"Baby boomers will control 52 percent of the total dollars spent on groceries, making them the largest food influencers and making iconic brands like Orville Redenbacher and Reddi-wip even more important, according to Phil Lempert, founder of Food Nutrition & Science and CEO of The Lempert Report and SupermarketGuru.com. Lempert's Top 10 Food Trends for 2012 is featured in an article in the December issue of Food Nutrition & Science.
For more than 30 years, Lempert has predicted the top 10 food trends for the upcoming year. In 2012, Lempert says to expect farmers to become the next big food celebrities and for mobile phones to become the new way to check out at a market. '2012 is going to be an interesting year,' says Lempert. 'Food prices will continue to increase, but more people - including dads - will cook at home. While technology in the store will move us forward, resurrected nostalgic brands will remind us of the past.' " (PRNewswire)
Older people, in general, like to think about the past, "the good old days." At least the ones who were reared in decent circumstances. My guess is that very few baby boomers in America today ever think about the 1 billion people living in hunger. No, they can't wait to plan the next bar-b-que and bring out the nostalgic brands in between trips to their favorite restaurants.
I doubt if "Guru Lempert" spends much time thinking about the world's hungry. He has too much work to do making predictions about today's American supermarket industry.
The baby boomer generation in America will start to fade away pretty quickly now as they age, but they will remain a viable ally against change in today's global food industry ("Big Food"). They have the money to back up their biases, and a lot of political clout to go along with it. "New Food" will continue to work quietly in the background, and, one of these days, a lot of people will be shocked to find out what is waiting down the old rodeo trail, as we used to say in Texas a lot. Young people will get excited and be ready to try the "New Food," but the changes will be profound and shock a lot of older folks who will refuse to have anything to do with it - that is, until they get to the nursing home where the medical staff takes over with newer "medical foods" that are currently being developed.
Poverty, hunger and malnutrition can easily lead to riots in the streets, and many leaders are now asking questions about what can be done to feed more people in cost-effective, efficient and meaningful ways in order to quell the unrest that is happening at a time of economic uncertainty and challenge in the world today. Also, at a time when natural disasters are combining with economics to make the challenge even tougher. Disasters such as the Russian drought which caused a drastically reduced wheat crop and higher food prices around the world.
Many of those leaders are looking for answers regarding nutrition not because they are that concerned about their people, but because they are looking for ways to stay in power. Now that shooting your own citizens in the streets is not quite as easy to do because of cell phone cameras anymore, they are looking for other answers. If someone went to them with a high-tech, low cost idea, do you think they would listen? Everybody has dirt. If food can be made from dirt anywhere in the world without it coming from plants or animals, then the changes will indeed be profound.
This is so interesting to me, an old Texas A&M agriculture grad, that I just can't help myself. I have to write about it. I hope you will want to continue reading about it, and, some day, let me hear from you. There is an email link in this blog, or you may leave a comment. Stay tuned!
tags:
nutrigenomics human nutrition food safety food wars hunger malnutrition poverty genetics nanotechnology robotics kurzweil monsanto dupont pioneer corn genetically modified usda fda eggs beef poultry pork turkey fish shellfish fruits vegetables food borne illness wheat rice oats barley sorghum soybeans alfalfa protein vitamins minerals amino acids fats unidentified growth factors fatty acids genetic engineering climate change food security agribusiness fresh produce desertification
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