The Acceptance of Alternative and Future Nutritional Products: Insects, Substitute Products and Food from the 3D Printer

Master's Thesis from the year 2016 in the subject Health - Nutritional Science, grade: 2,0, Buckinghamshire New University, language: English, abstract: How is the acceptance of Food and Beverage Department heads regarding alternative and future nutritional products? Could an implementation of such products lead to competitive advantages in the hospitality gastronomy? That master's thesis covers the topics; Aquaponic farming, Insects, alternative food products and food from 3D printer. The purpose of this research has two main objectives: To identify the degree of knowledge in general acceptance concerning afn-products available on the market. To discover the presumption of gaining competitive advantages due to the implementation of afn-products. The world's population increased by 1 billion to 7 billion people in the last 14 years. The UN expects about 9.6 billion people on the globe in 2050. Assumed that the dietary habits are constant the double amount of food needs to be produced. In contrast to that statement the WWF and WRAP reported, that about 1.3 billion tonnes of food are thrown away worldwide each year. The effects of climate change, overfishing and the growing scarcity of natural resources (land, water and energy) force us to rethink alternative future diet strategies globally. According to estimates of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) the production of meat will increase from currently 229 to 465 million ton in 2050. For milk production an increase from current 580 to 1.043 billion tons has been forecasted. Moreover, the FAO stated, that 71.2% of the world's commercial fish stocks were currently being fished as maximum, 28.8% are overfished. According to Valin et al. (2014), the food demand is expected to rise by 59-98% between 2005 and 2050 that is slightly above the recent FAO forecast of 54% from 2005/2007.