Food for Thought: The Appetizing Future of Health and Wellness

Wellness is becoming embedded across many consumer experiences. Spending and demand for mental health treatments is on the rise. Self-care has morphed from an occasional indulgence to a routine necessity. And many top beauty influencers endorse the importance of caring for both mind and body.

The wellness trend has had an especially notable influence on the home space since the pandemic. Virtual healthcare was just the start, and the movement is even expanding into pet care. In the coming years, technology advancements may permit many health services to take place in the home. Currently, there is increasing recognition for the fact that taking effective wellness measures at home may be as simple as sitting down for a meal.

Foodaceuticals, a trend Faith Popcorn predicted decades ago, is the idea that modified foods can provide extra health benefits through enhanced qualities of nutritious value. They could also be altered to contain pharmaceuticals, therefore becoming a future drug delivery mechanism. Could food-as-medicine also help reduce healthcare costs and address medical staffing shortages that we face in the near-term? It’s not just modified foods: regular groceries are now being prescribed to control chronic diseases and maintain health.

Strategic companies like Uber and the Texas grocery chain HEB are new contenders to the healthcare ecosystem, where they are making unique marks on the food-as-medicine wave. Uber is working with health care providers to deliver healthy foods to patient’s homes, and HEB’s clinics prescribe groceries. Can these types of boundary-blurring business innovations disrupt basic needs in a scalable way, and potentially elevate the standard of living?

Ideas of progress are only dreams until they are paired with technology tools that can realize the underlying vision. What if some of the currently ascendant technologies are also foodaceutical game-changers?

• Digital twins, which use data to provide a real-time simulation of dynamic processes and things, is a thriving manufacturing, mobility, and energy technology. Recent breakthroughs in healthcare have involved digital twins to perform surgery, study the immune system, and test cosmetics. In the future, digital twins of organs and the body could personalize edible cures or preventative diets.

• Generative AI is already influencing enhanced foods. A gen AI platform for molecule development has recently helped discover new plant-based protein. This particular use of AI—harnessing its productivity to quickly analyze and catalyze synthetic biology research—is a great example of how rising trends and technologies tend to interact. Plant-based nutrition could be an important aspect of a diet that treats medical conditions, such as cardiovascular disease and obesity. Sustainable alternatives to meat also help to highlight the connections between human health and planetary health.

• Bioengineered crops and livestock will provide more options for following a healthy and sustainable diet. CRISPR foods already exist, offering a selection of better looking and tasting foods. Genetically engineered and edited foods can be designed to appeal to the palate, so nutritious choices could become something people crave like junk food. This may be the ideal way to make food a preventative measure against future disease.