The simple and clean food

We still eat meat but we surprise ourselves when the latest meal becomes vegetarian without us even thinking about it. We will grow more ingredients at home and in our neighbourhoods, or buy from the city farmer who farms vertically in massive spaces created in abandoned office buildings. But we also grow things in the small spaces, in the windowsills, and share our harvest with a community online. For the digital generation, there is a social aspect to the trend – participating in a communal hobby with friends.

The pandemic has allowed us to rediscover our kitchens. Corona baking, whipping up a Dalgona coffee, and pickling vegetables. Interest in food is a megatrend. And in the foreseeable future, we’ll put more energy, time, and thought into our kitchens.

Parallel to this, we’ve become masters in creating a restaurant atmosphere in our homes and picking up takeaway, which has led to a new breed of restaurants that do not have a dining hall, so-called “ghost kitchens”. Maybe we’ll go online from our dinner table to receive instructions and a presentation of the ingredients from a professional. The virtual world provides opportunities to enjoy a pleasant evening around the table with your gang of wine lovers who “see” each other digitally every month.

A crisis can be torturous, but it can also be a creative breeding ground for the business ideas of tomorrow. We now see specially designed hybrid restaurants popping up in our cities – cafés during the day and taverns at night. A bakery in the morning, a lunch restaurant, and a store with pre-cooked meals in the evening, or why not a wine bar where the furniture and decor are also for sale?

Regardless of whether we go out to eat at a restaurant or go online at home to listen to the chef’s description, we’ll enjoy “Naked Restaurants” where the food is cooked with an open curtain. Kitchen secrets, cutting corners, and questionable hygiene will be left in the past. If we used to view machine-produced food as something dull, in the future, we’ll applaud the robot cook as the perfect chef.

What will our friend, the robot cook, whip up before us on the screen? Food from the sea also has a bright future. We’ll hear more about fish on dry land, bred in the large tanks of the adaptable farmer, as well as the ever-present hype of insects as an alternative protein source. Although it might be a while before you take your first bite.

The health trend is another megatrend on the rise. It goes hand in hand with our growing interest in food. We choose ingredients that boost our immune system. Locally produced goods will play an even bigger part, as will plant-based protein and new alternatives to sugar and fats. Reducing food waste is becoming an everyday habit. More and more people are aware that our food is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions, and that we also need to change what’s on our plates.

Familiar ingredients are the winners in uncertain times. You can count on safe, familiar flavours and brands making a return. A sense of security will also, paradoxically, likely make us choose canned and packaged food again. Traceable, of course. The packaging industry has begun thinking differently and is constantly providing us with new, smart solutions that are good for the environment.

But at the end of the day, the safest option is still the picnic. Fresh air, plenty of space. Simpler dishes are fully allowed and in line with our new preference for simplicity. After all, the most important thing is being able to spend time together.