More than 18,000 attendees flocked to Las Vegas to attend the Institute of Food Technologists’ (IFT) 2012 Annual Meeting & Food Expo, June 26-28 at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Food professionals were represented from all 50 states as well as nearly 80 countries at this year’s event. The ingredient show featured 1,066 exhibitors — an 8 percent increase from last year’s event — with 358 of those exhibitors being international.

At the keynote session, IFT launched a new campaign to counter misconceptions about food science. The video depicts what a grocery store would look like without the existence of food science. The campaign will feature five different video segments that feature interviews with experts from various food science disciplines to show the positive effects food science has on consumers, IFT says. The first video highlights the challenges surrounding availability of foods and the demands to feed the world’s population of approximately 9 billion people by 2050. The second video focuses on food safety and the role food science plays in ensuring that food is safe.