Landscaping Study – Modern Foods (Working Paper)

Landscaping Study – Modern Foods (Working Paper) Landscaping Study – Modern Foods (Working Paper) Date August 2020 V1 Organisation Gamos Quick cooking beans save time, fuel & boost nutrition, Photo ©2017CIAT/GeorginaSmith Authored by: Nigel Scott, Melinda Barnard-Tallier, Anna Clements, Rohan Inston, Simeon Lapworth, Martin Price This material has been funded by UKAid from the UK government; however, the views expressed do not necessarily reflect the UK government’s official policies. www.mecs.org.uk Executive Summary The MECS programme focuses on an alternative strategy to the enduring problem of biomass-based cooking1. It calls for a greater focus on modern energy as the source of clean cooking, and has evidenced that cooking with modern energy using energy-efficient appliances can be cost effective, particularly for urban communities. To date the programme has focused on household energy consumption. As at February 2020, the programme added research workstreams on energy for institutional cooking, for cooking energy in humanitarian contexts, and proposed that the household work should extend its remit to consider the changing habits of eating. This was originally called ‘pre-cooking’. The concept underlying the workstream was that when we consider the energy used in the kitchen in the UK, the average has halved since 1970. This has been due to three factors: increased efficiency in appliances; a re-coding of appliances2; and the increased use of easier-to-cook food and bought-in food. The architects of the MECS programme speculated whether a way to reduce the kitchen energy in their target countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and South and South-East Asia (SSEA) might be to encourage a greater use of ‘pre-cooking’. A brief internet scan brought to the foreground the work of IDRC in Kenya who had researched and stimulated the production of ‘pre-cooked beans’ (dried beans that retained their nutritional value and could be cooked in a kitchen in 15 minutes in contrast to similar beans requiring several hours of soaking and cooking from raw). Acknowledging that households across the Global South predominantly process food from a raw to cooked state to produce a meal, a process that is not only timely but energy intensive, depending on the cooking system used, the core research question for the workstream became: Can the amount of energy to be used in cooking a meal in the kitchen be cost effectively reduced, in a culturally acceptable manner, by partially (or indeed fully) processing food before the household starts adding kitchen energy? For this landscape study, the team went beyond the idea of ‘pre-cooking beans’ and considered the wider range of different foodstuffs, food preparation and eating behaviours that may displace energy from household kitchens. One particular incident3 reinforced the idea that cooking behaviours are changing, particularly in urban communities, and therefore the landscape study included a view on the social change that means cooking practices are being transformed. This landscape study supports the core aim of MECS by recognising that a holistic approach to cooking needs to be undertaken: energy usage in the kitchen does not simply start the moment the pot is put on to boil, but rather is deeply-nuanced and must be considered from pre-cooking through to post-cooking. Economic prosperity and demographic change have led to significant changes in food culture, with the adoption and increased consumption of pre-cooked and processed foods in eating patterns across the globe. 1 The ‘enduring problem’ includes early death due to Household Air Pollution (4m/a); deforestation; contribution to climate change, particularly black particulates; the burden on women for both fuel collection and food preparation; a reduction of time for women limiting economic activity; and a stress on urban finances, among other things. 2 Strangely, kettles and microwaves were recoded as small appliances, and are no longer counted as being within the kitchen! 3 At a stakeholder meeting in Uganda, the cooking of matoke in an electric pressure cooker (EPC) demonstrated a significantly-reduced cooking time. However, while pleased with the outcome, the result prompted locals to point out that urbanites had already developed shortcuts to cook the dish. Thus, there were two ways to cook the dish: a traditional way and an urban one. They were, nevertheless, impressed that the EPC had delivered a meal that tasted as if it had been cooked in the traditional way, but took the time of the urban approach. ii www.mecs.org.uk This paper explores what ‘modern foods’ and ‘modern eating’ encompasses, and the opportunities it may offer in reducing energy consumption in the form of ‘modern cooking’ across households in Africa and Asia. The FAO defines sustainable diets as those “with low environmental impacts which contribute to food and nutrition security and to healthy life for present and future generations. Sustainable diets are protective and respectful of biodiversity and ecosystems, culturally acceptable, accessible, economically fair and affordable; nutritionally adequate, safe and healthy; while optimizing natural and human resources” (FAO 2012). The nutrition transition narrative suggests that developing countries in SSA and SSEA increasingly tend to favour and consume refined, foreign grains (rice, and wheat) over traditional grains such as maize, millet and sorghum, despite associated concerns around health. Section 4 elaborates the changing eating habits of developing nations, by looking at the interconnected motivators driving change at both consumer and national levels. Section 5 examines the role food processing plays in feeding a growing global population, specifically in countries where cooking technology is limited, yet the need for nutritious, quality food produce is high. The section highlights rapid growth in consumption of processed foods across Sub-Saharan and South and South-East Asian countries, as well as discussing the limits, extent and changes of the food processing sector. It dwells on emerging interest in developing convenient, modern foods from indigenous, nutritious and resilient crops. It examines the potential benefits that may come from increasing a country’s own national processing sector, especially in developing regions: reduced harvest waste, lower levels of food loss, and improved profit margins in the local agriculture sectors. Eating out (section 6) both in the forms of going to restaurants and ordering food from external sources to enjoy at home has seen a significant rise in recent years. Whilst existing literature on the topic is heavily focused on eating out in urban contexts across the Global North, this paper attempts to extract evidence for consumption of street food, fast food, and restaurants in the Global South, highlighting that for lower-income earners in particular, street foods and the informal foodservice are significant contributors to their daily dietary intake. It supplements this data through an exploration of online food-delivery services, cloud kitchens and virtual restaurants as they emerge and gain popularity in urban contexts across the Global South, and focuses on the evolving technologies and socio-economic drivers of change responsible for the rapid shift towards eating out. In looking at food waste (Section 7), this paper addresses the complexities around what constitutes consumer food waste, as distinct from post-harvest losses, and the causes of waste, specifically prioritizing food waste at the household level. The section further describes technical interventions and social factors associated with efforts to reduce food waste. It focuses on access to domestic refrigeration, which requires access to electricity, and the need to understand more about the impacts on food waste. From a food policy perspective (section 8), this report closely examines the food policy landscape of MECS countries. Notably, trade liberalization and demographic changes are the primary drivers of food innovation, but, as this report emphasizes, a deep understanding of national policy-making is imperative in successfully identifying opportunities to contribute to not only the modernisation of food systems, but also the long-term reduction of domestic energy use in cooking. Section 9 takes us away from the formal aspects of food to the cultural associations that food, and cooking, embody. Through a cultural-historical lens, we see food as more than sustenance, holding adjunct values of belonging, identity, hierarchy, power and gender. By highlighting the fine balance between culture, food, and energy, this paper makes a start at examining the cultural shifts around food and cooking that need to be considered within the context of modern foods and energy-efficient cooking systems. iii www.mecs.org.uk Finally, through a series of stakeholder interviews, this report engages with a number of experts on issues encountered in the process of modernizing food systems relating to Covid-19, food safety and nutritional value, energy systems, innovation needs, and socio-cultural trends. A common theme that has emerged in the research presented is that little attention is given to the energy implications, driven by nutrition, sustainability and economic development, of food-related interventions in the Global South. However, eating consciously is of fundamental importance. Our aim, then, is to promote foods that are of high nutritional value, yet are low in cost and require low energy in preparation. In

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