Biomaterials in cellular agriculture and plant-based foods for the future

Abstract

Alternative food products are needed to address the most pressing challenges faced by the food industry: growing global food demand, health concerns, animal welfare, food security and environmental sustainability. Future foods are defined as foods with scalability and sustainability potential owing to rapidly advancing technological developments in their production systems. Key areas of study for future foods include cellular agriculture and plant-based systems, which include biomaterials as key ingredients or as structural components to impart texture, support cell growth and metabolism, and provide nutrients and organoleptic factors to food products. This Review discusses current requirements, options and processing approaches for biomaterials with utility in future foods. We focus on two main approaches: cellular agriculture wherein the cells are the key component for food (with the biomaterials utilized to support the cells via adherence and/or for texture) and plant-based foods wherein acellular plant-derived biomaterials are the food components. In both cases, the same fundamental challenges apply for the biomaterials: achieving utility at scale and low cost while meeting food safety requirements. Other considerations for biomaterials for future foods are also addressed, including sustainability, modelling, consumer acceptance, nutrition, regulatory status and safety considerations to highlight the path ahead. This emerging field of biomaterials for future foods offers a new generation of biomaterial systems that can positively impact human health, environmental sustainability and animal welfare. Although scaling these biomaterial sources cost-effectively presents a major challenge, substantial progress is being made, and opportunities to establish supply chains are already underway.