FOODINNOVA CONFERENCE AND THE PARADIGM OF THE INNOVATION IN TRADITIONAL FOOD PRODUCTION

Foodinnova 2017 is the fourth edition of the conference on food innovation, in particular focusing on advances in food engineering, technologies, packaging and analyses. The innovation in food processing is facing the paradigm of the necessity to innovate the food production to open new opportunities to the food industry and to give more sustainability to the food system a planetary need. In the frame of this view, it could seem to be a paradox, indeed, to talk about innovation in traditional foods. In fact, the first issue of the Foodinnova conference, in Valencia on 2010, was mainly finalized to this mega-topic. But it is not a paradox, since the local and traditional food production is doing a gradual - even some times not evident for the consumer view - evolution in the frame of the valorization of the traditional foods and the rationalization of their production. For sure, traditional foods are the basis of many of both European and extra-European countries diets, even if the development of the food processing in the last decades brought to the design, industrialization and commercialization of new foods. As a result of a EU policy on local food valorization, a large number of traditional products were certified throughout the Certifications of Origin (Protected Origin Denomination, Protected Geographical Origin, etc.) in order to certify the labeling of certain type of traditional food well recognized for tradition, history and quality. Food engineers and food scientists have thus also a “mission” to ensure the safety of industrial products of mass consumption, but also that to support the industries –even in the traditional production - in their process of knowledge development and food processing and products’ innovation, in a perspective of improving the sustainability of the food system at a whole. Aim of the present talk shall be to individuate the contexts in which food engineering and food science could play an essential roles in developing strategies to implement innovation steps in traditional food productions, considering some example mainly related to the EU and Italian domain.