A sustainable food supply is one of the great contemporary challenges facing humanity. Climate change, water availability and the loss of agricultural land will force changes in food production systems at a time when the global population continues to grow. Furthermore, the world is struggling with obesity, metabolic diseases and malnutrition, caused by excessive or unbalanced diets. New technologies that have the potential to disrupt and change the very basis of food production are also emerging.

The next generation of food products will need to address not only nutrition and health, but also the most pressing environmental and ethical issues of our time. There is an urgent need for foods to become more sustainable: environmentally, nutritionally, socially, and economically. This will require the introduction of new materials in the food chain, such as novel crops, animal protein replacers, marine plants and food materials from bioreactors, as well as the creation of foods that appeal to consumers and deliver their nutritional needs with less wastage.

The 2023 Food Structures, Digestion and Health international conference is seventh in the series co-hosted by the Riddet Institute and CSIRO. It brings together world-leading scientists from diverse disciplines and innovators from the food industry with a common interest in designing Future Foods in Harmony with Nature. These foods will be sustainable, support optimal nutrition, human health and wellbeing, and appeal to the preferences of tomorrow’s global consumers. In particular, the conference addresses some of the most important scientific challenges for optimising the nutritional value of sustainable foods, by unpacking the hierarchy of complex structures occurring in foods and their modifications during processing and gastrointestinal digestion. Increasing knowledge of the digestive behaviour of food materials will translate into the formulation of foods that provides optimum nutrient bioaccessibility and absorption.

The conference will offer researchers and industry professionals the opportunity to network across disciplines, form research collaborations and partnerships, and develop joint research initiatives. Early career researchers and students will have the opportunity to present their research to leading scientists and learn new skills.