Virtualization of foods: applications and perspectives toward optimizing food systems

Food production cannot be decoupled from human and planetary wellbeing. Meeting safety, nutritional, sensorial, and even price requirements entails applying an integral view of food products and their manufacturing and distribution processes. Virtualization of food commodities and products, i.e., their digital representation, offers opportunities to study, simulate, and predict the contributions of internal (e.g., composition and structure) and external factors (e.g., processing conditions) to food quality, safety, stability, and sustainability. Building virtual versions of foods requires a holistic supporting framework composed of instrumental and computational techniques. The development of virtual foods has been bolstered by advanced tools for collecting data, informing and validating modelling, e.g., micro-computed tomography, to accurately assess native food structures, multi-omics approaches, to acquire vast information on composition and biochemical processes, and nondestructive and real-time sensing, to facilitate mapping and tracking changes in food quality and safety in real-world situations. Comprehensive modeling techniques (including heat and mass transfer, thermodynamics, kinetics) built upon physic laws provide the base for realistic simulations and predictions of food processes that a virtual food might undergo. Despite the potential gaps in knowledge, increasing the adoption of food virtualization (data-based, physics-based or hybrid) in manufacturing and food systems evaluation can facilitate the optimal use of resources, the rational design of functional characteristics, and even inform the customization of composition and structural components for better product development. This mini-review focuses on critical steps for developing and applying virtual foods, their future trends, and needs.