Lee Ki-won, left, food tech professor at Seoul National University, and So-jung Trinity Park, director of The Trinity, at the World FoodTech Council's headquarters in Seoul / Courtesy of The Trinity
Technology is reshaping nearly every stage of how we eat — from distribution and selection to purchase and consumption.
Lunch arrives with a tap on a delivery app. Groceries appear at the door hours after an online order. Some consumers now pay using nothing more than their face, while others ask artificial intelligence (AI) assistants what to eat or which coffee beans suit their taste.
For Lee Ki-won, a food tech professor at Seoul National University (SNU), this is not a passing phase but a preview of where the global food industry is headed.
With an academic background in food science and biotechnology, he founded the FoodTech Department at SNU six years ago and runs the FoodTech Emergence Center on campus, where students are trained to build food tech businesses.
Food tech refers to technologies applied to food consumption and distribution, which Lee distinguishes from traditional food technology.
“Food technology has more to do with production, using engineering and science, often traditional science,” Lee told The Korea Times in an interview in Seoul, Feb. 9. “Food tech is about technologies involved in distributing and consuming food.”
The professor believes Korea is at the forefront of food tech globally, thanks to giants such as Samsung Electronics.
“People search for what to eat using artificial intelligence embedded in Samsung devices and cook with appliances Samsung makes. They also use Samsung devices and apps to monitor their health and take that information into account when deciding their next meals,” he explained.
The professor also predicts that robots powered by physical AI will soon dominate kitchen work. “The core of food tech is physical AI — who else will cook, deliver or manufacture food, if not AI robots?” he said.
Source: Korea Times News
