Food trends

The meat of a newly butchered animal is usually hard and not very tasty. Aging is that variable period during which meat is left to rest at the suitable temperature and humidity conditions to gain softness and develop flavours and aroma. A chicken or a very young animal only requires a few days, but for larger animals it all depends on race, age, and meat storage temperature. A regular steak preserved in a cold store – that maintains the right temperature and humidity – takes 10 to 20 days to reach the supermarket shelves.

The new trend in meat aging has a name: dry-aging. It is an innovative technique that has spread in no time from the United States to the rest of the world. It is complex and costly, but quite appreciated by gourmands. It is essentially a form of bone-in aging and subsequent seasoning in cold store at a controlled temperature. The process triggers natural meat drying cycles, allowing it to lose about 20% water, with a related increase in salt concentration. Such method causes physical-chemical changes in the meat, first of all the oxidation of fatty acids and enzymatic lysis that releases aromatic amino acids. The meat thus acquires excellent sensory properties, is more flavoured, soft, and with a beautiful marbled look. Its cut colour is dark red, and it has a compact texture. Once cooked, it exudes incredible perfumes: experts suggest to prepare it on a grill, lightly seared.

The so-called wet-aging technique is also used worldwide, with small pieces of meat left to age in their own juices, vacuumpacked. The third method, experimented for the first time ever in Italy by Eataly’s Consorzio La Granda, is high-humidity aging, in cold stores kept at a constant temperature of 0-1°C (32-33.8°F).

From an intersection of opinions from analysts, trade magazines, research institutes and catering service companies such as Doxa, Waitrose, Gambero Rosso, Whole Foods, Deliveroo, TheFork, Kroger and Kind, here are the eating trends expected for 2019:

1- Delivery only restaurants
Not just pizza and sushi but a whole new way of eating at home and, above all, a whole new form of catering: an increasing number of laboratories are dedicated to preparing dishes aimed solely for home delivery, as well as specialized chefs and refined conservation techniques. Because those customers who can afford it – a group that is growing clearly – demand restaurant-quality food in the comfort of their own homes.

2- African cuisine
After the boom of Peru’s Nikkei specialties, the spicy tastes of the Middle East and Korea’s fermentations, our world tour leads us to western Africa, to the decisive flavours and exotic fascination of Senegal, Ghana, Nigeria and Mali.

3- Healthy eating app
A balanced, personalised diet at the touch of an App allowing you to follow a healthy, varied eating regime despite today’s frenetic lifestyle. The way is paved for start-ups proposing practical, intelligent solutions.

4- Fake meat
The fashion for healthy living is on an exponential up: the dish of the year is “fake meat”, becoming extremely popular in the United States. It looks, feels and tastes just like real meat, though it contains no animal derivatives at all; in fact, it is completely vegetable-based.

5- Dragonfruit
The so-called functional ingredients – highly beneficial for our organisms – have been introduced to the menus in many restaurants. 2019 will be the year of the dragonfruit (otherwise known as the pitaya): a tropical fruit with low-calorie flesh but rich in vitamins and hempseed.

Turmeric is the superfood of the moment: just think that in the past 5 years, Google searches concerning the Indian root have grown by 75%. It is mainly its therapeutic properties that make it so popular: turmeric is in fact antioxidant and anti-inflammatory; it strengthens the immune system, facilitates digestion and – according to research by the University of California published in the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry in 2018 – it also may prevent memory loss.

We do not always know how to use it as a cooking ingredient though. Is it better to use fresh turmeric or dried turmeric powder? In tea or chopped and eaten? “It is important to know the related chemistry and the cooking techniques to benefit of its truly useful nutritional strengths”, explains Fern Green, a food-stylist and chef, author of Curcuma. La Bibbia (Turmeric: the bible), a book including 65 creative recipes involving the Indian root. Green states that turmeric is perfect when paired with foods rich in quercetin (peppers, onions, and capers), a substance that boosts its beneficial effects. She also recommends: add a half-teaspoon of the root in its powder version when sautéing. Or try it with golden milks – the drinks used in Ayurveda treatments, based on oils and butters (cocoa, cashews, oat or almond milk) – flavouring them using turmeric powder. Use it fresh in hot water, instead, when preparing detox tea. Keep an eye on time though: do not soak it for over 15 minutes, as the heat may subsequently spoil the root. Want a last word of advice? In savoury recipes, always add a pinch of black pepper: it will facilitate the body’s absorption of the turmeric.

