An exclusive interview with Maame Ekua Manful, food scientist, entrepreneur, and systems thinker at the intersection of nutrition and food safety
Michelle Müller, Marketing Assistant at NEMIS Technologies:
I am Maame Ekua Manful, a food scientist working at the intersection of nutrition and food safety. After my first two degrees in food science, I saw the need to specialize in food safety and quality, specifically in food quality management systems. I believe that there is no value in consuming nutritional products if they are not also safe for such consumption. Currently, I am focusing my doctoral research on food safety and regulatory affairs of upcycled ingredients.
My passion for food safety sprung out of a personal experience fifteen years ago, when after eating contaminated food, I got very sick. After being wrongly diagnosed with malaria, not knowing that I was actually suffering from typhoid fever caused by salmonella I almost lost my life. This experience had a significant impact on me - my education, family, and whole life. Unfortunately, we forget to remember that when food safety incidences happen, it is not only about the patient, but also about the cascading effects they cause. So based on my personal story, I think that everyone, whether in the developed world or the developing world, should have the right to access safe food.
The food system game changers lab supports the UN food system summit, whereby over 850 game changers were selected from 127 countries and were grouped into 24 cohorts. These 24 cohorts went through a 12-week solution acceleration program, where the food system game changers lab encouraged them to collaboratively develop what we call action agendas. I had the honor to guide cohort 24, where we worked on promoting food safety.
Regarding the biggest challenge in our food system, I think it is food safety. So often, we only see a reactionary approach to food safety. Consumption of food comes with food safety issues such as microbiological contamination, pesticide residues, allergens, or endocrine disruptors. While consequences of malnutrition can partially be undone, food safety incidents are very hard to reverse and most of the time, the costs and implications are extremely expensive.
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The challenge here is that it is not only about feeding as many people as possible, but it is also about producing large quantities of safe food. Suppose we only concentrate on the facts that we have more mouths to feed and use rapid food manufacturing methods, robots, and AI to produce more and more. We are prone to forget that food safety detection methods should go along with the pace of rapid manufacturing systems.
We must come up with localized, democratized methods to ensure that people everywhere can be in control of the safety of their food. This means that we need to shift from traditional methods that are often laborious, resource intensive and time-consuming to safe, rapid, low-cost, easy-to-use methods which can be used by everyone everywhere where food safety must be ensured. With rapid food manufacturing systems, we need rapid food safety screening and detection systems - and this goes hand in hand with producing more food to ensure global food security.
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There is an unleveled playing field, such that the more resources you have, the more you can stick to the traditional food safety detection methods. This does not favor resource-constrained sectors, such as low-income countries within the developing world. To level a playground, we need to make sure that we give access to simple tools that can be used by everyone, whether you are rich or poor, to ensure that a product you are bringing into the market is safe. Because this is a caveat - we need to have safe food.
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Therefore, I think that it is time for us to have simple, ready-to-use, low-cost, on-site testing, or screening methods, to screen your products for food safety before taking them to the market. With this approach, I believe we will save a large bunk of the socio-economic costs of foodborne illnesses that currently exceed 110 billion USD. My goal is to live in a world where I trust that food is safe and where everyone is able to be in charge of their food safety.