Food Fantasy or Food Future?
7 food and drink trends that are set to be on the rise in 2022.
No one can predict the future. Apart from Waitrose, it seems. The British supermarket chain has released a series of predictions about what we could be eating in 2022. In the latest missive of the Food and Drink report, the John Lewis subsidiary has given us a variety of insights and predictions based on current trends not just within their shops but further out on the high streets and on our dinner plates too.
Bigger and More Experimental Breakfasts
With more and more of us shifting to a blended working style, mixing working from home and working in the office, it is giving us a few more hours each day to play with. If your commute is simply from your bed to the kitchen table or spare room cum study, as opposed to an hour spent on a ring road in a queue of traffic, you can now spend that time making something more elaborate than just cornflakes.
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Overnight oats are great, a flexible way to pack nutrients and taste into a portable and convenient breakfast. Unlike many cereal bars, it has no plastic wrapper, just your pot to wash up and use again. It's great. But it's not eggs benedict? Or shakshuka. Apparently this year we've been frying, scrambling, poaching and benedicting eggs 68% more than last year, and this trend is set to increase. Equally, we're set to become more experimental with our morning munch, breakfast burritos, homemade crumpets, fresh pancakes, exotic coffees, the world is your oyster! Although I wouldn't recommend those for breakfast, but kippers, mmmm, yes please.
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Furthermore, we'll be elongating our breakfasts, no more gobble and go, instead, we could well end up taking our time and making a broader platter of things to consume through the morning. Which seems like elevenses erasure to me. Breakfast won't be just the first thing we eat in the mornings, but for those of us who, like me, work from home mostly, breakfast will be an event.
We will be trying harder to reduce our carbon footprint.
How often do you look at where your food is sourced from? Or if you buy in season? Shipping food in scores very badly when it comes to your carbon footprint. Eating meat is another habit that's under fire for its poor environmental track record. And let's not get started on plastic packaging. But 2022 is a year where these things will all take a more prominent role in our shopping. 70% of Waitrose shoppers said they find the carbon footprint of their food important and 85% of British shoppers are making more sustainable choices when it comes to shopping.
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2022 is lining up to be a year where we put even more onus on shopping closer to home and in a cleaner, greener manner.
Potato milk - coming to a coffee house near you, 2022.
Yes, potato milk. Proving that you don't need nipples to be milked. (Ed: I don't think everyone is gonna get that's a Meet the Parents reference?) Potatoes have now joined the long list of dairy alternatives available; low in sugar and saturated fat they are set to be part of a health boom and incentive to swap from traditional milk.
Bottled cocktails are booming.
Gone are the days of judging people for drinking premixed cocktails. Now a wholly accepted and also praised. No longer do you need a cabinet of thousands of bottles caked in dust on the off chance that you fancy a Negroni (always) when you can just keep one bottle of premium ingredients already mixed together on standby. Simple, efficient, and you really wonder why we didn't jump on this one sooner.
Now we're talking! Image credit; Pylyp Sukhenko/Unsplash
Umami is here to stay.
Umami is one of the five basic tastes – along with sweet, bitter, salty and sour, umami translates to a pleasant savoury taste. And it is now one of the most prolific flavour profiles we look for in our foods. Think warming chorizos and smoked meats. Think rich salmon and tuna cuts. Or indeed anything slathered with Waitrose's umami paste which saw a 17% growth in sales last year.
There will be an increased effort to grow our food sustainably.
More nature corridors around and through farmland, sustainable and ecologically sound harvesting and seeding techniques. How we farm our food will be seeing as much of a change as what we farm.
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Freestyle cooking could well be the next big thing.
Although I'd argue it has always been a thing, just see any student flat where improvisation and experimenting are key parts of making a pinched budget go further. But now it's set to be a far more refined thing with crossovers of cuisines, flavours and formats looking to set in motion a tidal wave of new dishes that'll be unstoppable, egged on by social media. TikTok is an exemplary example there, just how many people have tried at least one recipe off of the clock app, huh?
So there you have it, the future of food as called by Waitrose. At least for next year. But what do you think? Are you ahead of the curve? Are you already keeping a herd of potatoes in a milking parlour?
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Comments (3)
I like those predictions. Potato milk.... hmmm. I'll need to look into that. Never saw "Meet the Parents," so that reference went right over my head. 🙄
It's nice that people will take more time to have a good breakfast. I think that's most important for a balanced appetite for the rest of the day
There is definitely some interesting ones, and a couple that are nothing new.