You may not have heard of moringa or regenerative grazing yet. But there’s a good chance you will before long.
Not too far in the future, when you reach for a healthy drink, it might be full of water from a cactus.
Your main course at dinner might be a pear-like fruit from Southeast Asia that does a remarkable job of imitating meat. The next candy bar your children bite into might be infused with mushrooms that help cut down on the sugar needed to sweeten the treat. And their breakfast cereal might be colored with algae instead of chemicals.
Why the wave of exotic delights? Nutrition science - and customers’ rapidly changing tastes are forcing the food business to search ever further afield for new edibles.
Everybody knows standards change - fat was bad, for instance, until the big no-nos became carbs and gluten - and each time they do, a rash of new products appear that claim to be packed with good stuff and free of things that cause harm.
But now it’s no longer enough to claim a product is simply free of something that’s frowned upon. Consumers want to know that the bad ingredient hasn’t been replaced with something equally bad or worse. And they want to know the story behind their food - how it was grown or raised, and whether its production and distribution was kind to the environment. The less processed and simpler the ingredients, the better. That has left food and restaurant companies rushing to clean up their labels with ingredients derived from natural sources consumers can understand and pronounce.
For a trend to go mainstream, it has to provide health benefits, be easily comprehensible, make economic sense for the manufacturer, and of course taste good, says David Garfield, food-industry consultant at AlixPartners. It’s even better if the product tells a story and has third-party verification, such as a certified-organic label.
Of course, not all foods that are popular on the fringe go mainstream. Cricket bars, for instance, haven’t taken off in the U.S., even though eating insects is common in 80% of the world and they are high in protein. “It will be hard to overcome the yuck factor in the U.S.,” Mr. Garfield says.
But crickets aside, food experts have identified the super-healthy foods and concepts that are hitting supermarket shelves, and have the potential to become the next açaí berry or coconut water. Here’s a closer look at them.
“Grass fed,” once a progressive term in the food world, has become a mainstream buzzword used to attract consumers who want to eat beef that doesn’t come from cows raised in feedlots. It has expanded from expensive meat sold at Whole Foods Market Inc. and steak burritos at Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. to Chili’s Grill & Bar, which recently began offering grass-fed burgers, and Annie’s Mac & Cheese, which uses milk from grass-fed cows.
Now, Ms. Abbott argues, it’s not enough just to know the diet animals were fed, but also to understand the impact those animals have on the environment.
There is a growing movement called regenerative agriculture, in which different farming practices are used to restore soil degraded by planting and harvesting crops. One way to regenerate the topsoil is to graze cattle or bison on land used for growing crops, because their manure and left-behind forage act as natural fertilizers.
In the next three years, Ms. Abbott expects, restaurants and food companies will highlight that their grass-fed beef was raised in a regenerative-grazing fashion. She adds, though, that there would have to be a verification system designed to ensure the claim has meaning.
Explore about Dairy Alternative Industry at: https://goo.gl/N6hYYy
In health guidelines issued early this year, official U.S. dietitians say Americans eat too much meat. That’s giving fodder to new meat alternatives aiming to replace the usual meat replacement, tofu, which has worn out its welcome with many consumers.
There are burgers made with protein extracted from yellow peas, a molecule called heme that makes plants taste like beef and faux pulled pork made from shredded jackfruit.
Equity research firm Wedbush estimates the overall industry of plant-based alternative foods, including replacements for meat and dairy, has $3.5 billion in annual sales. Analysts there expect that to continue growing as a result of increasing health and sustainability concerns around meat, as well as new technologies like the heme molecule that make the texture and taste of vegetables more similar to meat.
Explore about Meat Substitute Industry at: https://goo.gl/Hq3ts5
Of all the budding meat substitutes, food experts say jackfruit has the most potential to go mainstream because of its meaty texture and ability to absorb the flavors in which it’s cooked. A large fruit with a spiky outer shell, it comes from trees grown mostly in South America and Southeast Asia, but it’s increasingly making its way to the U.S. The inner flesh somewhat pear-like when raw develops a savory flavor when cooked.
“People who want to avoid soy are looking for alternatives and a lot of the alternatives are highly processed,” says Ms. Abbott of Hartman Group. “This is just fruit that’s been minimally processed and seasoned with things you have in your kitchen.”
Read more at: http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-next-hot-trends-in-food-1476670682
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