As food companies evaluate emerging technologies and operational pressures, industry stakeholders at IFT FIRST Monday in Chicago pointed to a common theme: Progress depends not just on having new tools or resources available, but on knowing how to apply them strategically across the workforce, production, and sustainability. Here's what they had to say:
AI literacy as a workforce priority
Over 50% of food industry professionals use AI on a daily basis, but most have not received any formal training on it.
That’s according to Hanyu Chen, Assistant Professor at Purdue University. Chen helped to create the “AI Applications in Food
Hanyu Chen, Assistant Professor at Purdue UniversityProFood World
“You can use ChatGPT, Gemini, or Copilot; it doesn’t matter to us as instructors. But I want you to be able to have more confidence, more governance, and more responsibility and accountability with the same tools after taking this training,” Chen said.
As companies work to build AI literacy in their workforce, Chen highlighted a few key factors to consider:
- Define your competencies first and anchor AI use in your own workflows. Try to find specific use cases and tools over high-level, more generic options.
- Embed ethics from day one. Define guardrails and the reasons behind them for your team.
- Design training for your real learners, matching the format to the team members using the system.
- Measure and iterate. Try to track the efficacy and accuracy of AI uses, and ensure workers have a practical understanding of the tools available.
Turning processing data into action
Modern food processing technology can offer more data than ever before for manufacturers, but effective use of that data is vital to create real impact on food quality, consistency, and nutritional outcomes.
(L to R) Reza Ovissipour of Texas A&M University, Banu Sezer of Anton Paar, John Hayes of Penn State UniversityProFood World
“You may see in every aisle [on the expo floor] there are solutions that give you a value, number, or graph, but which one is meaningful? Which one will help you to overcome problems?” asked Dr. Banu Sezer, Global Market Development at Anton Paar. “Not every data is meaningful, not every data is useful.”
Sezer said a key to strategic data use is education, helping food scientists, quality control engineers, and R&D teams to understand which analytics to use, when to apply them, and how to turn data into action.
Food processors should also know that one data collection tool may not tell the whole story, explained John Hayes, Professor at Penn State University. Hayes alluded to smartphone apps that can track what a user ate, but won’t track things like eating speed, portion size, or macronutrient composition.
“As a subject matter expert, you have to be skeptical when someone comes along with a magic tool that’s going to make your life so incredibly easy,” Hayes said.
Clean label and production reality
Clean-label demand may start with consumer expectations, but food manufacturers have to solve the day-to-day production realities behind it.
Food industry leaders discussed the challenges of meeting
(L to R) Nitin Joshi of PepsiCo, Cordell Hardy of Cargill, Jay Bunte of Ingredion Incorporated, Adam Shahaf of Phytolon, Catherine Vinci of GivaudanProFood World
“It takes time to validate all of these solutions, and the consumer wants to move fast,” Vinci said. “We’re changing the base of the product, so we’re going to encounter some ingredient interactions and find out two ingredients don’t work well together. It’s really about how to move fast, and how to manage expectations and make a good product in the meantime.”
Ingredient companies are also balancing clean-label demand against larger food system pressures, using innovations like new texture solutions, precision fermentation, and plant-derived materials, added Cordell Hardy, VP, North America R&D – Food Enterprise at Cargill.
“We have more tools at our disposal to meet an increasingly challenging need around transparency, and rebalancing to make new products aligned with emerging consumer desire, or the same product in different ways to help overcome supply chain, geopolitical, or regulatory constraints,” Hardy said. “Innovation is allowing us a mechanism for taking different manufacturing methods or feedstocks and translating them to not just edible, but preferred, or satisfying food solutions that people are going to pay for.”
A varied approach to water stewardship
To truly improve water stewardship, food and beverage processors may need more than a single solution.
(L to R) Paul Bowen of BIER/GHD, John Ikeda of Water Environment FederationProFood World
“The first thing we did was focus on what we could control, which was inside the plant,” Bowen explained. “Over the time I was in that role, we reduced our water use from over four gallons per gallon of product to less than two. We were at about 1.8 gallons per gallon of product, which meant only 0.8 gallons went down the drain.”
The company also focused on how to sustainably grow ingredients, replenish water supplies in areas where it operates, and filter process water for reuse. Bowen said Coca-Cola began capturing water used to rinse cans before it hit the floor, filtering it, and running it back through the water treatment process. The strategy reduced water purchases, treatment needed, and discharge in the operation.
“It was a multi-pronged approach, but that’s what you have to do,” Bowen said.
