Separating Signals From Noise to Understand Food’s Future

To understand what’s next for the food system, leaders need to look beyond the latest trend report. That was the advice food futurist and innovation strategist Mike Lee shared in “The Future of Food, Unpacked,” an IFT FIRST Hot Topics Studio session.

“If you’re reading it in a trend report, you’re late,” he said. “Often, that thing coming next is not in the trend report. It’s on the ground. … GLP-1s and AI are what we’re hearing about. I think there’s room for hearing about things that aren’t trends.

“We have to breathe some new air,” he continued. To see the bigger picture, look for patterns—patterns that may come from outside the food and beverage industry, Lee advised.

Creating an organizational structure that encourages experimentation is critical, Lee said, adding that costs should be manageable and failure accepted as a necessary part of innovation.

In the session, which was moderated by Julie Larson Bricher, Food Technology’s science and technology editor, Lee also shared his thoughts on making the most of AI as a tool, enhancing the appeal of sustainable food products, and separating signals from noise.

Among AI’s biggest benefits is the fact that it enables anyone to create software and solve problems. “The real killer app is not the chat. It’s coding,” he said. “We can now be the producers of the software, not just the consumers of it.

“AI can be a weapon or an asset,” he noted, observing that the danger with AI is its tendency to create an echo chamber that reinforces consumers’ existing beliefs.

Bricher posed a hypothetical scenario to Lee, asking how he would advise the CEO of a major food company to reallocate 10% of the company’s R&D and innovation budget if given the opportunity to do so. “I think I’d work harder to try to find the connections between flavor, nutrition, and sustainability,” Lee said.

The futurist observed that consumers may be concerned about the state of the environment, but they’re typically driven by more immediate needs. “When it’s 10 p.m. on a Friday and they’re hangry, do they really want to hear about climate change at that minute?” he asked.

He suggested that marketers position products not as delicious and sustainable, but as delicious because they were sustainably produced. “I think we’ve got to figure out how to move to a world where we have real science behind it and say this food is delicious because it’s sustainable,” he said.

“What is the link between food that’s raised better and tastes better?” he asked. “We’ve been trying to get people to eat sustainably on an academic level. But people are buying food on a visceral level.”

The key question, he said, is this: “How do you make the sustainable thing the hedonistic thing?”

Sustainably produced food needs to appeal to an audience that goes beyond the “Patagonia crowd,” he said. “We need people like my MAGA (Make America Great Again) uncle, who denies climate change, to be part of the conversation.”

On the topic of understanding the difference between something that’s merely trendy and something that is an enduring movement, Lee said that he looks to fundamental human motivations to separate noise from signal.

He cited the mainstreaming of GLP-1 medication as an example, noting that it’s human nature to want to look better and feel healthy. "The deeper it's tied to something unique about humans that has not changed for a thousand years, the more likely it will stick," he observed.

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