Whether fruit, meat or cheese – the quality of food is not always as consumers would like it to be. But, in future, a spectrometer will allow them to gage the quality of food before they buy it. No bigger than a sugar cube, the device is inexpensive to manufacture and could one day even be installed in smartphones.

Whether or not a wine turns out to be as outstanding as the winemaker hopes depends on the quality of the yeasts; they control the fermentation process and create the distinctive flavor. A new sensor allows winemakers to establish whether the grape must contains the right sort of microorganisms before fermentation has even begun.

It looks like a cutlet, it‘s juicy and fibrous like a cutlet, and it even chews with the consistency of a real cutlet – but the ingredients are 100 percent vegetable. Researchers are using a new method to prepare a meat substitute that not only tastes good, but is also environmentally sustainable.

Convenience foods are growing in popularity, and the food they contain is usually protected by films based on petrochemicals. Now researchers have not only developed a biomaterial from whey protein, they have also come up with a commercially viable method of producing multifunctional films on an industrial scale.

Summer without ice cream – for many, it’s unthinkable. But those who are milk or lactose-intolerant must often go without. Fraunhofer researchers now offer an alternative: “Lupinesse” – the purely plant-based delicacy that is free of lactose and cholesterol, with valuable lupin protein.

Food should be delicious, healthy and sustainably produced. Researchers are working on new methods to use as many parts of plants as possible for nutrition. In the future, vegetable ingredients could replace animal raw materials. Lupin seeds, for instance, can be used to produce low-fat, exquisite sausage products.

Although drinking water is monitored more strictly than almost anything, our water supply network is still not immune to accidents, wear and tear or targeted attacks. A one-minute warning system for toxins and other substances in water hazardous to health could set off alarms in future if there is a danger.