Food technology

We've seen how lab-grown meats could help address the massive environmental costs associated with livestock production, and we're now seeing some interesting possibilities emerge around one of the world's most popular drinks – coffee.

The freezers found homes and restaurants play an invaluable role in preserving foods until they're ready to be eaten, but an alternative technology promises to not only use far less energy, but improve food quality at the same time.

The world of lab-grown meats is fast filling with all kinds of tasty bites, from burgers, to chicken breasts, to a series of increasingly complex cuts of steak. Now, Japan's famous Wagyu beef joins the list.

We currently rear animals for meat and dairy, cut down forests for wood, harvest organs from the deceased and mine the earth for diamonds. But what if all these things, and more, could be grown in a lab?

Agriculture requires huge amounts of land and resources, and as the human population grows our food supply will be put under increasing stress. But a new study shows that farming protein from microbes could be a far more sustainable and efficient system.

Japanese researchers have developed a new type of cholera vaccine by genetically modifying rice to carry a non-toxic cholera antigen. The vaccine needs no refrigeration with the rice simply ground into a powder, mixed with water and consumed.

From Singapore to the International Space Station, we're starting to see how lab-grown meat might soon make its way out of the lab and into everyday diets, and a newly opened factory in Israel should more than help things along.

Despite the fact that it's made of fermented raw pork, the Vietnamese meat snack Nem Chua does not cause food poisoning in people who eat it. In fact, new research suggests that a compound found in it could be used as a natural food preservative.

Researchers digging into the science behind popcorn expansion have shed new light on the process, finding thickness of the coating around the kernel to be a key factor, which could inform the breeding of higher quality corn down the track.

University of Oxford researchers have come up with a way to control the speed at which tomatoes ripen by modifying a specific gene. This could not only help reduce wastage and boost tomato crop yields, but possibly other crop varieties, too.

It would certainly be upsetting to discover that the beef you had just eaten also contained rat meat. Such things are possible, though, which is why scientists have developed a DNA-based meat-testing kit.

In most grocery stores, all of the fresh produce is either pre-wrapped in plastic film or it gets placed in plastic bags – both of which are often discarded by consumers. A new bioactive paper bag, however, could serve the same purpose while being easily recyclable.