Food Materials Engineering

1. We investigate the multiscale structure of food materials, in the original raw materials, during conversion of these raw materials into food ingredients, and during structuring of these ingredients into formulated foods that we enjoy eating.
2. We explore the potential of retaining some of the structure of raw materials in ingredients, as this can reduce the number of additives needed to create stable foods, and significantly reduce the overall environmental impact of foods.
3. We also explore the combination of different food materials to create new food materials, to extend the technical functional and digestive properties that we can achieve.
4. We capture the relation between the structural complexity and the properties of foods, we use data-driven modelling of the functionalities of food ingredients when used in formulated foods, as function of their origins, processing histories and structural characeristics.
5. To have sufficient experimental data for data-driven modelling, we develop new, scalable experimental methods to quantify the technical and digestive functionalities as function of the origins and processing history.

AI4NaturalFood: Naturally Smart: Sustainable Food using Artificial Intelligence

RECRUIT grant. PI: Prof. Remko Boom: Funding agency: Novo Nordisk Foundation (NNF). Jan 2025-Dec 2031.

Direct use of the native structure of plant raw materials for our foods can provide large savings of greenhouse gas emissions and water, while doubling the final amount of food produced. It also enables a diet with more natural fibre without having to use additives.

Currently, plant ingredients are refined to almost molecular purity - and then combined again to create structured foods. This isolation is resource intensive, and the removal of fibre and micronutrients compromises the nutritional value. The original structure in plant seeds resembles the structure of foods; so why not retain the structures that nature already provides? Retaining these native structures however makes formulation of foods very complex, as many mechanisms interact at the same time. To enable mild processing of natural ingredients whilst directly using the plant’s native structures, we model these complex interactions using data-driven approaches with a sufficiently expressive class of models.

Finded by the Novo Nordisk Foundation, the project is a unique collaboration between KU’s FOOD Department and the Computer Science (DIKU) department. The FOOD department develops new methods for generating sufficient experimetal data on physicochemical and digestive functionalities, which are then used at DIKU to build physics-informed models that can be used to optimise the formulations on sustainability indicators.

Read more about AI4NaturalFoods

Acetate consortium, Phase 2

Co-PI: Prof. Remko Boom: Funding agency: Novo Nordisk Foundation (NNF). Aug 2025-June 2027.

Imagine if we were able to turn one of our biggest environmental challenges – CO₂ – into nutritious food. The idea is not as far out as it may sound: funded by the Gates Foundation and the Novo Nordisk Foundation, the Acetate-to-Food Consortium translates the principles that have been shown in the last two years, towards production of optimal food ingredients and foods.

The goal is to mitigate food insecurity and climate change as well as eliminating land use for food production. The principle behind is based on natural processes that can be scaled into financially viable production of nutritious food without using agricultural land. Our role in this is to characterize the technical and digestive functional properties of the ingredients, as function of their processing history, structure and composition, to optimize processing and formulation of structured foods with excellent taste and minimal footprint.