Nutrition in transition E-Book

Michael Ballarini

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 187

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

Discover the intricate journey of our diets in "Nutrition in Transition". This captivating exploration unravels the mysteries behind our culinary choices, shedding light on why certain foods thrive while others are forgotten. Through a rich tapestry of historical examples, delve into the world of food trends, and unveil the patterns that shape our preferences. In this illuminating read, embark on a voyage through chapters that unveil the evolution of consumption patterns and the birth of food trends. Uncover the power of the dietary profile, a tool that categorizes preferences, revealing hidden connections and anticipating future shifts. Delve into the nuances of acceptance and understand the dimensions of width and depth, influencing our eating habits. From embracing new tastes to deciphering the impact of societal trends, each chapter offers a lens to examine the complexities of our dietary decisions. Unearth the paradox between consumer desires and actions and explore how suppliers shape our food landscape. As you journey through the book, gain the insights to predict the ever-evolving trends that await us. "Nutrition in Transition" is your gateway to unraveling the past, present, and future of our dietary choices, providing a comprehensive understanding of the forces that steer our plates.

Leseprobe

Table of contents

Nutrition in transition

From necessity to passion

Introduction

Of foodtrends and other consumer habits

Structure

Getting the Big Picture

Changing consumer habits

Foodtrends when there were no trends at all

How sushi went from a dare to a lunch menu

Events that change our diet

The Dietary profile

Structure of the model

The dietary profile in practice

Acceptances control nutrition

Different dimensions of acceptability

Acceptance width

Acceptance and rejection

Effect of the different perspectives

Effect of the pronounced acceptance width

Acceptance depth

The commitment to dietary preferences

The subordinate role of indulgence in the dietary profile

Taking up new dietary preferences

Humans as creatures of habit

Risk aversion: try something new or enjoy something familiar

From natural and controlled trends

Dietary targets

Multipliers

Longevity of controlled trends

Consumer trends and the influence on dietary targets

Behavioural aspects of consumption trends

The cornerstones of our diet

Consumer paradox

Contradictions in food choices

What consumers say and what they actually want

What consumers want and what they subsequently do

Supply-side factors

Disturbances

How supply creates the basis for trends

Trend forecasts

False prophets and blind squirrels

Asking the right questions

The food trend questions

Epilogue

A Culinary Voyage

Glossar

Nutrition in transition

From necessity to passion

Nutrition has many sides to it, but what they all have in common is that we cannot live without it. Rarely is a necessity combined with joy and passion. Food creates exactly that.

Anyone reading this book should have a passion for nutrition. For only those who themselves feel a certain enthusiasm for this lively subject can understand the dynamics in this business. We do not deal with dry theory or exact science. We work with assumptions and estimates, we get tendencies as a result and forecast on the basis of variables. Nevertheless, the reader should have an interest in patterns and numbers. Because with these tools we can better classify developments. Together we will find out what is driving the change in nutrition.

We will unravel the history of many foods, dishes and products, analysing why they have the status we associate them with today. Because it is only when we understand how sushi, kale or bubble tea evolved that we begin to understand how other examples might evolve in the future. Because whether it's social media or flagstones, word-of-mouth or screen-to-screen dissemination, radio or YouTube, the pattern for spreading a trend has changed remarkably little. Whether today or yesterday, whether in Asia or Europe. Anyone who reads these pages will recognise the exciting mechanisms that are set in motion consciously and unconsciously and have an influence on our diet. We examine diets that have gained popularity by chance and those that have been made popular quite deliberately. We look at the people, institutions and companies behind foodtrends. We look into the history books of nutrition and find foodtrends already in antiquity. In the present, we find food preferences that have become a trend and some that have disappeared. We will analyse a wide variety of examples and then deduce why a particular development has taken place.

We will bring order into the general linguistic usage and talk about foodtrends, but also about foods that would have deserved this term at one time, but were never called that. Because it is often forgotten nowadays that, in addition to the relatively few, well-known foodtrends, there are a multitude of other foods, dietary targets and concepts that have also gained or lost a great deal of popularity. Foods and diets that have been called a foodtrend but never really became one, or those that have been consumed for centuries only to suddenly become a trend. After all, at what point is a trend called a trend? What is a megatrend? And where is the demarcation from other, food-related trends? How does a trend become a trend? We quickly realise that the whole subject yields few clear-cut results.

