Replacing the Stove with the Steering Wheel

Newswise — What's the fastest growing food appliance in America?

It just might be your car's power window, according to Harry Balzer, one of the food industry's leading consumer research experts and vice president of the NPD Group, a food research company that's been tracking trends for 25 years.

"We never even get out of the car for 24 percent to our meals," he said Tuesday to food scientists and other food professionals gathered here for the Institute of Food Technologists annual meeting.

Restaurants are the natural leaders in the take-out option but, according to Balzer, grocery stores have room for improvement in this booming category of food sales.

"They could have a kid with a good football arm throwing the rotisserie chicken through the drive-up window," he said, and there's dinner.

Despite seeming that there's a Starbucks on every city street corner, Balzer declares U.S. coffee drinking is down. Instead, it's caffeine-loaded carbonated drinks—even for breakfast—that are providing a regular boost.

Yet as that food preference grows, so grows Americans concern about children's health, with rising rates of obesity and a growing concern that more babies born now will develop diabetes in the future. For those reasons, Maryellen Molyneaux of the Natural Marketing Institute see a market opening up for more for products aimed at kids' health.

She also foresees the organic foods market gaining strength.

"Now that Walmart is entering the organic market and every chain has some organic initiative, the market will grow."

As for dining out, Amada Archibald , an analyst for the food trends monitoring company Mintel, the "premium" choices are no longer the exclusive realm of fine dining. Fast food, fast-casual, and casual dining restaurants are now using upscale ingredients and defining them on menus with such terms as artisan, local, seasonal and authentic.

"Local branding is huge," Archibald said. "It's no longer a red beet, a baby beet or an heirloom beet. It's a beet from a local farm."

Those are the trends of now. But what about 20 years from now? How will they compare with days gone by?

"About 100 years ago, most of you could kill a chicken," Balzer told his audience. "Can anyone do that today without running over it" with the car?

"In another 100 years people will ask if you know how to cook. The kids will want to know: 'Now what was that stove used for?'"

Now in its 66th year, IFT Annual Meeting + FOOD EXPO® is the world's largest annual scientific meeting and technical exposition on food.

Founded in 1939, and with world headquarters in Chicago, Illinois, USA, the Institute of Food Technologists is a not-for-profit international scientific society with 22,000 members working in food science, technology and related professions in industry, academia and government. As the society for food science and technology, IFT brings sound science to the public discussion of food issues. For more on IFT, see http://www.ift.org.