New food fads
I decided to take a quick jaunt to California and check out the biggest Natural Food Expo Tradeshow in the world. This is a sure way to keep an eye on food trends, find out new stuff and check out the latest food fads coming our way. I have to say, there was no sign of a recession at this monster extravaganza. The economic climate didn’t put a damper on the shows success. The Expo, which is held across the street from Disneyland, spanned 300,000 square feet and featured nearly 2000 exhibitors. A record breaking 53,000 people attended this year to sample all kinds of health foods, supplements and anything else you could imagine that has anything to do with diet, health, food and natural
living.
I won’t lie, Disneyland was hard to resist, but the smell of organic chocolate beckoned so I entered the Expo. I have to describe my first hour at the show as a boot camp training exercise, within 45 minutes I had eaten organic meats, organic wine, energy bars stuffed with combinations of acai, goji berry and agave and 16 different organic health teas. I survived sampling gluten free dog food and tried not to look embarrassed when handed my organic tampon samples. After trying 24 different varieties of gluten free organic tapenades, corn chips and herbal colon cleaners, I realised I was still only in aisle 1. By lunchtime I was feeling decidedly ill and my pants were tight, can you over-dose on health supplements? It must have been the probiotics, or was it the organic gluten free pop-tarts?
All in all the Trade-show was a great eye opener, it's good to see what the latest fads are, gluten free is even bigger this year and berries from far off places will always be popular. It's good to see organics going more mainstream, but I’m not sure about the organic fried pretzels. One drink I sampled contained 40 grams of sugar (organic sugar of course).
Every time I go to Expo West, I notice trends. This year was no different, so for what its worth, here are the trends I noticed after spending 32 hours dragging myself around the giant convention centre.
Gluten Free
I thought this area was big last year but its even bigger now. Hundreds of gluten free soups, pizza, pet-food, pita bread, cake and baby food products. A growing trend is products that are not only gluten free, but also organic, soy and dairy free. They must have a lot of food allergies in America, because this area is huge.
Probiotics
We all know how important a healthy digestive system is and probiotics were popular again this year. I sampled probiotic squeezies for school lunchboxes, probiotic snack bars, probiotic water and probiotic protein bars. If that didn’t settle my tummy, I could hug one of the huge probiotic characters that were walking around the expo.
Tea
There were so many different teas on sample I thought I was in China. There was green tea, black tea, white tea, red tea and lots of organic tea. Green tea is all about green living. I found one Japanese tea company who pioneered a process to turn used tea leaves into a material similar to plastic resin to make park benches and plaster board.
Chocolate
There were so many organic, fair-trade, gourmet chocolate brands to choose from. Best of show was the Navitas’ Naturals take home chocolate lovers kit. For $9.99US you can make your own organic super food chocolate at home. Each kit contains cacao butter and powder, maca, and either Goji Berry, Cacao Nib or Golden berry for flavour. Yes, that’s right. Americans are returning to their kitchens.
Agave
Be prepared for agave sweeteners. I sampled agave syrup, agave nectar, agave crystals, agave green tea and agave chocolate. For those of you who don’t know, agave is an up and coming alternative natural sweetener. It comes from the succulent agave plant, which is native to Mexico. The taste is great, but I’m not so sure about the health claims. Agaves claim to fame is that it is low GI and natural. I’m not a food technologist, but it just seems to me that agave is just another form of fructose, not unlike corn syrup, maybe worse.
Coconut products
Wow, there were lots of people selling coconut products. Just think of any product that you would normally make with milk. Chocolate, ice cream, yoghurt, gelato’s, even cartons of milk. As you can imagine, the ice cream tasted amazing. What a great idea if you have an allergy to dairy. I didn’t see a lot of soy around this year. From the looks of it, coconut is the new soy. I saw pea protein, rice protein, hemp protein and whey protein. Soy protein seems to have fallen off the radar.
The global economy might be in a bad way, but this month I’ve witnessed many companies who are increasingly involved in being green from the ground up and positive about it. Many were promoting fair trade, organics and eco-packaging. I listened to Andrew Weil’s presentation on the role of food and supplements in the future of healthcare and learned what an important economic driver health can be. New statistics are showing that not only are consumers turning more to supplements to stave off expensive doctors’ visits, they’re also taking more responsibility for their own health by learning about nutrition and exercise. I was pretty pleased to see all the positive excitement around antioxidants, fish oils, resveratrol and green tea. There will always be hoax health products out there to steal our dollars, but all in all I was amazed at the professionalism and it was fantastic to see such a wide range of quality organics and health supplements.
