The EU is updating outdated legislation on novel foods, but what are these exactly? Here's a look at some of the most intriguing ones.

What will we be eating in 2025?

Hello and welcome  to the not so distant future.

There's an EU regulation on novel foods  that dates back to a time long ago, 1997,

but it was so old that almost 20 years later  the European Parliament gave it a reboot.

Before 1997, specialist or very unusual  foods that had a small consumer market

Every country was responsible  for deciding what was a novel food

but today there's  a centralised EU procedure.

So what are novel foods?  Novel foods can be produced or isolated

from the cells or tissue cultures of animals,  plants, micro-organisms, algae and fungi.

Professor Mark Post has created the first  hamburger cultured from the cells of a cow.

We actually are producing meat.  It's just not in a cow.

The stem cell techniques  are very useful for growing beef.

We take a few cells from a cow.  They divide by themselves,

and if we provide anchor points, the future  tendons, they will self-organise into muscle.

So a few cells that we take from this cow  can turn into 10 tonnes of meat.

Foods produced using new production  processes can also be novel foods,

for example nanomaterials, like the ones  being used in this lab in Brussels.

Nanoparticles are particles whose size is  typically a 1000th of your hair's diameter.

for example coffee milk  is given its creamy white colour

Through their tiny size, they have a great  surface reactivity, so they can be toxic.

So it is necessary to conduct more research  into these nanomaterials.

The aim is to encourage innovation  in the agrifood sector.

And do you know what all else you can eat?

Insects, just like some  of these house crickets.

There's dried crickets,  here you can see cricket meatballs.

In comparison with cows, to make up  the number of proteins that cows have,

they need 25 times less food,  300 times less water,

and they produce 60 times  less greenhouse gases.

We can also now eat traditional cuisines  from far-flung third countries

proving that they carry  no health risk to consumers.

They're expensive to produce, so it's  unlikely we'll find them in our hamburgers.

What about the offspring of cloned  animals? Well, that's another story.

They will be treated like novel foods  until specific legislation,

currently being checked by the EP,  gets adopted.

The European Food Safety Authority  checks that foods are safe for us to eat.

As the saying goes,  prevention is better than a cure.

If the EU cannot properly ascertain  whether a product is safe or not,

for example if the science isn't behind it,

it won't be allowed  on the European markets.