According to Francesco Morace, social scientist at Future Concept Lab, the kitchen is where the unexpected encounter between digital exposure and conviviality, customization and participation occurs. In fact, the burners are where an extension of the concept of recognition – that the new generations consider the fulcrum of their personal and social identity – comes into existence.

According to the sociologist, in the future the idea of domestic space will transform: kitchens will dominate and extend to the living room, finding new expression on specific “island” tables made for in-house cooking demos. The kitchen-living room will thus become the true center of the home.

This type of kitchen will be one of the new frontiers in the concept of family and home experimentation, which must be closely followed in the coming years. A multi-tech, user-friendly experience lived in the place where meals are prepared and enjoyed, just as if on a stage or a film set.

Morace states that all this will add to a renewed and enjoyable interaction with the domestic dimension – also in terms of retail – which may become the ideal location to freely express kinship and use cooking with an expansive philosophy, free of space or time boundaries. This special sensitivity will create a unique bond, distinguished by curiosity and communication: feelings of closeness and precise rituals, which will be shared online without interruption. “We need to believe in the future”, concludes Francesco Morace, “An increased awareness of the high-tech will continue to emerge, also in the high-touch form – the more haptic and human dimension. A binomial made of innovation and tradition that will find its limelight and its language in the food context”.

Italy is on the way to becoming the Food Truck capital. According to data analysed by Unioncamere on new registered businesses, every two days throughout the nation a new travelling catering firm is set up. On 31st March 2018 there were 2,729 such businesses: on the road you can encounter a prosperous universe linked to the preparation of street food with a particular presence of under-35s and foreign entrepreneurs. Six hundred businesses have been set up by young entrepreneurs born after 1983, representing 22% of the total. And 327 businesses are run by foreigners.

But what today are Food Trucks in Italy?

They are forms of transport (mainly Ape vehicles, but also caravans and vintage vans) equipped with full kitchens, refined and furnished with care, customised in shape and colour with one eye focussing on gourmet food and the other on design and communication – especially via social media.

What’s on offer?

Just a few years ago, the list of dishes on offer on the street in Italy was made up of the typical traditional foods of each local area; today Food Trucks have vastly expanded the variety of the dishes on offer. As well as revisitations of tradition street foods, they also propose street versions of traditional restaurant cuisine (from pret-a-porter Milanese risotto to cupcake-shaped lasagne and fried tortellini on a stick) and original and surprising gourmet innovations.

In which Italian region can we find the most Food Trucks?

By region, Lombardy ranks first with 389 businesses, followed by Puglia with 295 and Lazio with 271.

In the New York Times, Teja Rao wrote that panettone – Italy’s traditional Christmas cake – has become “An obsession for American pastry chefs”. The food writer interviewed some of the US’s best pastry chefs and bakers, and came to the conclusion that “bakers say they have become obsessed by this high-maintenance dough: no other breadstuff is harder to make, but no other breadstuff gives you such satisfaction when you are finally successful”.
Demonstrating the typically American genuine fascination for things that are made well and taking time, the article focusses on the difficulty and care and attention required in every phase of the making of this cake, from the choice of ingredients to the control of the temperature of the dough. The NYT interviewed the following pastry chefs: Rick Easton, whose baker’s is located in Pennsylvania but who, during the summer of 2017, organised an event dedicated to the panettone in New York; the local New Yorker, Jim Lahey; the Californian Avery Ruzicka and Roy Shvartzapel from San Francisco, who learnt from the star of Italian pastry chefs, Iginio Massari. “Baking is always a mystic and wonderful thing”, Ruzicka says, “but when baking panettone it is even more so”.

What is panettone?

