Future of food

It seems almost fitting that at a time of the year that has increasingly become associated with food and (over)eating, the final edition of the Biochemist for 2025 is focused on the future of food. Not the traditional foods that many of us can look forward to over the festive period, but rather the food that we may increasingly be coming to terms with in the near future. The huge growth in the population of the planet has significant implications for both demand and food security, which requires a major boost in food production. Increasing food production will strain resources like land and water and will exacerbate environmental issues. It is becoming recognised that changing diets towards more resource-intensive foods, though technological advancements and better practices will be required to mitigate these significant challenges.In this edition, we include a number of articles that directly address these issues. In the first, Faraz Harsini and colleagues provide an overview of why the world will need to move to more sustainable food production techniques if it is going to be able to feed the increasing population. They highlight the huge imbalance between the amount of land that livestock farming uses compared to the amount of calories it generates. They outline the unsustainability of the current global food production system and then introduce some of the many alternative food production techniques that are being developed, including artificial meat, precision fermentation and plant-based proteins.Sally Buck focuses on one such source of plant-derived proteins, the chickpea. Chickpeas have been cultivated since the first agricultural revolution over 10,000 years ago and are used in many types of traditional cooking. Their high protein content makes them an efficient and sustainable protein source, in many societies, they often replace meat. The article describes how such a form of protein replacement could be hugely beneficial to the global population, as it desires more calories. Proteins stored within chickpeas are readily accessible, and different cultivars (of which there are hundreds) produce differing levels of individual protein types that have distinct uses in food production. Continued selective breeding coupled with genetic modification will enable even more efficient types of chickpeas to be produced. These once humble seeds that traditionally produced foods such as flatbreads, curries and hummus have the potential to act as scalable and sustainable protein factories that could go some way towards feeding our ever-growing population.Karson Bateman and colleagues write about another traditional food production process that also has the potential to make a significant contribution to future food, fermentation. Fermentation is widely known as the anaerobic metabolic process in which microorganisms (yeasts, bacteria and moulds) break down carbohydrates into products that are important for preserving food and making alcoholic drinks. Precise fermentation, the subject of this article, uses microbial hosts as “cell factories” for producing specific individual functional molecules for use in downstream applications. In this context, of course, the products are ingredients for the food industry. The process can be used either to make large quantities of ingredients that are limited in the environment or difficult to extract, or else it can be used to generate specific animal-derived ingredients as replacements, thereby avoiding the use of animals completely. They describe a number of examples of how this process is contributing to the production of cheese and beer as well as highlighting how it may be able to replace ingredients produced from crops such as palm oil. They conclude by saying how the process will provide new food options, as well as impact on food security and sustainability.Lijing Ke provides a more philosophical take on the future of food by highlighting the importance of not only the nutritional value of food but importantly the sensations and emotions that surround it. We are, as he says, what we eat, and in many cases we are able to make choices about what we consume. Oftentimes, we don’t eat what is best for us from a nutritional standpoint, rather, we do it with regard for taste and enjoyment. He illustrates some aspects of taste, enjoyment and nutrition through the example of Chinese tea. Not only is tea drinking an important and enjoyable nutritional tradition, but it also provides health and medicinal benefits that have been used for centuries.In addition, this edition also includes a beginner’s guide to giving a conference presentation. Dissemination of data is a major expectation of a bioscientist and learning how to do this can be daunting. I well remember my first presentation as a PhD student in a darkened hall at the University of Groningen. How I wished I could have had access to more advice, such as that presented by Cathy Moore in this guide. We also include contributions relating to the Biochemical Society HE Science Communication Prize winners, some on lifelong learning, as well as a short interview with Professor Shelia Graham on her roles in EDI and STEM.This edition is also my last as Science Editor. After having undertaken many roles during my time as a member of the Biochemical Society, I have recently retired. In the last 2 years, I have greatly enjoyed overseeing the content and direction of the magazine alongside the editorial board and the Publications Office and I am grateful to them for their input and hard work. Importantly, The Biochemist is very much a member-led publication, and so as ever, feel free to contact us with any comments on this issue or if you would like to contribute to the magazine in the future. I will leave you in the capable hands of our new Science Editor, Kakoli Bose, and with my best wishes for 2026 and beyond.