Food is at the center of society’s most pressing challenges and opportunities.
Diet-related diseases account for 1 in 5 deaths around the world and dominant farming practices compromise the health of our planet. We need to transform food systems through data-driven solutions for healthier people and a healthier planet.
Mission: The Periodic Table of Food Initiative (PTFI) is building a global ecosystem and providing data tools to catalog the biomolecular composition of the world’s food supply.
Vision: We seek to enable data-driven solutions to improve human and planetary health.
What Is in Food? How Does This Vary?
Given the tremendous scientific and technological advances over the past few decades, it is hard to believe how little we know about what is in the food we eat. Technical challenges have prevented comprehensive, standardized, and accessible data on food composition. For example, most national food composition databases provide data on fewer than 150 biomolecules in food despite the 26,000+ food biomolecules estimated in the scientific literature, including macronutrients, micronutrients, specialized metabolites and exogenous compounds.
For the first time in history, with advanced analytics and a global coordinated approach, we can imagine knowing all the biomolecules in food and how they vary with environmental conditions and food system practices. With comprehensive profiling of all biomolecules in food along with where and how they were grown, the PTFI seeks to enable stakeholders across the food system to develop solutions to the challenges we face around food, in ways that best support human and planetary health in a changing world.
Data-Driven Solutions
PTFI data can be applied across the food system to inform practices, programs, and policies, including the following priority areas: