The UK House of Lords Science and Technology Committee released its report  “Nanotechnologies and Food” in which it criticised the food industry for “failing to be transparent about its research into the uses of nanotechnologies and nanomaterials.” It calls on the UK Food Standards Agency to maintain a publicly available register of food and food packaging containing materials and further calls on the UK Research Councils to “establish more proactive forms of funding to encourage research bids which address the severe shortfalls in research required for the effective risk assessment of nano materials in food,” especially research on the behavior of nano within the body and gut.

The Research Councils UK responded by welcoming the new report and will consider the recommendations. As a result of the RCUK Nanoscience: through Engineering to Application programme, the Councils point out they already support a wide portfolio of nanotechnology research in areas such as nanotoxicology, nanometrology, nanotechnology-based sensor devices, food manufacturing and processing.

But If the committee found it difficult to get it's food information, it's equally difficult to discover what is out there in any actual research grants into use of nanotechnology and food. Although Loughborough University  has been investigating the mechanism(s) underlying the somewhat mysterious phenomenon of "superspreading:self organisation on nano scale applicable to manufacturing food and drink, chemicals, pharmaceutical and biotechnology" with an investigation of it, using a set of new, comprehensive experiments. The project completes this June.

The results will be used to formulate new physical and mathematical modelling of the process. The investigation include self-organisation studies on nano-scale superspreaders at the liquid / air and solid - liquid interfaces, and nano-scale forces in thin layer and their influence on superspreading behaviour. Independent experiments (Fourier Transform IR spectroscopy and Atomic Force Microscopy) will directly measure the nano-scale forces and their influence incorporated into theoretical modelling, leading to predictions of the way to synthesis of new superspreaders with desirable properties. The  international research includes with Professor Ramon Rubio (Universdad Complutense, Madrid, Spain) and Dr Randal Hill (DowCorning, USA).

The food industry notes the report, represented 15% of UK manufacturing, is the fourth largest food and drink manufacturing industry in the world and comprises of 6,500 companies, the majority being small and medium size enterprises.

Direct applications of nanotechnologies in food are apparently currently very limited, restricted to a few food supplements containing nano-encapsulated ingredients, and some developments relating to oil-in-water and water-in-oil emulsions.

In the US, the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies (PEN at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars maintains an online global database of consumer products that are claimed by their producers to include some form of nanotechnology in their manufacture. According to PEN, in March 2009 there were 84 food-related items on the database of which nine were listed as used in cooking, 20 were used for food storage and 44 were categorised as dietary supplements.

Three products listed were entered as foods: an oil containing nano- encapsulated ingredients, a milkshake that uses a nanoscale silica-based compound to enhance the taste and a tea that claims to use a non-disclosed form of nanotechnology). But, despite its database, PEN concluded that it was “currently unknown how many nanotechnology-enabled food products are on the market that are not clearly identified”.

In the UK the Food Standards Agency also raised doubts about how much current registers or databases could tell us. This was because they would be “largely based on marketing information, which may or may not accurately reflect what is on the market.” They were aware of only two UK food sector uses of nanotech: a form of nanosilver known as “silver hydrosol” and a nano-sized formulation of co-enzyme Q10. Both were used in food supplements.

Research by food companies into uses and applications of nanotechnologies in the food industry began a decade ago. In 1999, Kraft foods established the first nanotechnology laboratory and in 2000  set up a ‘NanoteK’ consortium, involving 15 universities worldwide and national research laboratories.

(But despite producing a number of patents for the company, Kraft pulled back from its high-profile connection with nanotech in 2004. Manuel Marquez, the research chemist it appointed to organise the consortium, moved to Philip Morris USA, a sister subsidiary of Altria, that now sponsors a new name consortium, the Interdisciplinary Network of Emerging Science and Technologies.)

Kraft still sends researchers to industry conferences to make what it calls “generic” presentations about the potential uses of nanotech in the food industry. But it declines to specify its use of or plans for the technology. FDA officials say companies like Kraft are voluntarily but privately providing them with information about activities. Independent analysts say the disclosure  level falls far short of what will be needed to create public confidence.

Accordingly evidence received showed that the food industry (both in the UK and from abroad) has been unwilling to provide information about its activities. As a result, it has was not easy for the committee to "ascertain the progress that has been made by the industry in recent years or the level of investment that the UK food industry has put into commercialising the application of nanotechnologies."

Research currently: taste, pack & label
Current research the report discloses is focused on the nano-encapsulation of ingredients to maintain flavour and texture, while reducing ingredients such as fat and salt, or to improve shelf-life or enhance nutrient delivery. Other current research was investigating nano-coatings for packaging to improve shelf life, and reduce spoilage and waste, as well as looking at making packaging more intelligent (eg, by telling consumers when food is spoiled).

A company, eminate is cited in the report as just such research. It focuses on the food and pharmaceutical industries with the aim of “applying in-house process technologies to develop customer products in advanced coatings, materials & powders, food technology, drug delivery, measurement & scale up through to pilot productions.”

