The future of food refers to innovative and sustainable food practices that address some of the most pressing challenges faced today, including global environmental sustainability, rising demand for protein-rich foods, growing public health concerns about current food supplies, animal welfare issues, food inequities, and food security. A key emerging technology to help address these challenges is cellular agriculture (cell-based foods and cultivated meat). This biotechnology and tissue-engineering approach to future foods provides new strategies to generate protein-enriched foods, particularly meat and fish, with positive outcomes towards environmental, human, and animal health. However, many challenges remain to achieve impact, and these will be addressed within the context of the progress in the field over the past few years.
David Kaplan is the Stern Family Endowed Professor of Engineering at Tufts University, a Distinguished University Professor, and Director of the Tufts University Center for Cellular Agriculture. He is the editor-in-chief of ACS Biomaterials Science and Engineering. He serves on many editorial boards and programs for journals and universities. He has received a number of awards for his research and teaching. He was elected as Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering, the National Academy of Inventors, and the National Academy of Engineering.