Tomato-potato hybrid and weight loss cake are ‘foods of the future’

From:FoodBev

The TomTato is tomatoes on top and potatoes underneath. © Thompson & Morgan

A hybrid plant that grows both tomatoes and potatoes, brussels sprouts that taste like sherbert lemon, and pizza that can last for three years are among the innovations to be featured in a new television programme.

The BBC’s Tomorrow’s Food will also take a look at 3D printing technologies for pasta and biscuits, and the development of seaweed-derived alginate pills that can help people who eat fatty foods such as cake to lose weight. According to the British broadcaster, the series, presented by Dara O Briain, will reveal the cutting-edge technologies and produce appearing in farms, supermarkets, kitchens and restaurants around the world.

As the world’s population grows, researchers are coming up with increasingly inventive and ingenious solutions to falling food security, which could transform the way that the world grows, buys and eats its food.

Among the innovations featured is the TomTato, a hybrid plant developed by a Suffolk-based horticultural firm that consists of a tomato vine above the ground and potato plant beneath it. Each plant produces more than 500 tomatoes – sweeter than supermarket varieties, and with just the right acidity – as well as 2kg of potatoes, Thompson & Morgan said.

The US Army plans to introduce the pizza slices to soldiers’ rations. © US Army

Meanwhile, researchers from the US military have managed to create a pizza slice with a shelf life of three years. The scientists tweaked the acidity of the tomato sauce, cheese and bread dough in a food laboratory in Massachusetts, making it harder for oxygen and bacteria to survive. The room-temperature pizza, which doesn’t require freezing or refrigeration, is then wrapped in packaging which features embedded iron filings to absorb any air that remains inside.

“You can basically take the pizza, leave it on the counter, packaged, for three years and it’d still be edible,” US Army food scientist Michelle Richardson was quoted as saying.

The sherbet lemon-flavoured brussels sprouts were achieved using a substance called miraculin – sometimes dubbed “miracle berries” or “miracle fruit” – that has the effect of making even the most sour and acidic of foods taste sweet. Tomorrow’s Food will reveal how scientists are working to make miraculin, native only to West Africa, more easily applicable to wider industry applications.

And the alginate pills that stop fatty foods from making you fat are the product of research from Newcastle University, in the UK. The pills, derived from brown seaweed, have been found to help reduce weight among a test group of truck drivers when taken before eating a fat-laden meal. On average, the group each lost 3lb.

Tomorrow’s Food will debut next week in the UK on BBC One.

 

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