And what do we get out of it? First and foremost, it is incredibly exciting. Nutrition offers so many stories that could not have been foreseen. It is a reflection of society, it can be cultural heritage but also a future-oriented indicator. It brings joy and disappointment. With the knowledge we acquire, we can distinguish between real trends and falsehoods. We understand what short-term trends are and when something might become established in the long term. We see patterns that help us identify future changes in nutrition - in both directions. After all, the disappearance of a particular diet is at least as exciting to watch as the emergence of new trends. With this knowledge and a structured approach, we can seriously derive forecasts. We understand where to look to see the clues that have helped other trends succeed. But there is something we can already anticipate: Logic does not always resonate equally. Sometimes more, sometimes less. Sometimes change is predictable, other times chance plays a bigger role.

Introduction

Of foodtrends and other consumer habits

Most sciences produce exact study results. Mathematicians calculate results with an accuracy of many decimal places. Meteorologists predict the temperature to within one degree and programmers control computers purposefully with text they write at lightning speed. Nature regulates the world and the sciences are guided by these laws. This state of affairs makes it possible to give exact answers to difficult questions. It makes it possible to predict with a definite degree of certainty how something will behave and develop.

However, when it comes to predicting consumption patterns, especially in the food sector, these laws no longer seem to work. Human behaviour is complex and unpredictable. Humans are opportunistic per se, changing their mind if it gives them an advantage or remaining loyal to it if the risk of change is too great. Decisions are sometimes made factually and other times emotionally. Ideologies are pursued, rarely consistently, sometimes incidentally and more often as a result of some kind of peer pressure. Then suddenly a new phenomenon appears and old consumption habits are forgotten within a very short time. In addition, the food system is closely interwoven and extremely dynamic. The smallest changes in supply or demand happen constantly and thus influence nutrition. In many cases, this happens without the consumer even noticing. In addition, products can disappear from the supermarket shelves overnight for many reasons or suddenly be sold out, even though no one bought them a short time ago.

Nevertheless, developments are mostly slow, which does not necessarily make prediction easier. When we think about what was on offer in restaurants and retail stores just 20 or 30 years ago, we realise how our diet has changed step by step. The abundance of choice makes it practically impossible to keep track. But it is not only the supply that is changing, our diet is also changing insidiously. In this book, we will use numerous examples to find out why nutrition has changed in the past. With this knowledge, we will look into the future and apply this same knowledge to anticipate possible developments.

Why is this knowledge needed at all? Relying on the myriad lifestyle blogs, websites, and magazines, one can readily observe that the realm of "food trends" is readily accessible and poised for immediate adoption. It's almost as if predicting tomorrow's culinary choices has become the simplest task imaginable. What is usually forgotten is a stringent argumentation. And not only semi-professional journalists, but also authentic nutrition experts predict emerging consumption habits without being able to give or share reasons for it. In the hope of a self-fulfilling prophecy, superfoods and megatrends are chased through the communication channels. This state of affairs is at least partly due to the lack of definition of foodtrends - another reason why this term should only be used selectively. "Foodtrend" means first and foremost that the popularity of dietary preferences is noticeably increasing or decreasing. A dietary preference is what the name suggests: a preference in the area of nutrition, for example a dish, a diet or a food. But we will come back to this later, in detail. Back to the foodtrend: We don't want to overuse linguistics here, so we will follow the general linguistic usage and dispense with the "negative" foodtrend, i.e. the one of decreasing popularity. However, the definition is difficult: At what point is a trend "recognisably emerging"? Does it have to do with presence in the media, statistical sales, turnover or awareness? How big does the increase have to be to meet the definition of a trend? An increase of 1%, a sales increase of 1,000,000 USD or an index above 105? If we had clarified this question, we would still have to answer what kind of trends fall within the scope of foodtrends: A dish, a food, a diet, the food of a region, a continent, a preparation method, a new production technology, the concept of a restaurant or the packaging of a chocolate bar. We find all kinds of topics under the term foodtrend these days that have more or less to do with food.

The beauty of it is that really all consumers can have their say. Everyone can contribute with their opinion and ideas, which makes for incredibly exciting discussions, but also an insanely wide range of perspectives. The development of new eating habits is in the hands of the consumers, whose subjective opinions can have an influence on individuals or many other consumers. Although change is driven by individuals, it is society as a whole that brings about change. And this sheer mass of consumers is almost impossible to control. It seems as if emerging consumer habits appear out of nowhere and others disappear silently. The complexity is great and why a change occurs is difficult to understand. It is therefore not surprising that most "foodtrend" forecasts are wrong. There seem to be no clear rules. And that is a good thing.

