Foods in a Digital World Book Launch

We live in a world that is changing very quickly as a result of ever-improving digital communication. This has profound implications for our food industry. We can expect substantial change over the next 5 – 10 years in the way food is selected, purchased and prepared, and we need to be ready for it.

“Foods in a Digital World” arose from a meeting held by the Riddet Institute in February 2017 to discuss smart foods, which was attended by a group of invited industry thought leaders. The meeting suggested a small group should formulate an action plan for New Zealand food organizations to exploit the digital revolution to develop smart food systems as part of the drive to add value to New Zealand’s food.

As a result, a small group led by Mike Boland (Riddet Institute AI), and involving Jeremy Hill (Fonterra), Juliet Ansell (Zespri), Carol Ward (Zespri), Steffan Kelly (The Lean Hub) and Ian Proudfoot (KPMG) held a series of discussions and produced the booklet “Foods in a Digital World”. This has recently been printed and is to be widely circulated to New Zealand policy makers and industry.

This booklet is a briefing document that alerts industry to what is happening in the world of digital marketing of food and personalisable nutrition and provides an outline of an action plan with five recommendations to deal with this threat and opportunity. “Foods in a Digital World” should be considered as a Riddet Institute advisory document, following in the footsteps of “A Call to Arms”. It is intended that a project proposal in the forthcoming MBIE Endeavour round will follow this up.

For those who wish to read a copy of the booklet online, it can be found in our Corporate Publications section under “About Us”