KQED's 6 Technology Trends That are Changing How We Eat covers a group technology startups that "help people choose healthier, and affordable, food options."
Food products and technology have become a hot area in Silicon Valley.
According to Time's How Silicon Valley is Addressing the World's Food Crisis:
... the food industry and tech industry have started to intersect and companies like Google and Yahoo have major research projects related to the future of food. Many Sand Hill Road venture capitalists have placed major bets on various food technology and services.
Driving this interest is the size of the food industry (enormous) coupled with a growing interest in healthy eating.
Key quote from the KQED article:
"“More conscientious eating — meaning organic, sustainable and healthy food — is a huge trend, much bigger than many people realize,” said Ali Partovi, an investor in food companies. He says 91 percent of Walmart shoppers said in a 2014 survey that they would consider buying affordable organic food."
My favorite example from the article is Bitty Foods, which makes cricket-based flour and cookies. Their cricket-based chocolate cookies are shown above.
We've covered the growing use of insects as food in the past, and we've had the opportunity to taste cricket-based flour.
All in all, it's not bad. But afterwards you have the urge to jump around a bit.
In case you're not interested in health food, you will be happy to know that technology is also improving junk food. For example, Pepsi is using 3D printers to improve the potato chip.
According to a blog post in 3Ders.org,a site that tracks the 3D printing industry, Pepsi's new "Deep Ridge" potato chip was designed and prototyped using 3D printers.
My favorite article quote is about the IP generated by this project:
"the company has patents on not only the design of the Deep Ridge potato chip, but also the cutter and the ‘mouth experience’. "This is multiple layers of IP," he said."
You can patent a "mouth experience"?
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