Boston Globe reporter Amy Crawford highlights MIT startup Spoiler Alert, which “helps food businesses manage surplus inventory (its customers include Sysco, the world’s largest food wholesaler) and runs an online marketplace for discounted food sales and tax-deductible donations throughout New England.”
MIT researchers have developed a new system to detect contaminated food by scanning a product’s RFID tags, reports Devin Coldewey for TechCrunch. The system can “tell the difference between pure and melamine-contaminated baby formula, and between various adulterations of pure ethyl alcohol,” Coldewey explains.
Chronicle highlights MIT startup Spyce, a restaurant with a robotic kitchen. At Spyce, the flames used to heat a wok “are replaced with induction metal,” explains Erika Tarantal. “The robot-controlled rotation ensures cooking on all sides.”
Deborah Blum, director of the Knight Science Journalism Program, speaks with Boston Globe reporter Michael Floreak about her book exploring the origins of food regulation in the U.S. The book, “reminded me why these rules are so important and what a thin line they are between us and the bad old days of the 19th century when cookbook authors had to warn their readers about fake food,” she explains.
Writing for the American History Magazine, Sarah Richardson highlights the trailblazing path of Ellen Swallow Richards. Richardson notes that Swallow Richards was a “one-woman parade of firsts: first female student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, first female fellow of the American Association of Mining and Metallurgy, first female professor at MIT.”
MIT alumni Aman Narang and Steve Fredette speak with NECN’s Brian Burnell about their startup Toast, which provides cloud-based, restaurant management software. Narang explains that Toast was created to replace outdated restaurant technology and “build something from the ground up that could connect their diners, their guests, their employees, and make the restauranteur’s life more efficient.”
The Media Lab’s Open Agriculture Initiative is releasing a Personal Food Computer, which uses the same algorithms as the lab and is “capable of growing four plants at a time,” reports Howie Kahn of The Wall Street Journal. Research scientist Caleb Harper hopes the PFC technology, which will be piloted in Boston-area schools, “will expand our knowledge of cultivation on a rapidly changing planet.”
Wall Street Journal reporters Annie Gasparro and Jesse Newman spotlight the Media Lab’s Open Agriculture Initiative, where Caleb Harper is at work developing a Food Computer. Harper explains that the Food Computer, a controlled environment where all of a plant’s needs are controlled and tracked, is a “fundamentally different way of thinking about where we plant things and why.”
A new book by Deborah Blum, director of the Knight Science Journalism Program, focuses on Harvey Washington Wiley’s “fight for pure food,” explains Joshua Johnson, host of NPR’s 1A. While food safety has improved, Blum believes “it’s not safe enough and that our safety mechanisms have been – as they were in Wiley’s time – weakened over the years.”
Deborah Blum, director of the Knight Science Journalism Program, speaks with Radio Boston’s Deborah Becker about her book on Harvey Washington Wiley’s quest to make food safer in America. “I think we have a long way to go in being really transparent about what’s in food,” says Blum about current food safety protections.
Prof. Joi Ito, director of the Media Lab, writes for Wired about how scientists are creating new ways to develop meat-free foods. Ito writes that it’s, “feasible to imagine a system that unleashes a culinary bonanza of nutritional, flavor and texture options for future chefs while also lowering the environmental impact of belching cows, concentrated animal-feeding operations, and expensive and energy-inefficient refrigerated supply chains.”
In an article published by Salon, Prof. Heather Paxson examines the American artisanal cheese industry. Paxson writes that, “food-making traditions in the United States are often animated by personal narratives of innovation rather than, as in Europe, adherence to customary tradition.”
MIT spinout Ginkgo Bioworks is highlighted on the 2018 CNBC Disruptor 50 list, reports CNBC’s Andrew Zaleski. Zaleski notes that Ginkgo Bioworks, “has developed an automated process for combining genetic parts that has made it the largest designer of printed DNA in the world. That breakthrough has positioned the start-up to change the face of a variety of industries.”
Devra First, food writer for The Boston Globe, visits Spyce, the robot kitchen restaurant created by four MIT alumni. “When it comes to matters of taste, we (still) need people,” says First. “The Spyce inventors enlisted famed chef Daniel Boulud, who is culinary director of and an investor in the company.”
NBC Boston’s Brian Shactman reports from Spyce, a new Boston restaurant established by four alumni that uses a robotic kitchen to deliver healthy food fast. As students at MIT, the group was “sick of paying so much money for decent food,” says Schactman. “Doing what MIT students do best, they decided to invent something to solve the problem.”