennen of the importance of such a seed bank. ‘We’re in the middle of the sixth biodiversity extinction,’ he says. ‘Bananas are disappearing at eye-watering speed from Asia, for example, because people are choosing palm oil and coffee plantations over banana trees. The fruit originally came from these places, so it’s terribly important to preserve that biodiversity in one way or another.’ The seed bank makes it also possible to save disappearing varieties and cross cultivars later on. Some Asian ones have already been made resistant
against certain fungi and by crossing those with nonresistant kinds, we could breed several resistant varieties. New seeds arriving at the bank are evaluated, characterised, sequenced and checked for diseases, and countries can request them again later. ‘We can make 5 plants into 5 million in one year,’ explains Swennen. ‘The export industry is also knocking on our door more and more as they are looking for more possibilities. After all, there’s only one kind of banana on the Western market, so there’s definitely room for at least one more.’
Plant breeding Apart from managing the seed bank, Swennen mainly occupies himself with breeding better bananas. ‘There are plants that could produce 80 tonnes per hectare instead of the 5 tonnes we reach now.’ That’s definitely a good thing if we consider there’s only limited space to grow food.
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© Rony Swennen
Š Ghent University
Packaging and storage - 18 -
We throw away too much edible food. Part of the solution is better packaging and storage techniques, think researchers.
Smart packaging Wouldn’t it be great if the packaging of something were to show you whether the food inside has gone off or not? That is what Frank Devlieghere and Mike Vanderroost at Ghent University are aiming to accomplish with their CheckPack project in collaboration with the University of Leuven, the Free University of Brussels (VUB) and the Dutch Radboud University in Nijmegen. They have developed a small chip easy to incorporate into packaging that can be scanned to reveal how things are with the packaging itself or the food inside, so people can make informed decisions about whether they should eat it or throw it away. Devlieghere explains, ‘It’s a really revolutionary technique where you can read the results without needing to open the packaging or make a hole in it.’
Past the sell-by date Until recently the quality
of food was measured only before it went inside the packaging, meaning we didn’t know how matters stood with it from that very moment. ‘Was cold-storage food always stored in the same conditions, for example? Because differences might affect the actual use-by date,’ adds Vanderroost. In order to determine the sell-by date of their products, manufacturers tend to work with worst-case scenarios, which is why we often throw things away that have not even really gone bad yet. On the other side it’s perfectly possible that a product has been stored so badly it’s already past eating before it reaches the sell-by date. Vanderroost elaborates, ‘With this sensor you’ll be able to see if the food is really off or not. It’ll bring us much closer to reality and will allow supermarkets to guarantee to their customers their products are fresh.’
Meat and fish The sensor measures things like packaging integrity: meat and fish usually come in longlife plastic packaging with a specific amount of CO2, so variations in the amounts of that could indicate it has been damaged. - 19 -
The chip also measures volatile components occurring in low concentrations. It’s microorganisms that make these substances as food goes off. ‘We’re mainly focusing on meat and fish at the moment, because these can only be stored for a limited period of time and the micro-organisms in them produce a lot of these volatile components,’ explains Devlieghere.
A scanner in your fridge The sensors are small, cheap and easy to produce in large quantities with existing manufacturing processes. They work with light, so don’t need batteries or other sources of energy. Perfect for a grand-scale roll-out, then? ‘We’ll have a proof of concept on the table within two years,’ continues Devlieghere. ‘Then there’ll be some market development and the first products in smart packaging should be on shop shelves in five to ten years’ time.’ For now the researchers are targeting the retail sector, but it is not so difficult to also see the sensor take off in private households, with apps or devices in our fridge to scan packaging. Hopefully the sensor will help us throw away less perfectly edible meat and fish in the future.
Better storage How about fruit and veg, then? We put some apples or pears in a bowl and only about a week later they’re ready for the dustbin. Yet they were picked in September or October and stored for about a year. To make this possible companies store our fruit under controlled atmospheric conditions with temperatures around 0°C and lower concentrations of oxygen. This makes our apples go into hibernation and stop the biochemical processes in their flesh which would normally cause them to discolour and go soft.
Even better storage The fact that we can store fruit in this way is already a wonderful feat, but the question is if we can still improve on these storage protocols. This is one of the things Bart Nicolai and his colleagues at the University of Leuven are working on at the Flanders Centre of Postharvest Technology (VCBT). They are looking whether they can find a mathematical model to test storage techniques with a computer. ‘Experiments to determine the best possible storage environment are very
expensive and take at least a year,’ he explains. ‘So if computers could predict new storage protocols, you could try them out more easily and in a more targeted way.’ Thus, Nicolai and his team have been working on a new method to assess the stress fruit is under in real-time in order to adjust the oxygen concentrations in the air.
