Hanni Rützler was born in 1962 in Bregenz, the capital of Vorarlberg. She received her secondary education at the Sacré-Coeur in Bregenz, obtaining her Matura in 1981. After a one-year study visit in the United States at Michigan Technological University, Houghton, she began studying home economics and nutritional sciences, psychology and sociology, as well as food and biotechnology at the University of Vienna. Aside from an apprenticeship in person-centered interviewing, she was an associate at the interdisciplinary research project "Ernährungskultur in Österreich" at the Institut für Kulturstudien. Since then, she has been working as a freelance nutritional scientist, a consultant of food & beverage enterprises and a food trends researcher.
Career
Rützler is the founder and leader of the futurefoodstudio in Vienna. She authors reference books and has been an advisor at the Zukunftsinstitut of Matthias Horx in Frankfurt am Main since 2004. Rützler is a frequent speaker at international meetings and conferences, as a workshop and seminar leader as well as a nutrition expert on the radio, on television and in written media. She is the co-founder of the Verband der Ernährungswissenschafter Österreichs and was from 1999 until 2005 the vice-president of the Österreichische Gesellschaft für Ernährung. She was a lecturer at the Medical University of Graz and is a member of numerous scientific advisory committees.
On 5 August 2013, Rützler took part in food testing the world's first lab-grown burger, which was cooked and eaten at a news conference in London. Scientists from Maastricht University in the Netherlands, led by professor Mark Post, had taken stem cells from a cow and grown them into strips of muscle which they then combined to make a burger. Tissue for the London demonstration was cultivated in May 2013, using about 20,000 thin strips of cultured muscle tissue. Funding of around €250,000 came from an anonymous donor later revealed to be Sergey Brin. The burger was cooked by chef Richard McGeown of Couch's Great House Restaurant, Polperro, Cornwall, and tasted by critics Rützler and Josh Schonwald, as well as lead researcher Post. Rützler stated,
There is really a bite to it, there is quite some flavour with the browning. I know there is no fat in it so I didn't really know how juicy it would be, but there is quite some intense taste; it's close to meat, it's not that juicy, but the consistency is perfect. This is meat to me... It's really something to bite on and I think the look is quite similar.
Rützler added that even in a blind trial she would have taken the product for meat rather than a soya copy.
Personal life
Rützler is married to cultural scholar, playwright and journalist Wolfgang Reiter and lives in Vienna and Primmersdorf in Lower Austria. She is a flexitarian.
Publications
Bewusst essen – gesund leben. Ueberreuter, Vienna 1995,.
Ist mein Kind zu dick? Gewichtsreduktion und gesundes Essverhalten bei Kindern und Erwachsenen leicht gemacht. htp, Vienna 1997,.
Future Food – Die 18 wichtigsten Trends für die Esskultur der Zukunft. Zukunftsinstitut, Frankfurt am Main 2003,.
