Farm to fork… heritage… organic… these buzz words have been hitting the grocery store shelves in force for years now. Along with this trend, there is a growing desire to understand more about where our food comes from. According to the 2016 Nielsen Global Ingredient and Dining-Out Trends Report:
- Consumers are adopting a back-to-basics mind-set, focusing on simple ingredients and fewer processed foods. More than half of consumers say they’re avoiding artificial ingredients, hormones or antibiotics, genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and bisphenol A (BPA).
- Seventy-three percent agree that they feel more positively about companies that are transparent about where and how products were made, raised or grown.
A few innovative companies are tapping into this desire to give consumers exactly what they want. That’s great PR from the ground up. Check out what these three trend-setters are doing:
- SVO’s Farmer Focus Chicken – This chicken has a Farm ID on every single pack. Head to their website, and enter the Farm ID to see the exact farm your chicken came from. Now THAT is farm to fork. The fast-growing Virginia-based company sells to retailers up and down the eastern seaboard, and is pushing west.
- Fishpeople Seafood – Crazy stat: 90% of seafood eaten in the U.S. is imported from abroad. Fishpeople sources from small-scale American fishermen, so you’re supporting our local coastal communities when you buy from Fishpeople. For example, check out where this Alder Smoked Wild Salmon Chowder came from.
- Braveheart Beef – How about tracing your burger back to its origins? Performance Food Group’s Braveheart Black Angus Burgers use DNA tracking to assure restaurants and consumers that their beef is coming from angus cattle, Midwest-raised on all-vegetarian, corn-based diet to create a consistent, superior eating experience.
So, the next time you look at your fork, you can know that with a little homework, you can figure out exactly where that bite came from.