BRANDON Ñ Whether you grow food for the local farmers’ market or for consumers half a world away, knowledge of emerging food trends is valuable, says Linda Lowry, Manitoba Agriculture’s food and nutrition specialist.
She told farmers at Manitoba Ag Days in Brandon that surveys show consumers often display conflicting interests. For example, they are interested in health and fitness, but they also want opportunities to treat themselves with pleasure food.
“The (U.S.) National Coffee Association says there are 29 million Americans who drink gourmet coffee every day. Now what do farmers in Manitoba produce that can go along with those 29 million coffee drinkers?”
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Consumers are also time pressed, so they want convenience in preparation. And increasingly, they are concerned with the ethics of how their food is created.
She noted a local case of how the desire for a pleasure food was linked to ethics.
A Dairy Queen in Neepawa, Man., recently supported a children’s charity by donating profits from sales of its Blizzard ice cream treat.
“On a day when they would normally sell 300, they sold 1,400,” she said, noting that apparently half the town decided it was OK to indulge their sweet tooth if the proceeds went to charity.
The high rate of obesity in North America has increased interest in diets and healthy food. Low-carb diets had the highest profile recently and were identified as the driver behind higher meat consumption and reduced demand for potatoes and bakery goods.
It appears their popularity has peaked, but Lowry believes the effect will linger in consumers’ better understanding of so-called good carbs and bad carbs, based on where they fall on the glycemic index, which measures how fast a food is likely to raise blood sugar.
High glycemic index food includes white bread, baked potatoes and instant rice, while lower glycemic index food that is better for health includes mixed grain, pulses, pasta, flax and specialty grain with high fibre.
“I was talking to a producer this morning and she said they couldn’t get enough spelt. There is interest in ancient grains. There is a bakery in Vancouver looking for Red Fife wheat,” she said.
“There is an increased interest in these specialty grains that are high fibre and whole grain.”
Ted Bilyea, executive vice-president of Maple Leaf Foods, said some international food trends will likely migrate to North America.
“The Japanese and U.S. consumer markets differ in that the Japanese prefer to eat food to treat health conditions rather than take a pill,” he said.
“Food really is competing in their marketplace with drugs.”
A Japanese government-backed campaign called Foods for Specified Health Use encourages food makers to submit products for testing and if they meet the criteria, the product is allowed to carry a special symbol and make health claims such as: “helps to regulate high cholesterol levels;” “helps to regulate high blood pressure” and “helps to regulate high blood glucose.”
Such claims cannot yet be made in Canada and the United States, but Bilyea believes governments here will move in that direction.
“The reason is that it is good for you … it will cut the health deficit,” he said.
“They haven’t got all the data yet, but the Japanese are working on it to show that they will actually have less money flowing out of their health accounts if they put money in their food.”
Detailed traceability is another Japanese trend that Bilyea expects will spread.
Traceability rules started with domestic livestock and are spreading to imported meats, he said.
“The sticker tells you that each producer must submit the animal’s date of birth, sex, breed, address of the owner, location and date of fattening and date of slaughter,” he said, noting the information is put into the bar code.
Supermarkets have adopted traceability in their own assurance programs designed to win consumer loyalty. The consumer relates this detailed information to “knowing” the farmer. A program involving Wagyu beef allows the meat buyer, by way of the internet, to see a picture of the farmer.
“There is a simple thinking behind it,” Bilyea said. “If the consumer in Japan can see the face of the farmer who produced the product, they are pretty confident. They feel a lot better about it than the one that doesn’t have the face and they feel that no one would ever knowingly put a bad product out that has their name and face on it.”
