This is one of The Food Channel’s Top 10 Food Trends for 2010, based on research conducted in conjunction with CultureWaves® and the International Food Futurists®. For the full list, check here.
Food Vetting
You are what you eat, and we are big into understanding ourselves! That’s what’s leading this trend—our constant need for assurance that we are eating the right things, that our food is safe, that we are not ingesting pesticides or anything that will someday prove harmful. If we can provide jobs, help the economy, protect animals and ensure a sustained food supply at the same time, well, that’s all the better.
Call it food vetting, sourcing or whatever you want—the issue is that people are asking where their food comes from. We call it the ‘new luxury food’ because it can be more expensive to include that traceability into delivery, but we want it anyway. It’s everything from looking for mercury-safe seafood to wanting to know that humane treatment was given to farm animals. It’s about no hormones in meats, and organically-grown fruits and vegetables. It’s about Fair Trade chocolate and spices.
It’s about branded meat coming into its own so that you can trust the source and make your choices based on what the animals were fed, where they were pastured and how they were slaughtered. Expect to see more like what Dean & Deluca is doing with its Brandt Beef:
With roots in quality livestock dating back to the early 1900s, this single family of American beef producers has made it their passion and decades-old tradition to raise cattle sustainably, humanely . . . naturally.
We might even begin tagging our food so we can follow it from source, to purchase, to table.
While society is more than one step removed from much of its food source these days, Food Vetting is an attempt to pull us closer and give us an element of control. We want to know where our food comes from, how it’s grown and harvested, and whether it is truly good for us or not.
For evidence, read:
Lay’s Lets You Track Down Your Chips
Seafood and Mercury: Which Fish Are Safe?
Sushi Without Bluefin Tuna
Future Trend? Viewing the Food Mileage
Food Additives Make Us Overeat
Anti-Meat Group Sues to Impose Warning Labels on Hot Dogs
