If you have not decided yet what will be your food trend for 2016, here there are some clues.
When the year ends, a lot of studies appear and predict annual trends in every sector. In the food industry, lists are published on what will be in style next season, have turn into a tradition. Knowing trends is fundamental because it allows us to know what kinds of food will be part of the consumers’ diet, the key to develop new products, the technology needed in processes, etc.
Using like reference some studies by specialized consultants in market research and analysis, as Mintel (Global Food Report and Drink Market in 2016), Innova Market Insights, The Special Food Association, and the products introduced last October in Anuga Fair, it is possible to anticipate healthy tendencies for 2016.
Undoubtedly, this year, there is no excuse for not consuming vegetables because we can find them in all types of products like tea, yogurt, ice cream, etc.
Our concern for health, sustainability and animal welfare causes us to eat less meat, and we are becoming a kind of part-time vegetarians, which has been called ‘flexitarians’ (until now, we say flexitarian to refer to the people who be vegetarian until a jamón serrano appears on the table). This will involve the technological development of products in order to recall the texture of the meat, the search for alternative proteins and more respectful processes.
According to experts, this is an ideal moment for takeoff of organic food, to be considered by consumers as a common property for the planet. We demand ‘real food’, that is food without preservatives, artificial flavors or additives, produced using traditional techniques. In this sense, the ‘Clean Label’, a tendency of 2015, has turned into the ‘Clear Label’, that is we want that the label would be as clear as possible. In addition, we are interested in knowing the food origin, who makes them, how food is prepared, its properties, etc. Throughout 2016, we let ourselves be captivated by foods with message (‘food telling’).
This year, initiatives will grow in order to seek to convert waste into products with higher value added, and there will be more alternatives to transform these products which are ready to expire.
On the other hand, we are being witnesses the increase of allergen free products, especially without gluten. Nowadays, there are a lot of people who consume foods without gluten, in spite of not suffering celiac disease, only because they think that these kinds of products are healthier. Keeping it in mind, the food industry has had no choice to respond to a consumer demandingfor quality products, sustainable production and wider choice in this field. It is increasingly common for brands to develop products under the slogan ‘triple free’, that is these products which obey several requests at the same time, for example, food without gluten, sugar and lactose.
During 2016, the image of snacks will change, and it will occupy positions as an option for healthy food specially for breakfast and lunch. Consumers know that all the nutrients are not equal, so they will choose products with healthy fats, fiber and protein sources (specially peas and quinoa). It is expected that the moringa be the next ‘superfood’, the broccoli be the fashionable vegetables and millet grain the last alternative.
Gradually we will be immersed in an increasingly personalized nutrition in order to choose these products that are good for our lifestyle. Marketing departments feel that millennians, muppies or foodies will be the future. The milleannians look for natural food, produced in a sustainable way; muppies want all kind of food that give them the nutrients needed to face the physical exercises; finally, foodies rely on private label products. Defrauding these groups can have serious consequences because their opinions will spread like wildfire through social networks.
In 2016, easy or pre-cooked products will have a great success, and better if they are individual packages (single dose), because there are a lot of people who live alone or in smaller families.
The countdown has begun and CARTIF goes on to innovate in healthy eating. We wish this year would be a very innovative year.
Three steps to reduce waste, emissions and the use of resources
“Green Manufacturing” can be defined in many ways, but in this post and the following ones, we will focus on the “greening” of manufacturing, this is, reducing pollution and waste by minimizing the use of natural resources, recycling and reusing waste and reducing emissions.
A growing number of businesses are finding those investments on reducing waste, pollution and the use of natural resources, along with recycling and reusing what was formerly considered waste, yields benefits not only in terms of an improved bottom line, but also in terms of employee motivation, morale, and public relations.
There are individual and collective initiatives with private, public or even both types of funding. One of them, in which I am involved, is the demonstrative REEMAIN project. In this project, supported by the EU 7th Framework Program, we promote innovative strategies on the use of resources (energy and materials) at the factory, including the optimization of the production-process-product, a seamless integration of renewable energy systems and the recovery of wasted energy. This project has demonstration activities in three factories: a biscuit factory, a foundry and a textile factory specialised in producing denim.
Our “recipe” is based on three consecutive steps: first Reduce, then Recover and finally, Replace.