So should we now put the book aside and devote ourselves to more meaningful things? Of course not. But why are so many food forecasts wrong? With forecasts there is always an uncertainty, an unknown variable. As we discussed above, nutrition evolves without clear rules, it can change from one moment to the next. The unknown variables are large. But there is also good news: empirical data and some clever tools help us to get an overview and to be able to assess the probability of developments with foresight. Only when we have made this assessment are we in a position to make a realistic forecast. We can stringently show why a change has a high or low probability of occurring. In the next chapter we will look at the procedure.

Structure

Getting the Big Picture

The aim of this book is to create an understanding of why we eat certain foods and not others. We will go in search of the reasons for new foodtrends and learn to understand why others are forgotten. To achieve this goal, we will look at various examples from the history of food. We will also get to the bottom of both better known and lesser known trends. We will get to know different tools such as the dietary profile, which helps us to see connections. As we use these tools, we will find patterns that we can use to evaluate the likelihood of other trends. We will learn to ask the right questions and question the right statements.

We start with an overview of the topics and explanations of the structure. With the big picture in mind, we can move on to the chapters:

Changing consumption patterns: As an introduction, we look at some early changes in diet. Although humans are creatures of habit, they have always had to adapt to the environment and the food on offer. While opportunism dominated for a long time, people began to trade and cultivate, which was enormously beneficial to dietary diversity. Each culture found its own diet, many were taken out into the world, cross-bred with other dishes or found their way into new regions. Via the Middle Ages and industrialisation, we approach the present and delve into the exciting example of sushi: from a dare to a lunch menu. Amazingly slowly, the Japanese national dish expanded eastwards into the USA. Still without the help of social media and influencers, sushi conquered the foodservice-industry and the palates of many people.

The dietary profile: If we want to understand how eating habits change, we need a schema. We find such a scheme with the dietary profile. First and foremost, we can use it to categorise dietary preferences. We will immediately illustrate this with an example and quickly notice that we find dependencies and patterns. In the next chapter, we add the acceptance width and depth to understand how the subjects in the network influence each other. With this tool we can make better assumptions and thus anticipate developments more accurately. The dietary profile will accompany us throughout the rest of the chapters. We will use it to analyse past changes in eating habits and to anticipate possible developments in the future.

Acceptances control our diet: An important insight from the previous chapter is “acceptance”. The practical example described on these pages shows how a completely new product was allowed to gain more acceptance from year to year and thus gained popularity. In this chapter we delve deeper into the topic and immediately introduce two new dimensions: Acceptance width and depth. We give dietary preferences a weighting per dimension to illustrate why certain habits become established and others do not. The challenge here is quantification, which is enormously costly in the fast-moving and complex world of nutrition. We will work with approximations in our examples. We will therefore estimate how many consumers reject or accept a dietary preference (Acceptance width) and how strongly they are associated with it (acceptance depth).

Acceptance width: If we dealt with the concept of acceptances in the previous chapter, we will delve into the dimension of acceptance width in this chapter. In principle, a simple quantification of consumers into two groups: One group rejects a certain dietary preferences, the other group finds that preference good. It then becomes exciting to observe how this ratio changes. We can also insert this value into our dietary profile, which we learned about above, and thus get a better picture of the interconnectedness. We quickly learn that dietary preferences can be viewed from two perspectives: That of the accepting consumer and that of the rejecting consumer. This knowledge helps us to understand how people react when a new food comes on the market or the demand for a product disappears. The "effect of the pronounced acceptance width" is then discussed. With a very high or very low acceptance width, an increasing effect occurs, which is based on the self-image of accepting things if they correspond to a social norm.

Acceptance depth: The second dimension concerns the commitment of consumers to follow dietary preferences. In particular, it helps us to see whether consumers are helping to develop a foodtrend. Because whether a consumer only consumes a dietary preference or also promotes it, makes social media posts or simply tells her friends about it depends on the acceptance depth. In the next chapter, we will look at enjoyment, which has hardly played a role up to this point. Because what indulgence is and to what extent we can influence our own indulgence is hardly known.

Taking up new dietary preferences: We then go into depth and investigate why consumers try out new dietary preferences - or not. When food producers or restaurateurs sell something new, it is fundamental to understand whether consumers give the novelty a chance. Groundbreaking innovations in particular are often met with initial resistance because of our natural tendency to prefer the familiar. These revolutionary ideas, despite their potential benefits, may face challenges in gaining traction. This paradox of innovation versus marketability is a fascinating phenomenon that we will explore in more detail later on. By addressing this inherent risk aversion later in this chapter, we will shed light on the psychological mechanisms at play and explore strategies for overcoming such barriers.

