By: Andy Benson   Date: 8/27/10

Picture this: 1700 of the world’s top food scientists all in Africa, all of them beating out a rhythm on African Drums.  That’s what happened this week in South Africa and the drums served an important purpose.

Globally, we’re faced with a tremendous challenge to provide the right food, in the right way, and at the right place and time to feed the world’s seven billion people. Those 7 billion people all approach food a little differently: European gourmets seek the best in haute cuisine while harried executives and homemakers want quick and convenient food, and for 2 billion people in lesser developed countries there’s a desperate need for access to enough food to keep them from starvation.

And that’s where the 1700 delegates to the 15th Global Congress of the International Union of Food Science and Technology (IUFoST) come in.  They’re the ones who have the skills in food production to build a bridge between all the many, many ways of producing food and help deliver it safely to those that want it, where they need it, when they need it and how they need it.

The Role of Science in Feeding the World
While the idea of food science might sound a little scary, its actually already part of our daily routines. Some examples:

 Cooking and baking.  How long do we cook for? At what temperature? What other ingredients do we need to add taste and flavor, and to make the food wholesome and nutritious as part of a balanced diet?

   Food ingredient growing, harvesting, distribution and storage

 Quality control, process control, detection methods and food safety systems

Like it or not, whether you pick the apple straight off the tree or scoop the cereal out of the box, you are eating a product of food science and technology – and that’s a good thing.

So where do the drums come in to all this?

Believe it or not, the drums were the basic introduction, the “class 101” course to help the congress participants grasp the vital necessity of working together, knowing, appreciating and building on each other’s knowledge, cultures and skills  to address the food supply challenges that we face at the local, the regional and the global level.

If you have a hundred people in a room all trying to beat out a similar rhythm but with no guidance and coordination its an undecipherable and painfully noisy experience!  Harness the energy of the experts with a little guidance and coordination in working together, hitting the same beat, developing just a basic rhythm and beating it out together - now that really works! It helps get us all on the same page,  spread the word and get out a message that’s clear and decipherable for the communities around us that we are striving to serve.

That was a lesson well learned, and its something we’ll keep in mind at the International Food Information Council moving forward working with other stakeholders and developing our own global initiatives over the next few years.