It is also possible to make use of a combined approach to the electric and thermal supplies using co-generation or tri-generation biomass plants (with or without solar panels support). A generation plant attached to the factory produces a fraction or the total of the electricity, hot water (or steam) and even cold water that the factory requires for its operation. These proposals represent a deep impact on the existing manufacturing systems. The installation of the required attached infrastructures and their interconnection with the production systems is a complex issue. In some cases, the implementation of these new systems will require changes in the production planning and management.
In next posts, we will talk about the advantages and the obstaclerace that a factory will have to overcome if it decides to become “green”, or at least, to try.
In recent years, being the instrumental techniques cheaper and cheaper and the computational algorithms more accesible (even open source) several researchers and consultancy companies are developing new 3D abilities. Laser scanning or photogrammetry techniques are applied to mechanical or structural systems in order to collect some geometric specifications, which may be not available for different reasons.
Although direct engineering process will usually have the technical reports and drawings of the product prior to its building or manufacturing, it is usual that the old factories or buildings are not documented or, if they are, it is quite common that the drawings do not match to project. And even so, the time may have caused differences in the material behavior (chemical attacks, damage, settlements of supports or other common structural pathologies).
Footbridge stadium Balearic (Mallorca, Spain)
Often the collected data are focused on geometric dimensions and surface characteristics such as roughness and color. One of the most obvious applications is the three-dimensional reconstruction of architectonic buildings, either for rehabilitation or development of augmented drawings (BIM) or for historical or industrial heritage.
Being very useful the geometric data collected, in structural engineering it is necessary to add more information about the characteristics of different building materials, the joints between them and their possible interaction with the supports and the ground.
Fortunately, other enabling technologies to extract some additional information are also becoming more widely available. In this post we will see how using simple acceleration records and identification algorithms together with computational model updating techniques can complete the geometric information so that all technical specifications, necessary to estimate the dynamic behavior of the structure under study, can be obtained. These procedures do not require destructive testing and, even though these tests were viable, they did not provide the required information despite their higher cost.
First it should be noted that the geometric data collectedusing 3D techniques, irrespective of dimensional accuracy, refer to a particular state of load on the structure (at least due to the gravitational action) and corresponds to a particular ambient temperature. Both conditions can affect in a significant way when dealing with slender structures such as bridges and pylons. Furthermore these constructs generally experience unavoidable deformations due to environmental actions that can also affect dimensional accuracy of the 3D model.
Second it is interesting to note that in structural engineering and building is usual to use commercial components (proper cross-sections, formworks, pipes, lamps, …) of known discrete dimensions. This enables the possibility of carrying out adaptive scaling for improving the dimensional accuracy or for local refinement. So, it is not necessary comprehensive dimensional records and low cost systems (both instrumental as compact cameras and computer software) can be good enougth.
Considering the above and assuming certain skills for computational modeling, it is posible to create a preliminary model of the structure. On this model, using the finite element method, it is easy to estimate the incremental deformation due to certain loads or thermal actions and through appropriate correlations begin to estimate certain internal parameters (effective density, stiffness, damage, etc.). However, the methodology is especially important when the above information is combined with modal data.
To do this, first thing is to have the experimental eigenmodes (identified through operational modal analysis by post-processing acceleration records under environmental loading) and then select certain parameters of the computational model to be modified. Now it is the turn to adjust the value of these parameters (through optimization routines and depending on the sensitivity of each parameter and its range of reasonable values) to match with the experimental modes to the numerical ones (calculated via FEM). This process should take into account not only the most representative mode shapes but also their modal frequencies and damping.
Once proper values for these parameters are determined, the computer model can be used not only to generate the corresponding technical documentation of the as-built structure but also to estimate their vulnerability to accidental loads, or to evaluate the life-span or to estimate the performance of conservation jobs, among other applications. Those tasks are known as “structural re-engineering”, whose advantages can be matter for other post.
The title might suggest a classical scenario inside a horror movie: some people, typically a group of teenagers, enter inside a derelict house that seems to be alive, and is the cause of many troubles that, depending on the script, could end up dooming them all. In the real world exist those houses that, far from the evil intentions of their homonymous movie ones, communicate with the users, sometimes directly, sometimes in a subtle way, with the dwellers not being conscious of it.
