Epigenetics? Nutrition? Social entertainment? Or environmental footprint? Food futurist Dr. Irwin Adam serves up the truth about food and how the decisions we make are not only changing us as individuals, they are also changing the world at large and significantly impacting global climate change. Combining a background in engineering, biology, and technology with his passions for eating and design, Dr. Adam explores global eating futures.

Food is often relegated to the realm of nutrition, which is important to understanding the health impacts of the food we eat, but the impact of our eating decisions extends far beyond the ideas of fats, proteins and carbohydrates. Food is made up of many functional and bioactive compounds, some of which over the last decade have been discovered to augment the ways our genetic information and our genetic code is interpreted. Though our genetics are predetermined, their interpretation can be varied over the course of our lifetime through physiological, chemical, and emotional experiences. This experiential imprint, called the epigenome, is written as a layer of interpretive code over the existing biological blueprint of DNA. Changes in the epigenome in essence open and close the nearly three meters of DNA coiled up in every human cell, making specific genes available or unavailable for transcription.

This is the biological way in which food and food experience transforms us as individuals, and accumulating evidence demonstrates that these transformations are passed on to our future generations. This is a molecular memory of all the things we eat and experience and has become the basis of movement in epigenetic eating: choosing foods for their genetic implications rather than purely for their nutritional implications. Inevitably this food transformation journey of us as individuals leads one to ask what foods might be best and where they come from and of course, how are they produced?

Food decisions are transforming not only the course of our lives at an epigenetic level–they're also transforming all living organisms on earth. Food links biology, the environment, and our future, and now is the time for action. As humans we are responsible for climate change. It is up to us to use better food production practices that minimize our food footprints. Let’s ask more questions. Let’s label food products with nutritional information and ecological impact information. Let’s recognize that food gives us the ability to create and the ability to destroy. Let’s take a moment before each and every bite and consider the high stakes of how the foods we consume will biologically transform us, the world around us, and the future.

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Dr. Irwin Adam has worked on some of the most innovative experiential projects we’ve ever seen. The award-winning Wndr Museum in Chicago brings beauty and imagination together in immersive experiences. The Museum of Ice Cream reinvents a historic brand with sensory installations. The Stella Artois Sensorium engaged all five senses in a stunning dining event and transformed customers’ feelings about a luxury brand.How can you create this same kind of magic for your business? In this fascinating talk, Dr. Adam expands on the concepts of “personalizing the personal” and experiential marketing. He looks at customer experience from an innovative new lens, opening your eyes to infinite possibilities. What can you do to wow and excite your customers? How can you develop and promote experiences that are truly innovative? How can you create a campaign that’s a historic event for your brand? How can you make your customers feel the emotional connection that’s triggered when something is just for them? Join Dr. Adam and prepare to see the game-changing power of customer experience.

Why is an egg yolk that’s been tinted blue more likely to taste like mould? And why does ice cream taste creamier if you’re holding a soft piece of cotton? Thanks to researchers like Dr. Irwin Adam, we now know there’s much more to taste than just sweet, sour, salty, and bitter. A creative scientist and food futurist, Dr. Adam is studying and creating multi-sensorial food experiences. His overwhelmingly cool talks introduce audiences to a new way to look at food—and to a future where tasting food may look very different than what we’re used to. Audiences will take home Dr. Adam’s lessons on creativity and innovation and bring them back to the office; learning from one of our top scientists about iteration and transformation. This is innovation you can literally taste.

What exactly is cross-modal personalized eating? It’s the future of food: the ability to choose the nutritional content or taste or texture you need and want. And it’s happening already. “It’s not 10 years from now—it’s next year,” says Dr. Adam. “We’ve already seen a bleeding veggie burger, and people are working on cellular agriculture: chickenless eggs, cowless milk, lab-grown steak [...] We’ll be able to make lettuce more salty, more sweet, more earthy, more green-tasting, whatever that means. Imagine you’re vitamin B-12 deficient; you’ll be able to get a special B-12 tomato.”

This eye-opening talk is essential for anyone in the farming or agricultural space. The depth and urgency of Dr. Adam's wide-ranging research will excite and inspire you—and prepare you for the opportunities that lie ahead.