Food Tech Innovators Need to Focus More on Global Nutrition

Food tech innovators claim to be social entrepreneurs, disrupting technology with droves of new products thanks to a tripling of investments over the past five years. Despite their ingenuity and a commendable focus on sustainability and food loss, entrepreneurs are missing a huge opportunity by not prioritizing nutrition. More than 3 billion people worldwide are plagued by malnutrition; undernourishment and obesity rates are rising at alarming rates. If food innovations better-integrated nutrition, we could be one step closer to providing optimal nutrition for all. The world needs much more than plant-based burgers and non-dairy yogurts to reduce the devastating outcomes of food and nutrition insecurity. The world needs food entrepreneurs to consider the nutritional quality of their products and how to scale up and adopt within specific, at-need global populations.

Now is the time to revolutionize how nutrient-dense food innovations can transform health through food and nutrition security and subsequently economies and livelihoods. Food innovation that improves global nutrition cannot succeed alone—the creative minds of inventors, the strategic drive of industry, the change-making power of policymakers, and the scientific rigor of researchers must work across the food system and collaborate to develop and implement solutions. Social entrepreneurship cannot succeed in a silo.

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