Winter Fancy Food Show 2020

02/01/20 • 34 min

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The Specialty Foods Association holds a Winter Fancy Food Show in San Francisco in January. The 2020 edition just wrapped up. I did a virtual fly-over of the show to see what caught my attention. The sheer number of specialty foods and beverages on exhibit is overwhelming: 80,000 + items! There’s no way any one observer could cover the whole show in person or by perusing the online directory and pages devoted to the more than 1400 exhibitors from around the world. I relied on a steady stream of pretty picture posts from folks covering the Fancy Food show in person to get a sense for what was getting buzz.
For this episode I asked my business partner, and wife, Farnaz Badie to have a light-hearted, definitely not definitive or comprehensive chat about a short list of items I thought made a statement. With all our combined years managing, marketing, and researching food and beverage brands I thought we might weigh in on the prospects of some of these products.

Previous Episode

Zero Waste Shopping

Our lifestyle, for the vast majority of us in the U.S., demands the convenience of packaging. This dependence on convenient packaging is only growing as we live more of our daily lives on the go, and we look to light-weight, sturdy, sealed, hassle-free packaging (think plastic) to transport our food with us. And when we do eat at home, many of us are often too time-pressed or too tired to prepare a meal from scratch, so we turn to pre-prepared, packaged foods.

At the same time, many of us are literally feeling the effects of too much greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. We are worried, individually and collectively about the impact on our health, and, for some, even our survival as a species.

There is an uncomfortable, unrelenting tension between what we think we need, which translates into producing 300 million tons of virgin plastic feedstock every year, and the price we are paying in terms of the unsustainable levels of pollution we are generating, to live the way we do.
Recycling is not working nearly as effectively as it could or should. And while packaged food manufacturers have started to invest in alternative, more eco-friendly packaging to plastic, the fact is that the plastics industry is planning to make more food and beverage plastic packaging for years to come. Another, or parallel solution is for us consumers to just not ask for, or use as much disposable packaging. That is mostly what the zero waste movement is about.
This episode focuses on two zero waste shopping approaches. First, I talk to owners of two zero waste stores that have opened in the last year; Stephanie Lentz of Scoop Marketplace in Seattle, and Lea Rainey at Roots Zero Waste in Garden City, Idaho. Nothing is pre-packaged or branded in these stores. You bring your own containers, or pay to use the store's.
I also speak with Ben Weir, from Loop, a start-up that is testing a model where you and I can buy products in non-disposable, durable packaging that we send back to Loop for them to reuse when we've used up all the product.

Next Episode

Pleasures of Fasting

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Intermittent fasting has been on the periphery of my attention as something getting buzz in the broader world of food and food marketing. In fact, intermittent fasting is among the most popular weight loss strategies as we roll through 2020. According to an annual survey by the International Food Information Council, about 10% of Americans tried intermittent fasting in 2019, second only to “Clean Eating.”
An app promoting intermittent fasting - DoFasting - broke through the onslaught of January diet marketing for me because fasting brings back poignant memories. Not because I’ve fasted to lose weight, but because fasting was an annual event in my family growing up. Breaking the fast is what I remember most and best. Food never tasted so good! And not just any food. Special food that did more than replenish your energy. A hearty, nourishing soup called harira (I give you my vegan version of it in this episode), figs, dates, eggs, and a special Moroccan sweet treat called chebakia.
This wave of interest in fasting got me wanting to revisit my experiences to better understand the potential of fasting, especially as something more than a way to lose weight. From my limited experience it seems like fasting can heighten the pleasure of eating and offer emotional, even spiritual rewards if it’s part of an overall approach to eating.
In this episode I talk to Liliya, who recently started a fasting Meetup group, about her experience and why she's a big proponent of IF. I also speak with Dr. Rachel Herz, a neuroscientist who specializes in perception and emotion, and author of "Why You Eat What You Eat." She tells me about some of the latest research into the health benefits of intermittent fasting related to managing insulin. Dr. Herz also talks about how we experience food after not eating for a long time, and speculates on the potential emotional benefits we derive from breaking the fast. Martina observes a vegan fast for weeks at a time, in addition to periodic 18-24 hour fasts. She describes the spiritual rewards of fasting.
Then we talk about food to break the fast with. Mehdi Menouar, owner of Meska Sweets, a Moroccan bakery/patisserie in Englewood, NJ, talks about his Moroccan Macaron and elaborates on chebakia, the heavenly cookie/pastry that is one of my favorite things in Moroccan cuisine, and a staple during the fasting month of Ramadan.