How Well Do We Know Our Food?

A brief exploration of a restaurants opportunity to cater to specialized diets

Photo by Matt Walsh on Unsplash

How well do we “know our food?” Are the foods we eat, what we think they are?

For some of us, questions like this might not matter very much. Maybe we’re one of those who mostly cares about what we eat for the taste of it, or the experience of it. It doesn’t matter where an oyster was swimming before we eat it mixed up with “hot sauce and butter.” 

We’re just in it to eat an oyster with hot sauce and butter.

But on the other hand, some of us care a great deal about the source of our foods.

Consider those of us with special dietary needs, for example. And what about those of us with spiritual reasons to care about what we eat?  Some of us care a great deal about the foods we eat because we follow dietary guidelines based on our religious principles.

And, as we know, food continues to evolve. We are seeing plant-based alternatives and meat created in bioreactors now.

Food sourcing and preparation and creation is likely to continue to evolve into the future.

This means that restaurant leaders will need to stay ahead of how these shifts in food matter to those who care for personal reasons or even religious reasons about knowing food intimately.

As the Future Evolves, Restaurant Leaders Will Need to Know Specialized Food Diets Even Better

While some of us may just be curious to know more about our foods, those of us who ascribe to particular diets for religious reasons, pay close attention to our food and how it is prepared.

Consider kosher and halal diets, for example.

The article “Kosher Food: Everything You Need to Know, describes the basics of a kosher diett, for example.

The article reminds us that, “There are three main kosher food categories: Meat (fleishig): mammals or fowl, as well as products derived from them, including bones and broth Dairy (milchig): milk, cheese, butter, and yogurt; and Pareve: any food that is not meat or dairy, including fish, eggs, and plant-based foods.”

Another article points out that kosher diets forbid, items like “pork, reptiles, amphibians and insects.”  Shellfish too, including lobster, mussels, shrimp, scallops and the oysters featured in the beginning of this article, are off-limits for those who ascribe to this diet. “Animal products or by- products made from any non-certified animal” are off-limits too.

Halal diets are also specialized.

In halal diets, “Haram,” or forbidden foods include “cereal products containing such things as “alcohol, animal fats and vanilla extract.” Or, “Cheese, yogurt and ice cream made with animal rennet, vanilla extract, gelatin, pepsin, or lipase.” Halal, or permitted items include such things as “juice” and “milk, yogurt, cheese, and ice cream made with bacterial culture without animal rennet.”

These brief overviews give a general example of how each diet takes care and work to understand and to prepare accurately.

This is now.

But as food technologies evolve for the future, the dietary prescriptions for diets like these will continue to evolve too.

Consider How Emerging Food Technologies Will Impact Specialized Diets

One article points out how religious leaders are following trends carefully and making sensitive decisions for their constituents. Impossible Pork, (which according to the company website contains a mixture of plant-based ingredients like soy, coconut oil and sunflower oil, as well as heme, vitamins and minerals) was not given a kosher designation. In this case, they “certified,” the “Impossible Burger,” but not “Impossible Pork.” And so, even though, this happens to be a plant-based product, it is not receiving the certification, yet. It may or may not, in the future.

This example demonstrates how religious leaders are watching food technology trends closely.  It also opens up the door for restaurant leaders to pay close attention to such trends too, if they want to continue to build trust with their customers who ascribe to such specialized diets. 

Know Your Customer

The opportunity for restaurant leaders is to know their customer so that they can help the customers to know their foods. This means staying close to specialized diets, but also the technology trends that are emerging that may affect such diets.

Here are 3 specific ideas:

1.     Know your client and customize the menu: Watch out for opportunities to customize your restaurant menus. Remember this article? What if the Restaurant Menu Knew You Personally?

2.     Help customers feel they know their food: Take care to understand the basic principles that serve as the foundation for specialized diets and sourcing and preparing and educating consumers accordingly. This QSR Magazine article points out how restaurant leaders have an opportunity to “guard the hospitality element in an increasingly distant world.” The futurist cited in the article references seeing restaurant technologies through a “people-first,” filter.  

3.     Know what questions to ask: As restauranteurs embrace new technologies, and begin to serve new foods, such as plant-based alternatives or lab-grown meats, let’s keep in mind how they apply to the specialized diets too. This means asking the questions before customers do. As technology evolves rapidly, restauranteurs will have a lot to learn by staying close to religious organizations as they make new determinations. This article suggests, for example, that “Cultured meat will be off-limits to observant followers of Islam–the world’s second-largest religion, with about 2 billion adherents–if Islamic authorities decide it’s not halal.” 

All in all, leaders have an opportunity to help their customers to know their foods well.

Staying ahead of new technology trends and how they relate to the specialized needs of customers will help leaders and those interacting with the clients to educate them.

This will help consumers to feel that they are being cared for and that they know their foods well.

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Shannon Mullen O’Keefe and Mark A. Irwin contributed to this article.