Food
In a world where obesity and hunger exist next to one another, the answer may not be in pills or political policy, but in our practices of how we grow, process and define food. Almost 800 million still go to bed hungry while more than 2 billion live with obesity or overweight (FAO, 2025). The effects of rising food prices, supply chain issues, and climate change are persistently driving healthy diets out of reach for much of the world. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and World Health Organization (WHO) have warned of the paradox we face today where the most fundamental ingredient for health, food, has become one of the greatest global risk factors (WHO, 2024). The need to shift food systems is more pressing than ever: if food systems do not change, food systems cannot nourish the world.
One child from Bihar, India, demonstrates both the risk and promise of this shift. Rather than taking vitamin supplements, she in fact eats a bowl of orange biofortified maize. Her body derives the vitamin A it needs from biofortified grain itself. Food, in this case, has become medicine. Food as medicine is a principle that is generating a wave of new technological innovations, from artificial intelligence in agriculture, irradiation in food processing, alternative proteins, biofortification and other food technologies that aspire to be not only preventive medicine but also a long term treatment for global health. But, like any medicine, food technologies will only work if trusted, distributed equitably, and implemented sustainably.
It is necessary to have a new understanding of food and health. Malnutrition is responsible for poor growth and low immune response, while obesity is associated with cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Recent studies in The Lancet on global child health show that anaemia and vitamin-deficiency diets are still amongst the greatest contributors to childhood illness (Bhutta et al., 2022). From the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2025 the FAO reported that costs of a healthy diet are now rising faster than wages in many nations facing crises of food and nutrition, leaving billions unable to afford a healthy diet (FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP & WHO, 2025).
Add climate change to this scenario, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have highlighted that changes in climate through heat waves, floods and droughts are reducing crop yields and thereby the potential micronutrient density in staple foods like wheat and rice (IPCC, 2022). Unless there is a new technological pathway, food systems will not just be less supportive of life, but bans or truncate across all domains of health.
The first pathway to healthier food systems is through precision agriculture and digital technology. Artificial intelligence is already changing the ways we design and distribute crops. A 2025 article in npj Science of Food described the ways AI is accelerating finding nutrient dense plant varieties, optimizing fertilizer use, and minimizing waste (Ahn et al., 2025). In Kenya, drones were able to provide farmers with precise pesticide spraying without the farmer being exposed to those chemicals, while also using less water (Wang et al., 2025).
Blockchain platforms are enabling food to be traced back and allowing consumers to check nutritional claims and safety. Even energy-intensive vertical farms can bring fresh veggies into dense urban areas, where obesity rates increase most rapidly (Santo et al., 2022). Collectively, the above innovations engender the possibility of precision nutrition- where technology not only maximizes yield, but also maximizes health.
Another avenue is in food processing innovation, specifically in food safety initiatives like irradiation. Irradiation is often viewed with suspicion, despite being among the most rigorously studied food safety technologies. It is endorsed by Codex Alimentarius, the FDA, and the International Atomic Energy Agency as a way to minimize the pathogens that lead to food borne illness while simultaneously substantially extending the overall shelf life of food products (Codex Alimentarius, 2020; FDA, 2024; International Atomic Energy Agency, 2025).
In Japan, table spices and potatoes that are irradiated dramatically reduce food waste and contaminations. However, in the European Union, consumer hesitancy has stymied the uptake of this process, even after decades of safety assessments (IAEA, 2025). This paradox leads to an important principle, scientific consensus is not sufficient to assage cultural skepticism. Nevertheless, there remains potential for irradiation to extend the shelf life of new food possibilities such as plant-based meat or cultured chicken, making them safe, and scalable.
Alternative proteins and cultivated meat possibly represent the most radical potential redefinition of food. Plant-based proteins have already started to reduce GHG emissions while simultaneously providing a heart-healthy alternative to animal fat (Springmann et al., 2023). In Brazil, also one of the world’s largest beef consumers, plant-based meat companies are gradually taking a piece of the market, demonstrating that entrenched food cultures can be pliable. Cultivated meat – which is grown using animal cells in a bioreactor – has achieved regulatory approval in Singapore and “no-questions” safety consultations for human consumption by the U.S.
