Knowledge Systems for Food

Executive Summary. This text outlines the author’s position underlying the presentation on the Workshop on Converging Technologies for Food on 20 December 2005 in Brussels. According to this position central tasks in the sector of food are: more reliable knowledge and its timely and truly useful communication to those who and when they need it. Building up knowledge and advice systems by harnessing mostly existing and to a lesser extent newly researched knowledge should therefore become a high priority. An aspect in these systems which should not be confused with simple databases is that they could (by Bayes’ nets technology) complement the human weakness in dealing with uncertain knowledge abounding in the food domain. Concerning the generation of new knowledge important areas are (i) development of and experimentation with simulation systems in the domain of food and metabolism, (ii) CogSci research on what causes food preferences in humans, (iii) how people can be positively influenced and (iv) how knowledge can best be transferred to them. A similarly important issue is food control for consumer protection with technology. Altogether we plead for an environment and customer centered strategy in the research policies in this domain. The goal should be a substantial and scientifically underpinned overhaul of the national and European agro-systems in their local and global functioning. 1. General aspects of food “The European agro-food industry is the largest manufacturing sector in Europe” (CIAA 2005). So food is an economic factor of greatest importance. At the same time food is of utmost importance for the health and well-being of the European population. Therefore there is a growing awareness that, in guiding the industry’s evolution, a greater emphasis has to be laid on the consumer needs and preferences for safety, quality, convenience, diversity and food for health, an approach captured by the slogan “fork to farm”. Especially the health promoting aspects of nutrition are standing out, not least from an economic point of view given the enormous societal and individual costs of lifestyle-related deseases. With this focus in mind we begin with a few general and well-known observations. The selection of food, ie. our diet, has evolved from an evolutionary trial-and-error process which has lasted tens of thousands of years. This search process resulted in regional dietary traditions and cultures and may have resulted in a statistically rather optimal diet before industrialisation started a few hundred years ago. 1 We consider this assumption, termed the evolution thesis, of utmost importance in all considerations concerning the feed and food topic. The strategy for selecting the diet is carried out through instinctive and acquired preferences, ie. they are acquired in the childhood and may even be predisposed by genetic heritage. Today these preferences are superposed, transformed and alienated through a variety of influences including lifestyle habits, food processing and advertisement. Biotechnology and Biochemistry have uncovered the details of many of the processes involved in the metabolism of the human body including the substances required to keep them