Designing Food with Purpose: Enhancing Food Characteristics
Deaza Fernández María Paula
Keywords: food design, gastronomy, customisation, functional foods.
Abstract:
Food is vital for human survival, and over time, its variety has grown exponentially to meet diverse consumer needs, requirements, and expectations. Public health, environmental, and economic factors increasingly influence food design. Gastronomy plays a key role in this process, leveraging expertise in transformation techniques, food composition, and substitution options to enhance or preserve sensory qualities.
Chefs and gastronomists are experts at collaborating with interdisciplinary teams, using this knowledge to identify diverse alternatives that meet all industry and customer demands. It is crucial to be aware of the numerous ingredients and how to use them to satisfy most requirements, such as reducing costs significantly, targeting customers to ensure there will be people interested in consuming the product, and ensuring the feasibility of obtaining the raw materials and having enough resources to produce it on the required scale.
Designing food with a purpose is one of the key factors nowadays. The growing importance of functional foods and product customisation is among the most valuable trends in the food industry in recent years. However, this trend has also led to increased consumption of highly processed foods. This is why the expertise of chefs is becoming increasingly important, as they find ways to preserve the essential food qualities without adding chemical additives, but by enhancing the natural properties of the ingredients.
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