Mintel at The Flavor Experience

You might notice that I tagged the previous post with “renovation”. After speaking with a few other attendees, and cross-referencing the “Top Ten Trends” road map assembled by our friends at Flavor & the Menu, I am trying to distill everything I have heard here down to a framework of 5 or so trends. For the most part, this is to help me think about and interpret the proverbial fire-hose of information this week.

One of my personal Top 5 Trends, then, is “renovation” – in other words, an attempt by a food manufacturer or operator to update or refresh a dish, brand, or product to respond to ongoing pressures in the marketplace and from consumers while not investing in a full innovation process or an entirely new product and (again) staying true to the core brand message.

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Lori Daniel, MC for The Flavor Experience, presented an intriguing recap of “outlaw” foods, ingredients, and issues yesterday morning. Daniel’s delivered her speech in a humorous way – Kevin Bacon came up – but still managed to hit on a number of challenging points. In the course of her fast-forward review, she discussed how the pace of change and the breadth of consumer understanding has influenced the food industry. For example, butter became one of the first outlaws, to be replaced by margarine, only to find out that margarine too was unhealthy (more so even than butter), but then trans-fats were removed from margarine in response to consumers’ concerns, to now when (maybe) olive oil is the new butter.

Yet, there is a new worry – even the healthiest (or maybe we should say, least unhealthy) oils and fats cooked at high temperatures may produce toxins.

Among some of Daniel’s other points, she cited:

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