Food Trends at the NASFT Fancy Food Show
Tuesday, July 1, 2008 at 6:13PM This year’s Fancy Food Show, the 54th year of celebrating gourmet and imported foods, displayed a trend not of actual food, but more of the way food is marketed.
“Sustainable marketing,” or the practice of being a green company, partnering with companies to let no foods or products go to waste, offsetting carbon footprints, and more. Although we’d all seen green marketing and eco-friendly companies in the past, it appeared that more companies than ever really stepped up to the plate, putting tremendous effort into lessening the harmful effects of production plant bi-products, and stressing clean energy and carbon offsetting.
Nearly every company I stopped by rushed to tell me not just about their food products, but about how they’re offsetting their company’s footprint, tapping into unused resources, partnering with foreign companies to use surplus products, and more. Some companies even skipped telling me what they had to offer, instead going straight into the sustainability spiel. I even started chatting one evening with Gillian Christie of ChristieCommunications, a full-service agency striving for “global betterment.” They strive to create and support ethical companies in addition to actually starting and partnering with self-sufficient global programs all over the world.
All in all, it was a great show as expected. An expanded natural and organic pavilion showcased a ballroom full of exciting newer companies, and several new products were exciting as well. Visitors were allowed to taste the newly imported West African “Miracle Fruit,” which tricks your taste buds into thinking bitter foods are sweet for an hour. Jelly-Belly’s newly expanded line of gross-out jellybeans, including such flavors as “Baby Wipe,” “Vomit,” and “Rotten Egg” were a hit with adults of all ages. MarblePop, as reviewed in my “Products” section, was a fantastic new packaged product that was fun and funky just to open! Imitation meats reached an all-time high with dishes that truly tasted like pork, bacon, and chicken. Even die-hard meat eaters were mystified as to how such a convincing texture and taste could come out of a soybean.
Some terrific new foods, in addition to some great ideas for improving our environment, were really the focus of this year’s Fancy Food Show. I can’t wait to see what comes around next year, but hopefully the attention to our planet’s well-being is a trend that won’t disappear.
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