With its characteristic dome shape, panettone is Milan’s typical Christmas cake made from a dough of water, flour, butter and egg to which is added candied fruit, equal measures of orange and citron zest and raisins.
The origins of the panettone are linked to some Milanese-based legends from the late 15th century. The most famous tells of the chefs of the court of Duke Ludovico Sforza who, in order to properly celebrate Christmas, prepared a bread in the shape of a cupola containing grapes. Toni at the ovens, distracted, left the cake to burn leaving a thick burnt crust. The cake was so enjoyed by the Sforza court that they called it the “pan del Toni” (Toni’s bread) in recognition of its uniqueness.

Market

598.3 million euro. This is the exports value of ‘high quality Italian cakes and pastries’ according to a report by Confartigianato. And if the panettone is the true leader of the pack, other cakes, holiday pastries, bread with raisins, croissants, biscuits and pastry goods fair pretty well too. A real sales boom, which led to an increase of 5.8% during the September 2016-August 2017 period compared to the previous year. And of this amount, almost 600 million – 31.6% – is represented by exports to the United States which increased in the same period by 31.4%.

What wonders does the food & beverage industry have in store for us in 2018? For the past few years, the Waitrose and Whole Foods supermarket chains have been laying down the law, anticipating the food trends that will sweep the world. According to the list they’ve produced for 2018, we will be seeing very simple, yet high-tech, specialities boasting health benefits. Consumers will continue to be obsessed by one question: where does this food come from? Traceability, ingredients and wholesomeness will be the aspects to look out for when buying food, to the point where some consumers will be driven to farm food for themselves (using DIY agricultural machines like FarmBot). Purchases will be increasingly high tech: how many of us will soon be using technofoodology and artificial intelligence when shopping, such as Amazon’s Alexa device that you can talk to and do a number of things with, including ordering food? Let’s take a closer look.

Food
The most important trends identified by Whole Foods and Waitrose are particularly nutritious edible powders, such as matcha tea, maca root, spirulina and even cacao. People like them because they are easy to add to dishes, making soups, broths and hot and cold drinks more nutritious.
Protein powders, the real Food 3.0 frontier, merit particular attention. Companies are specialising in refined flavours for balanced liquid meals that can be consumed on the go or for homemade meals with extra protein flours: muesli or porridge containing flakes and flours with low levels of carbohydrate. Plant-based protein is also in the spotlight: soy, seeds, algae and almonds. These will be the stars of ground-breaking products such as Heme, a protein created by the Impossible Foods start-up, which apparently mimics meat flavour perfectly and could become the most popular ingredient on vegetarian menus in 2018.
Then there are medicinal mushrooms, featuring varieties such as reishi, chaga and cordyceps, which up to now have been popular among athletes. From having been used as dietary supplements, they are now added to traditional dishes like broths, desserts and even coffee. Cordyceps has been introduced from Finland. It is made from matsutake mushrooms and apparently has all the health benefits of normal coffee without the side-effects that some of us suffer from, such as heartburn and tachycardia. Clarified butter, or ghee, is also one of 2018’s musts: lactose free, it can resist high temperatures. When it comes to the culinary trends we’ll be stealing from other cultures, Middle Eastern cuisine will be top of the list, particularly that of Morocco, thanks to its spices and their worldwide popularity: harissa, cardamom, cumin and coriander. This culinary/cultural exchange will also involve Latin American cuisine, which has seen a surge thanks to the fashion for new types of tacos and foods designed for different dining occasions. Last but not least, there is a new healthy way of cooking: air frying. What does air-fried food taste like? Almost the same as fat-fried food, but much healthier.

Beverages
According to Whole Foods and Waitrose, we’ll be increasingly drinking ‘mocktails’: non-alcoholic cocktails. And what ingredient will be absolutely essential from now on? Timut pepper. This unusual pepper from Nepal is rapidly becoming popular among foodies all over the world and is perfect as an ingredient in cocktails. We will also become big fans of a new kind of soft drink that has nothing to do with the sugar-loaded beverages that have dominated the drinks aisles of our supermarkets up until now. These are natural drinks made from plants such as maple and birch that are naturally carbonated without the addition of carbon dioxide.