Of natural and driven trends: By introducing acceptance depth in the previous chapter, we were able to lay the groundwork for dealing with "driven trends". We now see anomalies in the dietary profile and understand how to interpret them. Multipliers play an important role in this. They are information carriers who change the diets of other consumers through multiplication: Influencers, newspaper stories, TV shows, advertisements, cookbooks, blogs, restaurants, neighbours and many, many more. Thanks to the multipliers, we understand how dietary preferences have been elevated to foodtrends - we talk about managed trends. This is in contrast to natural trends: Dietary preferences that find their way into our diet in small steps, almost unnoticed. They are gaining popularity because they coincide with societal dietary targets.

Consumer trends and the influence on dietary targets: dietary targets can be seen as a subset of societal trends: If humanity cares more about sustainability, this will have an impact on nutrition. We have already met dietary targets in the dietary profile as the most general, superficial category. We get to the bottom of it and find that there is no more important criterion for the development of dietary preferences. They are inert, change only over a long period of time, but have all the more influence for that. We are grateful for this, because dietary targets give us reliable indications of possible developments and trends. In this chapter, we will discuss other examples that influence our decisions in the supermarket or restaurant on a daily basis.

Consumer paradox: Consumers' wishes do not always coincide with their actions. The best-known example is the desire for a healthy diet. Those who wish for a healthier diet do not automatically act accordingly and therefore do not necessarily eat vegetables and pulses. This knowledge helps us to judge statements in studies, reports or features. Publishers of this information often have their own interest in controlling dietary preferences and therefore exploit the consumer paradox.

Supply-side factors: We take a detour to the supply side and find out how suppliers can influence what we eat. We cover examples where companies, technologies or other factors nudge supply towards demand. We will not be able to answer the question of the chicken and the egg, or whether it was demand or supply that came first. We focus on past trends where products became popular thanks to supply-side stimuli. On the other hand, we look at dietary preferences that disappeared because of supply - even though there was demand. It is only through supply that individuals have easy access to the ingredients and products that reflect current culinary trends. This synchronisation ensures that people can seamlessly embrace and explore new gastronomic experiences, contributing to the dynamic evolution of the food landscape.

Trend forecasts: In the last part, we turn to predictions of trends and developments in nutrition. The view into the future is finally created by stringing together various assumptions. In the previous chapters we have dealt with the dietary profile, the model that can be used as a basis for these assumptions. We will go through an example from practice and see the complexity of a serious forecast.

Each chapter describes different components that are necessary to evaluate food trends. They are coherent, so a holistic understanding is required. If you are unclear about any of the topics, it is worth consulting this overview again or reading the glossary at the end of the book.

Changing consumer habits

Foodtrends when there were no trends at all

Although the term "food trends" has only existed for a few decades, trends in nutrition have been present since time immemorial. "Foodtrend" is a modern term that describes the increasing popularity of a food. The general understanding, however, only includes hypes under this term, i.e. trends that also achieve a certain level of awareness in the media. But there have always been ascending and descending dietary preferences without this being noticed. At all times, humans and animals have had to adapt to a changing range of foods. dietary preferences also changed along with this. An important turning point in the nutrition of our civilisation was reached with the change to Homo Sapiens. Man's intellect grew, gradually adding the occupations of farmer and cook to those of hunter-gatherer. Man became better and better at making use of fire. With the help of fire, food could be made edible and more durable.

The consumption of protein increased, and with it the growth of man and his brain. Fire was able to conjure up new flavours from familiar foods. The Maillard reaction, as the browning effect caused by heat was called at the beginning of the last century, gave people a new taste experience that they would never again miss. Fermentation opened up another important method of preparation. Thanks to this natural process, alcohol, new tastes and also the preservation of food were invented. Usefulness and taste made these methods a trend, which was passed on by observation and word-of-mouth propaganda (language was also developed by Homo Sapiens). Man was still a hunter-gatherer and ate what looked edible: Fruits, vegetables, nuts, fish and game meat. But he changed from being a nomad to a sedentary farmer. From then on, man understood how to cultivate and breed, and for the first time in human history, he influenced the supply of available food. This turning point was to have a lasting impact that continues to this day: our diet is based on the foods that were cultivated by the first Homo Sapiens: Rice, wheat, potatoes and the common breeds of cattle, pigs or sheep were considered the most productive. Less "efficient" plant and animal species continued to be hunted and gathered in the wild, but not cultivated. This meant the end of many foods.