Food and Drug Administration (FDA, 2023; FDA, 2025). Consumers in Singapore have eaten GOOD Meat’s cultivated chicken in restaurants. And while researchers like Hocquette have concluded that long-term health and environmental advantages will take time to ascertain, energy requirements are high, and nutritional equivalence is still in flux (Hocquette, 2025). Most importantly, however, cultured meat is a cultural and ethical issue: Is a meat product that involves no slaughter an end to cruelty to animals, or a troubling disassociation from historical food sourcing? For some it is progress, and for others, alienation.
The most direct and established relationship between food technology and health is in biofortification and nutrition enhancement. For example, randomized controlled trials in Zambia and India demonstrate that orange maize with high levels of Vitamin A can provide children with the same health advantages as supplements (Gannon et al., 2014). Biofortified foods can provide major reductions in anemia in children across Africa and Asia (Bhutta et al., 2022).
In Nigeria, vitamin A cassava is already reaching millions of people and, thereby, improving immune function in communities with limited dietary diversity (FAO, 2025). These examples demonstrate the vision of “nutrition by design”: engineering these staple foods to do more than merely fill stomachs, but to incorporate elements of health to bodies. We could link biofortification to AI distribution models that take the best performing micronutrient crops into the same regions where malnutrition is most entrenched.
Of course, each of these technology examples has concrete counterpoints and challenges. The first is equity. FAO’s State of Food and Agriculture 2022 expresses a clear warning that agricultural automation could add to the divergence between wealthy tech-enabled farms and smallholders without access to capital (FAO, 2022). Consumer trust is a second hurdle. The relatively recent safety endorsements of the FDA, World Health Organisation (WHO) and others suggest safety, but long public hesitancy toward GMOs and irradiated food in Europe indicate perception can be more potent than evidence (WHO, 2024).
Evidence gaps also endure. A 2022 Nature Food article review signaled practical gaps in research related to the long-term health of diets including vertical farming produce to the long-term health impacts of eating alternative proteins (Santo et al., 2022). Last, sustainability paradoxes occupy an unsettling space: cultivated meat decreases land use but has a higher energy impact than conventional meat; U.S. vertical farming startups declared bankruptcy under surging energy bills, demonstrating that the hype of technology can often succumb to ecological and economic realities (Nature Food, 2022).
If food technology is to be valuable to the health of all humanity, it must be innovated responsibly. There are three factors that should be prioritized. First, we need to design in equity. Innovations like drones or biofortification cannot just be delivered to wealthy countries. These innovations need to be explicitly developed for smallholder farmers and vulnerable populations. Second, we need to prioritize transparency.
Regulators like the FDA and WHO must also keep communicating safety and social findings in plain language so that people can trust their reports. Third, we need to design for integration. Technologies cannot just be dropped via parachute into our social fabrics without understanding cultural sensitivity – Brazil has a very different meat culture than cassava heavy Nigeria, and Japan presents unique consumer attitudes. But more importantly, drug and food technologies should be considered as global public goods – akin to vaccines – that serve the health of all and not the profits of a few.
The food future is, in this sense, the vaccine of the 21st century: preventative, life-enabling, and a function of trust. Established pathways like biofortification, irradiation and lead-farmer in AI-driven farming already provide concrete health benefits. Newer but still unproven pathways like cultivated meat and vertical farming require consistent testing and objective evaluation. It is a luxury we cannot afford to ignore their possibilities, nor their limits.
Food technology will not only change what we eat, but it will also change what we expect from food – and which points to definitions of food that nourish all of humanity, or only some. If we can successfully approach food technology as medicine, then the next child in Bihar, or Lagos, or São Paulo, will not need a pill to be healthy – they will only need a meal.
By: Brandon Yoo
Write and Win: Participate in Creative writing Contest & International Essay Contest and win fabulous prizes.
About the Author
