Food Trends: Health, Ethics, and Market Segmentation

• Dining trends involve health, the environment, animal welfare, aesthetics, and ethical, social, and economic concerns.
• Market segmentation of food trends uses an XTC trends tree, identifying trends, axes, and consumers.
• The axes of the XTC tree include pleasure, health, physical, convenience, and ethics.

Early Food Movements

• Hippocrates stated, "Let food be thy medicine."
• Traditional Chinese medicine and Ayurveda are systems, not trends.
• Philosophers like Epicurus (341–270 BC), Socrates (469-399 BC)and Confucius (551–479 BCE) warned against excess.

Trends vs Fads

• A trend is a general development or change in behavior, signaling a permanent shift.
• A fad is a popular style or activity for a short time and does not influence the general direction.

Identifying a Food Trend

• Observe what kitchens are doing before trends hit the menu.
• Monitor social media, chef discussions, and consumer reactions.
• Pay attention to growing concepts, design, and target demographics.
• Observe the supply chain.
• Consider the influence and lessons from other industries.

Trend Life Cycle

• Embryonic stage: exclusive, rare, and elite.
• Early adopters: specialists give the trend airtime but it is still rare and financially risky.
• Mainstream: intrepid consumers embrace the movement, posting about it on social media.
• Tapering off: Mainstream businesses adopt the trend, but it may be ridiculed to maintain relevance.
• End stage: The trend is dated.

Nouvelle Cuisine 1973 +

• Health and aesthetics influenced Nouvelle Cuisine.
• Pierre Troisgros, Paul Bocuse, Michel Guérard, Roger Vergé, Louis Outhier, and Alain Senderens contributed.
• Henri Gault and Christian Millau, from the Gault&Millau restaurant guide, popularized it.
• Nouvelle Cuisine rebelled against the conservative principles of the Michelin Guide.

Nouvelle Cuisine: The Ten Commandments

• Do not overcook.
• Use fresh, quality products.
• Lighten the menu.
• Avoid being systematically modernist.
• Explore new techniques.
• Avoid pickles, cured meats, and fermented foods.
• Eliminate rich sauces.
• Consider dietetics.
• Present dishes inventively.

The End of Nouvelle Cuisine?

• Nouvelle Cuisine style has been integrated into mainstream cooking
• It has lightened French cuisine and brought a sense of honesty to dishes, but is often ridiculed in the mainstream.

Early Food Trends: Health

• Low-fat diets were popular in the 1940s; seed oils replaced animal fats.
• Obesity and cardiovascular disease rose.
• Weight Watchers was founded in the 1960s.

Modern Food Trends: Health

• Health trends fit into three categories: medical, natural, and plant-based.
  • Medical functional ingredients promote health and prevent or treat disease.
  • Natural: Minimally processed foods reassure consumers with their “natural” qualities.
  • Plant-Based: Ingredients derive partly or wholly from plant sources.
• Recent movements include the Paleo Diet, Gluten-Free, and Veganism.

Canada's Food Guide

• The Food Guide provided recommendations per day based on age and sex.
• "One Food Guide Serving" defines specific portion sizes for grain products, milk and alternatives, meat and alternatives, vegetables, and fruit.
• Canada's Food Guide was updated in 2019.

Vegetarianism and Veganism

• Various reasons for eating less meat include health, weight management, animal welfare, the environment, concerns over antibiotics, and taste.
• In Canada, 7.6% are vegetarians, and 4.6% are vegans (2020).
• In the USA, 5% are vegetarians, and 3% are vegans (2018).
• In the UK, 25.8% are vegetarians, and 4.4% are vegans (2019).
• Switching to plant-based foods ignores the role of grazing animals and the health and ethics of industrially grown crops which need a lot of fertilizer, fungicides, pesticides, and herbicides.
• Sustainable livestock farming can restore soils, biodiversity, and sequester carbon.
• Vegan cheese is expected to become an industry worth about $4bn within the next five years.

Slow Food

• Founded in 1986 by Carlo Petrini in Bra, Italy, as an antidote to “fast food”.
• It counteracts the disappearance of local food cultures and traditions.
• The Ark of Taste collects small-scale quality productions that belong to the cultures, history, and traditions.
• The main principles involves food that is quality, flavorsome, and healthy, produced without harming the environment, has accessible prices for consumers and fair conditions and pay for producers
• There are over 1,500 Slow Food communities.
• The Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity, Terra Madre Foundation support food projects that defend food biodiversity and traditions.
• The University of Gastronomic Sciences (UNISG) educates future food professionals.

Farm to Table

• A social movement promoting ingredients from local farms rather than through long supply chains.
• Produce is picked when ripe, with better flavor but there is growing skepticism because of fraudulent claims.

Modernist Cuisine

• Molecular Gastronomy is a scientific discipline exploring culinary transformations.
• Public misunderstanding led to the founding chefs of the molecular movement abandoning it and rekindling their intentions as "Modernist Cuisine".
• Modernist Cuisine's manifesto guides cooking through excellence, openness, integrity, tradition, innovation, collaboration and sharing.

Nose-To-Tail

• Nose-To-Tail eating addresses ethical, social, economic, and animal welfare concerns.

Zero Waste

• Zero Waste addresses ethical, social, economic, and environmental concerns.

Ethnic Foods

• A trend that might have a 3 year rotation.
• There are issues with calling an "ethnic" cuisine a trend

Mindfulness

• New consumer attitude, mostly millennials, to deeply understand and support companies aligning with their values.
• Ethical claims on packages have increased seven-fold since 2010.
• New corporate values include social conscience, health, wellness, enhanced nutrition, and life hacking.

Tactile

• Multi-sensory experience is a new secret weapon for food .
• Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response, or ASMR in the new food media world helps the restaurant experience.

NeuroNutrition (and Biohacking)

• Diet is the #1 cause of preventable metabolic disorders.
• NeuroNutrition connects food and the brain. -"Brain claims" have increased by 36% (sports nutrition and cereals mostly).
• BioHacking provides individualized nutrition.
• Some restaurants have on-staff nutritionists.

Dive into understanding food trends, including health, environmental, and ethical considerations. Explore market segmentation using the XTC trends tree, which identifies key trends, axes like pleasure and ethics, and consumer behaviors. Differentiate between lasting trends and short-lived fads, and learn how to identify emerging food trends.