Wisdom from the Far East
Dr. Heinz and the president of the Metal Industries Research & Development Centers, Dr. Paul Chung, in Kaohsiung, Taiwan
The people in East Asia basically have a different understanding of food than people in the western world: They focus on a consonance of pleasure and balanced intake of nutrients. Often, the desire for eating a certain food is governed by the presence of a defined health benefit, no matter whether this has been scientifically substantiated or simply passed down for generations. The diversity of basic ingredients and the great variation of final products have to be taken into consideration, for example, when linking China exclusively with the fact that more than 50% of the global pork production is being consumed in this country. One should also keep in mind that there are just 3% of the Chinese population suffering from obesity compared to 30% and more in western societies (e.g. 33% in the USA). Nowhere in East Asia there is anything like our education for proper nutrition that we practice for 40 years now without much success.
Having stated this, one could conclude that food companies in East Asia might have a lot of difficulties because the purchasing power is also significantly lower than in the western states. During his trip through East Asia, Dr. Volker Heinz, head of the DIL, could see for himself more than once that this assumption is not true. During his visits to Taiwan and South Korea, for example, he made contact with interesting companies which may turn out to become promising partner for future activities of the DIL. Despite all divergences in nutrition and food products, the processing process is the connecting link. This means that the DIL’s motto “less chemistry, more physics” has high priority in Asia as well.
However, the diversity and multiplicity of the vegetable products processed in that region of the world could be improved and made more sustainable by the use of intelligent technologies. The ELCRACK® technology developed at the DIL aroused great interest, resulting in the agreement that the DIL will fit several processing companies with its proprietary system for test purposes.
Dr. Heinz underlined the significance of an innovative process technology for a competitive future food production in front of 100 industrial representatives. The “DIL model” as private, independent development platform also was met with great interest. It is expected that the first Asian companies will become members in the DIL very soon.