This is a five year project, receiving a grant of £3.5m from the government-funded Technology Strategy Board and has the collaborative support of leading commercial and academic partners
(Honda Trading Europe Limited, Leatherhead Food International and The University of Nottingham). eminate has taken just 15 months to bring three products (right)  — Natto Vitamin K2 Capsules, Ultra-fine Salt and machinery wear-resistant coating — closer  to market.
 
Dr Roger Carline, CEO of eminate, says: “We have created a new way of doing business. By setting clear objectives, defining partner roles and identifying market opportunities we are achieving the purposes for which eminate was established.

How others do it
But  one country, the Netherlands seems to be much less apprehensive of "the convergence of micro systems, fluidics, functional molecular cell design, and supra-molecular chemistry that bringing all food size structures within nano reach, according to (left) Dr. Frans Kampers. 

Director of BioNT,  the Wageningen, Netherlands based research center focused on the fundamental science and technology of micro- and nanosystems and their applications in food and health, Kampers is the strategic research coordinator in bio-nanotech (and was a contributor to the UK Nanotech and Food report).

His remit encompasses QA through sensing and diagnostics, food design, safety monitoring and control, innovative processing, encapsulation and delivery, and packaging and logistics. The center’s location in Wageningen is no accident. This area enthusiastically aims to be to the food industry  what San Jose, California area is to the semiconductor industry. It’s even referred to as the Food Valley.

Unlike the US, where great chunks of nanotechnology work are funded by the government’s DARPA program, or in the UK where top down direction comes from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and, to a certain extent, the Ministry of Defense, in the Netherlands the prime motivator and funding source is the actual agriculture and food industry.

So the growth is bottom up, and in moving toward nano, with the indigenous semiconductor industry, has found a happy symbiotic partner. There’s real synergy and enthusiasm among these areas in the Netherlands. It may not produce the best technology-equipped dismounted warrior, but it may well pay off in the areas of producing and exporting good food, medicines, and cosmetics.

The new EPSRC centres focus
Photonics and light using optical fibres to revolutionise the internet and telecommunications is Southampton University's remit. Loughborough will
work with regenerative medicine (therapies to enable damaged, diseased or defective tissues to work normally again) and Brunel focus on liquid metals technologies for the reuse and recycling of metals.

In Scotland the current enthusiastic concentration seems aimed more at the process with the molecular machine centre at Edinburgh University and the molecular architecture process of Glasgow University laboratories of Professors David Leigh (left) and Lee Cronin (right) respectively with NEMS as the chemical templating and patterning level for bottom up and top down assemblies in future technology manufacturing.

Where's the food enthusiasm?
But where the UK  seems to have missed out in research is that sense of enthusiasm and pleasure in and for the actual food. In contrast, consider the US Cornucopia approach to 'digital food' (a clearly nano affair, though US Massachusettes Institute of Technology opts to classify it as a fluid media, where the authoritative Dutch dub it 'wet' nano). 

MIT's Cornucopia is a  concept design for a personal food factory that brings the versatility of the digital world to the realm of cooking. In essence, it is a three dimensional printer(right:printer's head) for food, which works by storing, precisely mixing, depositing and cooking layers of ingredients.

Cornucopia's cooking process starts with an array of food canisters, which refrigerate and store a user's favorite ingredients. These are piped into a mixer and extruder head that can accurately deposit elaborate combinations of food.

While the deposition takes place, the food is heated or cooled by Cornucopia's chamber or the heating and cooling tubes located on the printing head.

This fabrication process not only allows for the creation of flavors and textures that would be completely unimaginable through other cooking techniques, but it also allows the user to have ultimate control over the origin, quality, nutritional value and taste of every meal.  Perhaps for food and nano, the digital approach could be more attractive than that of NEMS (hidden in the cannister tubes)!

The place to keep watching for NEMS, industry and manufacturing trend development is of course in the world's patents data bases. The US  position in 2009 was more than 4,400 patent granted and more than 49,000 pending as the claims are staked out for the gold of future nano IP.

But back in 2000, only 578 US patents were granted that referenced nano in the text. By 2009 more than 360 nano patent were being granted monthly. Intriguingly 24,442 US patents reference nano or nanotube, but materials such as fullerenes or molecular manipulators which do not use the word nano keep the score down. Development in new materials and processes like bio genetic and DNA developments can be powerfully camouflaged by clever patent wording, needing exhaustive and skilled search processes. Doubtless food patents will find their own hidden pathways too.

Rather depressingly in a quick  search for 'Nano' in UK patents finds the US, Switzerland, Australia and Korea filling the first 42 results, from positioning nano-particles, through thin film additive layer to (AMD) alignment & feature shaping. But nothing from the UK.

As for NEMS and food, the US patent office returned only 10 granted patents (2001-2009), but 44 applications are pending. Like the high snow melt, the flood takes time to arrive. Interesting to see what 2010 yields up, and certainly time for the UK food industry to rediscover its creative youth!!