Traditionally, the behaviour of the buildings have been like passive elements, that is, having features completely dependent both on the users’ handling and the equipment integrated on them (heating and air conditioned, electric power, plumbing and water, and recently telecommunications). This way the traditional buildings were conceived and existed with certain predetermined features and goals: people using the building enjoyed (and suffered from) the working status of the facility, and only a few parameters of these buildings could be modified with the direct intervention of the user or the administrator/maintenance crew.
It is not always clear if the progress of the technologies or the ideas to implement them are going ahead or following one to another, but it is true that the enhancements in the characteristics of the equipment installed into the buildings and the reduction of their sale prices to reasonable levels for the average user have taken to achieve, at global level, the change from the traditional passive dwelling to another active. But, what is the concept of active dwelling?
First of all, it is necessary to clarify that there are two general accepted concepts called Active House and Passive House (or PassivHaus in the original German concept), but using the concept at energetic level, that are referred, in the first case, to the traditional home, and in the second case to the house that, without any support from devices that consume energy, is able to keep certain environmental and comfort parameters to satisfy the final user. Here we are redefining the Active House in terms of interactivity at a energetic level with the user, where the dwelling “talks” to the user: it receives the requests and needs from the people using the building, and is able to make an intelligent management of its own resources and mechanisms (heating, lighting, etc.) in order to satisfy those requests and needs, generating an appropriate level of comfort for each case.
Nowadays there are solutions for these Active Houses (although Interactive Houses would fit better) that combine three fundamental elements when running these kind of houses: sensors and interfaces, control networks and equipment. The first ones are the senses of the system, and gather the current data of the environment and the needs of the user.
Next, the networks join together, like the body circulatory system, all the elements from the system, including the communications between them. And finally the equipment, that execute the actions necessary to fulfil the needs.
The sensors have evolved in price and performance to the point of being able to be used in private homes, and their future will see technological enhancements and reduced prices, as well as easiness in installation and maintenance.
About the networks, there are some manufacturers and consortiums with their own designed protocols, and the tendency for these cases is that only a few would survive, then simplifying the process to generate the network, along with the costs and maintenance.
Considering the equipment, this is progressively adapted along with the current needs, offering new possibilities in comfort, and enhancing the building energy efficiency. It can be commented that CARTIF is actually working on a relatively new concept called BEMS (Building Energy Management System) that would comprise the former elements. This is a concept being developed by some R&D centres in order to manage the Active Buildings as a whole, including many concepts like the Internet of the Things, neural networks and fuzzy logic for modelling prediction, decision making and so on. This is a concept that we will develop in future blog entries, due to its special interest in the social and scientific fields.
As a conclusion, it has to be commented that the paradigm of home management has evolved to the point of change it into a living element that interacts with us, and that provide us, in a clever way, all the comfort and energetic management that we need.
Celiac disease is a condition developed by people who are intolerant to gluten and is characterized by an inflammatory reaction, where the immune system mistakenly attacks the intestine as if it were an external aggressor and causes lesions in the mucous affecting nutrients and vitamin absorption. This disease can affect both sexes by equally and can start at any time, from infancy (as soon as cereal grains are introduced into the diet) to adulthood (even when individuals have consumed cereal grains all his life).
The most common symptoms are weight loss, fatigue, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, stunted growth, anemia, abdominal pain, among others. Although sometimes is more complicated because there are people who do not show any of these symptoms or they may be so atypical that the diagnosis is difficult. This condition is detected by clinical examination, an analytical measuring specific antibodies (transglutaminase and immunoglobulin A) generated in the intestine and an intestinal biopsy that allows a reliable diagnosis.
But what exactly is gluten? The cause of this disease is a set of proteins contained in cereals such as wheat, barley, rye and oats, and products derived from them (white flour, white wheat, graham flour, Triticum, wheat, kamut, spelled, germ wheat, wheat bran, etc.). According to Molina-Rosell, gluten serves to give elasticity to the masses, allowing the products have volume and an elastic and fluffy. So far, the part that almost all know. But what not everyone knows is that it is also used as an additive to give viscosity, thickness or volume to a lot of foods such as sausage (chopped, mortadella, sausage, black pudding, etc.), pates, cheeses, preserved by meat and fish, sauces, coffee substitutes, chocolat and cocoa, roasted or fried nuts with flour and salt, candy, snacks and some ice cream. In resume, a celiac has it really hard to have a varied diet safely.