The market of high quality corporate presents is on the up. And for Christmas 2017 we are witnessing a return to tradition, especially in Italy, where large businesses are already moving with time to spare, choosing from the many food & beverage specialities the territory has to offer. Not only panettone and bubbles, but gourmet treats carefully selected for customers and collaborators alike.
After years in which we have seen a preference for electrical consumer goods and wellbeing experience packages, this year companies have returned to gifting high quality food & beverage products, often linked to good causes. In fact, there is a penchant for specialities coming from Italy’s earthquake-stricken regions, Abruzzo and Umbria, or from prisons, such as in Padua where 150 inmates are employed in a baker’s which has quickly made an excellent name for itself in the production of Christmas sweetmeats. Thus the customary corporate gift is given extra meaning: the receiver is pleased to receive high quality products while making a small gesture of solidarity.

So the market is growing, but only for the more evolved companies. Such as Hampers, a branch of Alifood that started working in the corporate gifts field in 2003. Working in this sector requires a background in marketing, logistics and customisation, as well as a perfect knowledge of the world of food & beverage. In fact, even the simplest gift is chosen together with the client, customised with the company logo or the receiver’s initials; then there is the packaging to prepare, delivery to organise. In 14 years of work, Hampers has established a perfectly synchronised supply chain enabling them to satisfy even the most complicated demands, throughout Italy and abroad.

Organic Italian wine is going from strength to strength. In 2016, sales reached a total value of €275 million, up 34% compared to 2015. The domestic market was worth 30% of the total (€83 million, up 22% compared to 2015). However, most sales are made on international markets: €192 million, up a staggering 40% compared to 2015 (as opposed to the more subdued 4% increase in total wine exports). These are the statistics published in Nomisma’s Wine Monitor research, commissioned by the Italian Trade Agency’s ICE national institute for foreign commerce.

As far as exports are concerned, organic Italian wine accounts for 3.4% of total Italian wine exports, but this figure is part of a steady upward trend (up 1.9% in 2014 and up 2.6% in 2015), thanks also to the importance that organic companies attribute to exports. The survey demonstrated that organic wine exports are worth 70% of total turnover among the Italian companies interviewed (compared to the 52% importance of exports in the Italian wine industry as a whole). In 2016, 79% of the companies producing organic wines exported the quality and excellence of Italian wine beyond national borders. The main market for this trade is the European Union, which is the number one destination (worth 66% in terms of sales). Just as in the agri-food industry, Germany is the main market for organic Italian wine (accounting for 33% of the foreign turnover achieved in 2016), followed by the United States (12%). According to Nomisma’s Wine Monitor, the US market will drive Italian sales abroad in the next three years; there are also excellent prospects in the European market, which will continue to be a focus.

When the behaviour of foreign consumers was analysed, organic wine’s success beyond national borders was confirmed, as shown by the results of the survey, which analysed the behaviour and purchasing habits of two important markets: Germany and the UK. These markets are extremely promising for Italy, first and foremost because they are among the largest importers of Italian wine (22% of the wine imported into the UK is of Italian origin, while in Germany it accounts for 36%).
The interest in organic wine is demonstrated by consumer preferences. In Germany, 12% of consumers have tried organic wine at least once in the past 12 months, while in the UK the figure is 9%. As in Italy, both markets prefer still red and white wines, followed by sparkling red in the UK and sparkling white in Germany. According to consumers (42% in the UK and 40% in Germany), organic wine produced in Italy is generally of a higher quality than organic wine produced in other countries. Quality is a recurrent theme among the attributes that this wine evokes. Both in Germany and the UK, 19% of consumers indicate ‘high quality’ when they think of Italian organic wine, while 15% see ‘authenticity’ as its main value. Italian organic wine undoubtedly enjoys an excellent reputation beyond national borders, but there is still untapped potential: 84% of wine consumers – both in the UK and in Germany – are interested in buying organic wine that has been produced in Italy.

What is organic wine?

Organic grapes are grown in vineyards without the aid of synthetic chemical substances (fertilisers, weed killers, fungicides, insecticides and pesticides).
Wine-making takes place in cellars using only oenological processes and products authorised by EU regulation No. 203/2012.
In short, organic wines are the result of an agricultural and production philosophy that prioritises our relationship with the land and nature and, in general, the wholesomeness of the food we eat.