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Is food a bigger threat than AI? What the Lancet tells the food industry

Are-food-related-threats-more-dangerous-than-AI

Published on October 12, 2026

Ahead of our upcoming webinar on global FoodTech investment and trends next week (October 20 at 11 am CET; you can register here), I want to put these trends into perspective and offer hints on how much more we need agrifood innovation.

A new Lancet Commission examines the major threats to global health through 2100. Its findings are a reminder of how much is at stake in food and nutrition. For food companies and investors, they also offer a starting point for understanding how pressure to improve health could reshape products, portfolios and innovation priorities.

Are food-related threats more dangerous than AI?

While this is maybe a catchy question, it is also one of the conclusions we can draw from the 17 threats examined by the Lancet commission, from climate change and pandemics to nuclear conflict and the malicious use of artificial intelligence.

While most of the attention is being put on AI threats, which are separately classified, not very reassuringly, as existential threats. However, beyond these, two areas related to food and lifestyle stand out, and how much progress can be made:

  • Obesity, diet and sedentary lifestyles: addressing these risks could prevent the loss of around 23 billion years of healthy life, the largest threat identified in the study.
  • Unhealthy ageing, high blood pressure and high alcohol use, with 8, 5 and 2.5 billion years of healthy life potentially recoverable by 2100 respectively. Each points to areas where food and beverage innovation could, and should, contribute to improve the situation, from nutrition for older adults to sodium reduction and appealing alcohol-free alternatives.

Child malnutrition also features in the study, reminding us that the challenge includes both excess in food and beverage intakes and deficiencies.

Food-related-threats-more-dangerous-than-AI-DigitalFoodLab-graph

These estimates describe potentially avoidable health loss and should not be added, but they make one point clear: food and nutrition deserve a central place in the conversation about our future, notably when talking about threats.

What it means for food innovation

In our view, this will become a strategic issue for the food industry, due to combined pressure from consumers and governments.

As populations are getting older in many countries, attention to healthspan (the time you live in good health) will increasingly matter, and we can expect that the pressure on governments to act will only get stronger.

Second, this should be considered in our current context where acting to reduce the nefarious impacts of climate change and artificial regulation requires International coordination, and hence doesn’t really happen. This could first translate into increasingly tight regulation of ingredients and food supply chains, and then into a broad push towards adopting “quick fixes” like GLP-1 drugs (addressing multiple threats at the same time).

For food companies and ingredient suppliers, the opportunity, as well as the threats, extends then well beyond the next wellness brand. It is rather about where and how they can win in the future (of food) by answering multiple questions such as which products to reformulate, which ingredients and technologies to invest in, or which consumer needs to prioritise.

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