Fortunately, there are some solutions for not including gluten in many foods. In the case of cereals, they are replaced wheat, barley, rye and oats with corn, rice, millet, quinoa, etc. With this, celiac could safely consume bread, flour, pasta and biscuits. The problem comes when we realize that the price of these products gluten free can be up to 448% higher than foods with gluten! A very simple example, according to 2015 Prices Report: normal bread costs € 2.11 / kg. Gluten-free bread € 9.48 / kg.
The next question is why? The answer is that the process of preparing food without gluten is considerably more complicated. Without the natural “glue” that gluten produces, the masses are liquid and cannot be baked. For this reason is necessary to use other products that help to simulate the characteristics provided by the gluten. Then the hydrocolloids (locust bean gum, guar gum, xanthan gum, agar, pectins and β-glucans), emulsifiers, enzymes or proteins, starch, combined with fats and dairy derivatives are chosen to impart viscoelastic properties.
But, besides in the process of developing gluten free food, should be used exclusively equipment and utensils, or have been properly cleaned previously. Cannot use oils or fryers where previously fried foods that have gluten, nor can use trays that previously contained gluten products. According to the Guide to prepare menus without gluten, throughout the production process should prevent cross-contamination with gluten products because, for a food to be considered gluten free, must comply with the legislation (Regulation 41/2009) and contain less than 20 mg of gluten per kilogram of product.
Quite a challenge for food R&D, which is already working on new processes and systems that can streamline production and achieve a significant decline in the price of gluten free food.
From November 30 to December 11 was celebrated Paris the COP21, the twenty-first conference on climate change. One of the objectives of this summit was to reach agreements between the participating countries, which allowed limit global warming to a level below 2 ° C.
When we consider man’s contribution to climate change, in particular emissions of greenhouse gases, we are thinking about the big electricity companies, energy production or emissions from transports, but our diet and the way in which we consume our food have an important role in contributing to climate change.
Food systems worldwide are responsible for up to 30% of all greenhouse gas emissions. (FAO). Furthermore, 2050 is forecast population growth, which will require an increase in agricultural production and will therefore increase pressure on natural resources.
We must find a more sustainable way of feed the world, looking healthier diets and friendly nature. Recently Chatham House (Royal Institute of International Affairs), non-governmental non-profit organization that works to build a sustainable world, has published a report which concluded that a diet change is needed to reduce global warming.
In this report, it is concluded that we keep too carnivorous diets, which contribute directly to global warming and that the livestock sector is responsible for 15% of greenhouse gas emissions. The meat is the least efficient food exists to feed the planet, the amount of arable land that is dedicated, limiting itself to other crops, and by the enormous expense involved water per kilo of meat produced.
Reduce meat consumption could reduce gas emissions by 25%, and switching to Mediterranean diets based on fish or vegetarian would have a considerable reduction in these emissions.
Accordingo to Gidon Eshel, the beef uses 28 times more land and 11 times more water than production chicken or pork. And compared to the production of potatoes or rice, the impact of beef per calorie, used 160 times as much land, besides the greatest emissions of greenhouse gases.
David Tilman, ecologist at the University of Minnesota, says that “global emissions of greenhouse gases would be reduced by an amount equivalent to the current emissions of all cars, trucks, trains, ships and airplanes. Moreover, this change in diet could prevent the destruction of tropical forests and savannas of a size equal to half of the US “
We must be aware of the impact our everyday actions have on greenhouse gas emissions, to make sustainable environmental choices. Choices to the time of making the shopping will be from now essential, if we want a sustainable planet for all, to feed the whole population (currently around 900 million people go hungry each day) and respect all living organisms.
Much of consumers think that the greatest effect of food contaminants, are the packaging and not the food itself. From now on, they will be necessary awareness campaigns, to inform consumers of the importance of the diet on the climate change.
We must walk towards more sustainable food systems, with less impact on the environment, acquiring the healthier diet patterns, that prevent diseases such as type II diabetes, obesity, cancer and cardiovascular diseases associated with diet.
