Twenty years ago, as we watched the cartoon Jetson family sit down to an instant gourmet supper that had been cooked by a computer, who would have believed that in 1989 three-quarters of American homes would have microwave ovens performing the same trick? Also, advances in packaging and preservation have allowed fresh produce to go anywhere, even on space missions. We've tailored foods to our liking by removing their caffeine, fat, and sugar; enriching and fortifying them with nutrients; and reducing their preparation time to minutes.
In this new year we draw closer to the end of a century, and suddenly, 2001 seems near at hand. Of all the fantastic hopes and dreams for the twenty-first century--world peace and prosperity, controlled environments, settlements in space--predictions about our food supply may be most on target.
Although many yearn for "natural," unprocessed foods, consumer demand for more nutritious, convenient, safe, and tasty victuals keeps prying new products from research laboratories. Lynn Dornblaser, who as general manager of Gorman's New Product News witnessed a record seventy-five hundred new food products introduced in 1987, does not expect consumers to tire of novelty. "Sometimes I think the consumers will eat anything put down in front of them," she muses. Latest figures for 1988 predict that new products will total nearly eighty-five hundred.
The food trends that will continue into the nineties have been labeled "schizophrenic" by industry groups. Consumers demand convenience (witness the surge of microwave products), but will not compromise on freshness or nutrition. Most curious is the "work out/pig out" trend that sets low-fat, low-calorie products side by side with decadent desserts at the checkout counter.
Here are some of the most promising new-and-improved foods that we will see in our supermarket shelves in the next one to five years.
Convenience
An increasing number of hectic households depend on microwave ovens, fast-food restaurants, and shelf-stable foods for nourishment. The food industry responded with over seven hundred new microwave products in 1987. Several are convenient, microwavable fast foods with long shelf lives. Hormel's Top Shelf selections of beef, chicken, fish, and pasta dinners are shelf stable for up to eighteen months. The dinners go directly from the microwave oven to the table in their own plastic serving dishes. General Foods' Impromptu line, Dial Corporation's Lunch Buckets, and similar products from Omni and Chef Boyardee are also being test marketed.
Another version of new microwave products makes restaurant-style fast foods more convenient for the home. Micro Magic introduced a line of frozen hamburgers, cheeseburgers, french fries, hash brown sticks, chicken sandwiches, and milkshakes. Along the same theme, Campbell's is test-marketing Souper Combos, frozen lunch entrees consisting of soup and a sandwich that are microwaved together for a fast hot lunch.
Expect to see more frozen dinners packaged with a "doneness indicator" for microwave foods. The tape changes color when the food is properly cooked, thus helping to ensure good results regardless of
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