We've been scouting out the stockpiler chef for several years now. They're the folks who cook in bulk on either Saturday or Sunday, then refrigerate or freeze their meals so they have something quick and home-cooked for dinner any night of the week. It's a great idea, but it takes a lot of planning, shopping and organization.
Enter Let's Dish (www.letsdish.net).
While the rest of the world is taking advantage of the summer crop by mixing blueberries into muffin batters and cereal, some food scientists have found an alternate source for them... your meat.
The latest self-help cause among consumers is a bit fishy.
Call it the food mood movement. It's been brewing for years now, and reached its peak about a month ago when the headlines broke on yet another study proving omega-3 fatty acids (found in fish oil) fight depression.
Now psychiatrists are prescribing fatty acids instead of Prozac to their patients.
To some, religion seems out of place in the Pledge of Allegiance. Others are trying to push it onto consumers' plates.
Consider this new crop of "Bible foods":
A company called House of David Foods is marketing a Bible Bar and Bible Granola. Both are said to have "nutritional and spiritual" value and include the seven foods of Deuteronomy - wheat, barley, raisins, honey, figs, olive oil and pomegranates. The products are sold in some 2500 stores nationwide, including religious shops and bookstores.
Can the color of your product make or break it?
It may seem preposterous until you consider purple ketchup and pink margarine.
Or Kool-Aid's Magic Twists, the drink mix that changes colors when prepared. Magic Twist's newest entry -- Switchin' Secret -- goes even further. It's an orange powder that turns into a secret color and flavor.
Everywhere we turn, we find another health-foodie who's on a flax diet.
The nutty, buttery flavored grain has been cultivated since 9,000 B.C., but it wasn't until a few weeks ago that Entertainment Weekly Magazine named it the 'in' diet.
If you check out the facts on flax, you can see why it's so hot. Flax is high in potential cancer-fighting omega-3 fatty acids, full of fiber and also contains lignans, a plant estrogen that may protect against breast and colon cancer.
We've seen Asian fusion restaurants opening up almost as fast as Starbucks chains, and now it seems they have spawned the newest, hottest ethnic-dishes-to-go-mainstream.
The first is pho (pronounced fu). This Vietnamese noodle soup with beef is sweeping through the U.S. like a monsoon. We're finding it in restaurants all over the place, and even on college cafeteria menus. Soon, Seattle's Associated Grocers will begin distributing a line of instant pho noodles and jars of concentrated pho broth paste.
Airline food may have been much maligned, but now that it has virtually disappeared from all but a few flights, consumers are feeling the void.
In sweeps the hotel industry. Many high-end hotels, like the Four Seasons Palm Beach and some Marriott chains, are offering "Airline to Go" meals. Essentially room service packed up and ready to fly, the meals are being pushed hard to today's hungry, harried traveler.
Everywhere we look these days, cheese seems to be taking center stage.
There's so much talk about consumers spending increasingly less time cooking. But there's one target group that's actually flocking to the kitchen - Kids.
Credit the cooking channels, of which you will find plenty of pint-sized devotees; or perhaps Generation Swapping - a trend in which adults act like kids and children act like sophisticates.
©2013 Consumer Eyes
