The war in Ukraine has caused severe disruption to national and worldwide food supplies. Ukraine is a major exporter of wheat, maize, and oilseeds, staples that are now suffering a war-triggered supply risk. This paper describes the background of the problem and illustrates current trends by outlining some of the measures that may be deployed to mitigate the conflict’s impacts on achieving SDG 2 (Zero hunger), especially focusing on ending hunger, achieving food security, improving nutrition, and promoting sustainable agriculture. In order to understand the main research strands in the literature that are related to food security in the context of wars, the authors adopted a bibliometric literature review based on the co-occurrence of terms technique, conducted with 631 peer-reviewed documents extracted from the Scopus database. To complement the bibliometric assessment, ten case studies were selected to narrow down the food insecurity aspects caused by the war in Ukraine. The co-occurrence analysis indicated four different thematic clusters. In the next stage, an assessment of the current situation on how war affects food security was carried out for each one of the clusters, and the reasons and possible solutions to food security were identified. Policy recommendations and theoretical implications for food security in the conflict context in Ukraine were also addressed.

Gluten-free food is a huge group of products whose common characteristics are recipes containing non-gluten flour or starches. Most of them are bakery-related products which initially were manufactured based on the recipe containing wheat/wheat flour. Nowadays, the growth of the gluten-free food sector is mainly powered more by trends and personal choices of consumers following the “healthy choice” diet than patients with real medical conditions, who need to follow the strict gluten-free diet. 3D printing is considered a disruptive technology, and being an additive manufacturing technique contributes directly to structure/texture creation. Food 3D printing as a manufacturing technology is struggling with repeatability and precision but is still very promising as a potential problem solver, especially in texture creation, which is the main technological problem for the gluten-free bakery. The article aims to analyze, using clustering analysis, the main obstacles so far identified for gluten-free 3D printing. Meanwhile, the prospects of producing personalized food products using 3D printing and its relationship with the UN Sustainable Development Goals 2030 as the advantages of this technology were discussed. The up-to-date exploitations of 3D printing techniques in gluten-free food manufacturing were discussed.

The market for gluten-free products is experiencing significant growth due to the increase in the number of gluten/wheat affected patients diagnosed, but largely as a result of the emergence of a new niche market dedicated for consumers who optionally avoid gluten. Native flours are perceived as viable alternative for industrially used starch and hydrocolloids blends, mainly due to their lack of vitamins and minerals, which are abundant in non-refined raw materials. Edible inks for on-demand printing are under significant consideration, while texture building capacity remains an issue. As heat-moisture treatment has proved to be useful for stabilizing the pasting and rheological behavior of various native flours, HMT supported by microwave heating was investigated as printable ink stabilizers. For Spanish and Polish buckwheat flours and two different varieties of teff (white and brown) flour pasting, structural and textural characteristics after the microwave supported heat moisture treatment in 30% of initial moisture content were evaluated. The peak viscosity was reduced by 54% and 60% for Polish and Spanish flour, respectively, while for teff, the reduction was 15% and 43% for the white and brown varieties, respectively. Significant improvement in viscoelastic modulus G’ (for Polish and Spanish buckwheat flour, 32% and 16%, respectively; for white and brown tef varieties, 14% and 18%, respectively) was observed for all the treated samples regardless of the species or variety; this resulted in better performance during 3D printing.

Addition of extruded corn flour affects the egg sponge stability. The dependence of the effective viscosity of egg sponge samples with different concentrations of extruded corn flour on the shear rate and stress is investigated. Viscosity index is closely associated with the water-retaining capacity of the egg sponge. So, there is a need to study the state of free and bound water in the egg sponge depending on the content of extruded corn flour. The aim of the research was to identify the impact of extruded corn flour on the rheological properties of the egg sponge under mechanical impact, and study of the effect of extruded corn flour addition on the ratio of the state of free and bound water in it. The most intensive decrease in viscosity with increasing shear rate is observed in the sponge based on the mixture with the content of extruded corn flour of 50 % at a shear rate of 2.4 s^-1. Further decrease in effective viscosity with increasing shear rate is less intense, and all the samples tend to approach a constant viscosity of 2.4 Pa•s for the control sample and the viscosity of 4.2 Pa•s in the sample with the content of extruded corn flour of 50 % at a shear rate of γ 11.65 s^-1. Increased amount of extruded corn flour raises the spin-spin relaxation time, indicating a decrease in the mobility of water molecules in solution. This suggests that increased amount of extruded corn flour in the egg sponge increases the amount of bound water, which contributes to retaining more moisture in the finished product. The research shows the feasibility of extruded corn flour in the technology of semi-finished sponge cake that will improve the quality indicators of the finished product and extend its life.