While everyone is focusing on food trends for 2010 (see here and here), we took a riskier guess into trends for the next decade. We could be totally wrong, come back in December 2019 and let us know.

* More functional foods - the trend is clear, people want to eat the same tasty and cheap food, spend less time preparing it, but get a bigger nutritional bang for every dollar spent and calorie consumed. More scientific discoveries of micronutrients will create new marketing buzzwords, just like the passing decade did (how many of us knew about omega-3 in 1999?). Nanotechnology will also play a role in modifying foods we know into something “healthier for us”, see example here.

* More information – As the Internet reaches the palm of our hands (iphone, blackberry, etc..) we consumers will be able to make better choices when selecting our foods. Comparing prices, nutrition, learning new recipes, and even tracking down which farm that tomato was grown on are all becoming a reality now .

* Genetically modified food – Already today a vast majority of the corn and soy in the US is genetically modified, and it seems like all the activism in the world is not going to stop other crops. Without getting into the crossfire of the debate here, expect more developments and more pressure by companies like Monsanto on agriculture departments across the globe to start planting GMOs.

* Sustainable Food - hand in hand with the monoculture crops and GMOs, a growing number of people will seek a sustainable, or close to it, approach to feeding themselves. Important as it may be, only a small part of the population will be able to partake in this noble lifestyle. The modern capitalistic world does not allow for large systems of small independent farms – not economically efficient, meaning high price for food – meaning many will continue to opt for cheaper “conventional” food. Also – to be truly sustainable and peruse local food, many people in Europe and the US would need to give up bananas, tomatoes in the winter, coffee, and many other comforts we can’t imagine living without. Too difficult. Please – prove me wrong!

* More profits for the big food companies – No matter what trends and prophesies will fulfill themselves, companies will continue to eek out monster profits. if you think healthier less-bad choices by consumers mean less profit for the big food manufacturers, you are wrong. Manufacturers charge a premium for health, even just a health halo. Slap the words “Natural” “Health”, and others on product packages, and you can charge 10, 20, and even 50 percent more for basically the same product. If you think organic foods reduced the profits of big companies, just look at who owns all the big organic brands. That’s right, the big conventional food companies.

What do you think?

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The days are getting colder and many families are switching from breakfast cereal to hot oatmeal. We took a look at Nature’s Path Organic Instant Hot Oatmeal – Apple Cinnamon to see just how good it would be to start of the day.

What you need to know:

The ingredient list (which does not appear on the company’s website) is short:

Organic rolled oats, organic evaporated cane juice, organic dried apple, organic cinnamon, sea salt, natural flavor.

Only 6 ingredients (good), but why is sugar #2 on the list? (In case you didn’t notice, “organic evaporated cane juice” is fancy-speak for sugar). At least we can understand what each ingredient is, expect for the last one. Natural flavor is a code word for some secret hush hush formula of herbs/spices/fragrances that gives this product a supposed edge over competitors. We’d rather have that spelled out for us too.

The nutrition panel says each packet contains 50 grams and will set you back 210 calories (before added milk). 64 calories come from the 14 grams of sugar inside. Since the FDA does not mandate labeling how much sugar is added to a product and how much is naturally present (through the apples, for example), it’s hard to know the exact ratio. It’s safe to assume though, as sugar in #2 in the ingredient list, that at least 3 teaspoons are added sugar, and not  sugar from the dried apples.

From a vitamin and mineral perspective, there are virtually non labeled as present, except for 10% iron. However, that’s simply because many organic products don’t get “artificially” fortified. We wouldn’t get too excited over all those B vitamins that most of us get enough of from other foods on a regular basis.

There are 4 grams of fiber (about 16% of the daily value which is good.)

Summary – we would be happy to recommend this product if Nature’s Path would cut down on the added sugar. Even non-organic competitors such as Quaker Oats only have 12 grams of sugar.

What to do at the supermarket:

Generally, organic products tend to have short, understandable ingredient lists (but not always – we’ve seen plenty of organic junk food). This product has too much sugar than we would like. Look for other options with less than 8 grams of sugar in the per serving (2 teaspoons), especially if they don’t have any fruit inside.

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Image via Wikipedia

The blogosphere is in a frenzy. A new, comprehensive study from the UK, has proclaimed that there is no nutritional benefit to organic food, nor is there any health benefit. Organic supporters are tearing apart at the conclusions, while many conventionalists are reveling in the news.

The study was conducted by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and is summarized by one of the researchers: “Our review indicates there is currently no evidence to support the selection of organic over conventionally produced foods on the basis of nutritional superiority.”

Surveying 50,000 studies conducted over 50 years, the authors focused on 55 that met their standards of scientific rigor. The studies that led to the group’s controversial conclusions covered a wide range of crops and livestock that are raised and marketed under organic standards. For 10 out of 13 food crops studied, the researchers found no significant differences. Where they did find differences, those were attributed to differences in fertilizer use (say, the use of nitrogen vs. phosphorus) and the ripeness level at which the crops were harvested. The authors judged the differences observed “unlikely” to “provide any health benefit” to consumers.

read more [LA Times Blog]…

Not wanting to take sides on whether the finding are legit or not, we’d like to present the case that, from a personal nutritional perspective, most people have more immediate issues to take care of.

Read more…

flickr photo: kthread

Organic food gets a nice seal of approval from the USDA that we can all see on the package. And meats imported from abroad must be labeled with their country of origin. (COOL Legislation).

But some markings on foods are not regulated at all. The most common is the “Natural” label which has been slapped on every kind of food imaginable.it is meaningless in that “natural” in no way means “healthy”.

The latest trend is to mark foods as “local”. But what does local mean? Fresher, Tastier, Healthier, and Better for planet Earth? The Guardian, a well respected UK newspaper, asks, and immediately answers:

What you need to know:

Food manufacturers and supermarkets have one goal – to sell us as much as possible. The creative marketing people working for these corporations have a keen sense for what is popular with the public. And they know very well to translate it into messages that play all the right chords on our mind.

Low-fat was a big hit, then low-carb. Organic is huge, despite a current blow due to the faltering economy.

And Local has now become the flavor de jour. Never mind the little discrepancies, such as the food actually arriving from hundreds of miles away, or stored for 6 months in chillers, or picked from a nearby orchard but shipped halfway across the country to a sorting and washing facility.

What to do at the supermarket:

As Mark Bittman, cookbook author and NY Times food writer explains:

You can’t trust the supermarket companies to sell you only good, wholesome food. Yet they’ll try to convince you that everything they sell is exactly that. So: skip the [marketing] labels, watch what you buy, and strive for goodness, no matter where you find it.

Keep this in mind the next time you shop at the supermarket. Or, try a farmers market nearby. It’s springtime and there should be one open near you every weekend.

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Sustainability has been a big buzzword in the last few years. The organic food movement has been preaching sustainable farming practices for over 50 years. And with local food growing in popularity over the past several years, more people are interested to know how far their food has traveled to reach the supermarket.

According to Terry Tamminen, who advises world leaders on design and implementation of climate-change solutions, “sustainability labels” are coming to supermarkets. In an interview with FastCompany magazine, he provided some insight into sustainability trends: Read more…