Where’s a great place to spot upcoming food and nutrition trends? The annual Food and Nutrition Conference and Expo of the American Dietitians Association. You can read our recap of my time in Boston last year here. The 2011 conference has just closed and I’ve really enjoyed reading the roundups and tweets, especially the post by my pals at Teaspoon Communication. You’ll love reading Serena’s excellent post on the expo as she shares her top 5 trends being: The protein-packed power breakfast; Stealth health for adults; Get your (Probiotic) Shots; Gluten-free goes whole grain; and Low-cal beverages without artificial stuff.
I also called on one of our Sydney dietitians to bring you the scoop direct from the huge expo floor.
About our expert:
Sarah Patterson is an experienced Accredited Practising Dietitian and Senior Account Manager at The Food Group Australia, a nutrition communication consultancy in Sydney. She loves exploring new food trends and the latest nutrition news and is loving her trip to San Diego.
Avocado board beats them all
If you’ve ever been to a dietitians conference you’ll know that the chocolate stands like Hershey’s and Mars are popular – all that new info about antioxidants and dark choc and not the samples of course. But I was surprised to see the Avocado Board overloaded with delegates. I headed over and to my surprise found, yup you guessed it, chocolate, well chocolate cake to be precise – made with avocado! It was delicious (as well as being low in saturated fat and high in fibre). Recipe here.
Packaging innovation gets healthy
Go Live Prebiotioc and Probiotic drinks are pre-packaged beverages with a bubble in the cap. You press the cap and it releases the freeze dried probiotics into the bottle to create the probiotic drink. The best part is no refrigeration and only 160kJ per serve (and they’re super yummy). They claim to contain up to 15 billion live cultures from up to 15 strains of bacteria.
Hippie health goes mainstream
The Expo was bursting with interesting products from left of centre including Yerba mate, claiming the strength of coffee, health benefits of tea and euphoria of chocolate. But it was hemp foods time to shine. Hemp Hearts – raw shelled hemp seeds that can be eaten on their own or added to salads, cereal or yoghurt. Plus Amazing meal – a new supplement range made from ingredients including hemp seeds, brown rice, wheat grass, barley grass, alfalfa, Kale, acai, goji, maca, carrot, blueberries, rosehip, banana, flax seeds and digestive enzyme and probiotic blend.
Nutrition labeling heats up
A key presentation at the conference was “Who Owns the Message? Diverse Groups Clamour to Control the Food-Health Arena”. And there’s no finer example than the rise in nutrition sign-posting schemes within supermarkets in the USA. NuVal believes it currently has the world’s largest & most comprehensive nutrition database used in 1500 supermarkets (ranking is displayed next to price point on shelf). Preliminary research is showing increase in sales of more nutrient dense foods following introduction of NuVal. Other systems include Safeway, Nutrition IQ, Wholefoods Aggregate Nutrient Density Index (ANDI) and Healthy Ideas. So look out for new initiatives in Australia and your part of the world too.
But it was this tiny change in approach to food labelling on new Wholegrain Goldfish Crackers that caught my eye and made ME smile.
Editor’s comment:
Thanks Sarah, so jealous that you made the trip this year. Love to hear from other RDs and links to their FNCE posts in our comments below, especially the scientific sessions. Perhaps you have a question for Sarah too? My big question, is when will we hear from FSANZ about hemp foods approval in Australia, we have the background in this archived post?
