What about the health of the planet?
The clean label movement has not necessarily benefitted the environment, either.
Mehmood Kahn, MD, vice chairman and chief scientific officer at PepsiCo gave the example of growing almonds in the desert and extracting water from aquafers to do so. “Sure, it’s great, it’s clean, it’s organic. But we’ve potentially taken away the food supply from the next generation. At some point, we need to ask where we are going with this. Food safety and food sustainability – technology plays a role there.”
Any scaled business has a responsibility to reduce its carbon impact and water usage and source ingredients responsibly, he added, but sometimes doing so goes against consumer demands.
While all food guidelines urge the public to eat more fruit and vegetables, this would require a massive increase in fruit and vegetable production that may not be viable.