Measuring deliciousness The Centre is also developing measuring techniques to establish how delicious apples are. At the moment these are sorted by characteristics like size and colour. ‘Apples are sorted on lines,’ says Nicolai, ‘but on top of colour and size, we’d like to sort by deliciousness too. Once we have achieved that, we can really offer added value to customers.’ A characteristic like delicious obviously means different things to different cultures. In Northern Europe, for instance, it’s equal to a hard apple, but the South mainly cares about taste, which means people there go for soft apples, because they contain more sugars and are consequently sweeter. The technique developed at the VCBT works with reflection and shines infrared light onto the apple which then absorbs - 20 -
more or less of the light, depending on the amount of sugar it contains.
And what about vegetables? Unlike apples and pears, vegetables can’t be stored for a whole year. Lettuce, for example, can be found on shop shelves only two days after it has been taken off the field. So vegetables go off much faster, but modified atmosphere packaging the one keeping your food under special conditions - goes already a long way in keeping them fresh for longer. Nicolai continues, ‘Packaging for fruit and cutup vegetables often works with combination foil which regulates its own amounts of oxygen. Because the plastic lets through as much oxygen as the vegetables use, the overall amount inside the bag or tray stays low and the vegetables stay fresh for longer.’ This is also a subject the VCBT is researching.
How important is innovation? Nicolai finishes with a very clear point, ‘It’s important for Flanders to go for innovation and quality in terms of fruit and veg. We just used to do our thing, but now there’s a lot of competition from
abroad.’ China is the world’s biggest producer of fruit and vegetables, while a large proportion of the apples we buy comes straight from Poland. The two countries are coming close to Flemish quality thanks to good investment. ‘So we need even more quality and innovative products to stay competitive, like sorting apples by deliciousness or growing small watermelons and cauliflowers the size of one portion. Quality and innovation are Flemish horticulture’s most important weapons against increasing competition from abroad.’
‘Quality and innovation are Flemish horticulture’s most important weapons against increasing competition from abroad.’
- 21 -
© Bram Bamps
A seal of approval
We don’t always think about it, but packaging is a piece of top technology making sure our food stays fresh. Amazingly there are even researchers working on the seal on packaging: the places where it is closed before it rolls off the conveyor belt. Bags of crisps have one at the top and bottom, but also the film on the tray of lasagne you bought in the shop earlier is held in place with such a seal. So think about all the research that went
University’s Packaging
be sealed by heating the
Technology Centre/
material up locally, but that
IMO-IMOMEC and
isn’t much use if the heat
occupies himself amongst
you need is going to dry
other things with testing
out the food or make it go
commercial packaging like
off. Sealing can be done
bags for crisps and trays for
with sound waves to avoid
ready-lasagne. ‘This research
this problem, which is what
is important,’ he says. ‘Many
Bamps is working on. The
companies are confronted
sound waves heat up the
with losses during
sealing surfaces through
production or transport,
friction, the two layers are
because their packaging has
pressed on top of each other
failed. This can be because
and melt together.
small hairs, dust or just food get onto the sealing surface so the package isn’t closed well enough or the seal isn’t as strong as it should be. By developing better packaging and seal technologies we can tackle the waste of food and packaging alike.’
into the seal on your bag of
Once they are done experimenting, the researchers put together guidelines in co-operation with Pack4Food so the industry can use their results. ‘We’d like to develop
crisps next time you open one.
Companies are helping
a tool for companies to help Neither too strong, nor too hot
them with their choices for innovation and explain how they can switch from the
One of those researchers
There are a lot of things to
one to the other technique,’
making sure our packages
take into account: a seal
says Bamps. Hopefully
stay in good condition
shouldn’t be too strong,
packaging will break less
and nicely closed is Bram
because it’ll be too difficult
easily that way so we will
Bamps. He is project
to rip open. And yes, of
end up wasting less food
engineer at Hasselt
course, a package can
and packaging material.
- 22 -
Author: Toon Verlinden
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The thematic papers are published by Research in Flanders, a project run by Flanders Knowledge Area.
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Editions 1. Materials Science 2. Urban Planning 3. Industrial Design 4. Research in Times of Crisis 5. World War I 6. Food - 23 -
Š Rony Swennen