Recent Publications
When imagining the future, we often assume things will keep moving in the direction they have been in the recent past. In the global food web, this means we would see continued growth in global efforts to streamline the way food is bought, prepared, and consumed, and the spread of novel food products. At the same time, food-related health problems such as diabetes and heart disease would persist...
Food sustains and nourishes us, and it also increasingly connects us to a global food web that is intertwined with politics, economics, environmental concerns, culture, and science. This global food web is undergoing rapid change, presenting considerable challenges and significant opportunities. Every one of the six broad areas of activity in the food system—agriculture and stewardship,...
In recent years, rising obesity rates, a crushing disease burden, and the direct impact of what we eat on our health has moved food to the forefront of health discourse. Food nourishes and sustains us, but it also impacts our health, environment, and politics in critical ways. We are pleased to announce the public release of IFTF's 2007 map of The Future of Foodscapes, which explores the major...
Welcome to the interactive online version of the Food Web 2020 Map.
Food sustains and nourishes us, but it also increasingly connects us to a global food web that is intertwined with politics, economics, environmental concerns, culture, and science. This global food web is undergoing rapid change, presenting considerable challenges and significant opportunities. Every one of the six broad areas...
"Food is our common ground, a universal experience." —James Beard
We all eat. It's not just that we all eat, but everything we do leads back to food. Food systems are integral to our society and the feedback-laden changes we see building on one another will shape our collective future.
Over the past 60 years, we have seen radical transformations in our food system that have leveraged more...
The future of food is an area ripe with dilemmas and opportunities. Declining biodiversity, global climate change, infectious disease, and global food sourcing (with attendant food safety concerns) are all intervening in food webs in different ways at different levels. We will have to confront the irony of the coexistence of malnutrition and obesity, as education, income, and health gaps grow...
In May 2008, the Coca-Cola Retailing Research Council (CCRRC) publicly released the results of a year-long research endeavor by the Institute for the Future's Health Horizons Program, studying the Future of Health and Wellness in Food Retailing. This project helps food retailers connect the dots between food and health, design strategic processes that help retail stores respond to this future,...
Health costs continue to skyrocket in industrialized countries. Populations are living longer and are subject to a greater number of chronic conditions such as obesity, heart disease, and diabetes. More people are considering the ethical implications of a consumer-based global economy in general (think of global warming and other ecological disasters) and scientific advances in biotechnology in...
We need only to pick up a magazine or turn on the news to see that there is a furor about obesity. From the halls of public health and corporate boardrooms to tabloid newspapers and women’s magazines people are talking about obesity. A social response is shaping up that is poised to move private behavior into the public domain and broaden the target of intervention from the individual to both the...
The dramatic scientific advances of the Human Genome Project—the mapping of the entire human genome—are revolutionizing the way we think about health, illness, and disease prevention. Not only do advances in genomics increase our understanding of the inherited basis of disease, allow us to develop new drugs with specific molecular targets, and help us to understand why drugs are more effective or...
