Are we facing a paradigm shift?

The oth­er day, I stum­bled upon an old copy of the Gastronomic Calendar. It is a book that is pub­lished annu­al­ly by the Swedish Gastronomic Academy and con­tains a col­lec­tion of essays regard­ing every­thing that has to do with food.

I was sit­ting in my arm­chair and found myself with a copy from 1963. At the end of the book, there is a text that today would be some­thing of a trend watch into the future. A gen­tle­man by the name of H. Carlheim-Gyllensköld writes about ‘Tomorrow’s Cooking’.

Two things pop up in my mind: One: This will be inter­est­ing. Two: I will sit and gig­gle at all the fool­ish con­clu­sions. Much like an old sci­ence-fic­tion movie from the same time that pre­dicts fly­ing cars and cap­sule food.

But am I wrong or what? Mr Carlheim-Gyllensköld is aston­ish­ing­ly sure-hand­ed. Sure, he is not com­plete­ly accu­rate. The fish of the future is appar­ent­ly always fresh and trans­port­ed by air from the fish­ing boats. With no exceptions.

It is an opti­mistic view that is con­veyed and the author’s pre­dic­tions are – as stat­ed – astound­ing­ly good. Carlheim-Gyllensköld pre­dicts a future with a vari­ety of dish­es and ingre­di­ents. Deep-fried octo­pus and grati­nat­ed mus­sels are noth­ing to be sur­prised by and ‘the despi­ca­ble cig­a­rette smok­ing between the cours­es that ruins the culi­nary expe­ri­ence has van­ished as if by a mag­ic trick’.

A lux­u­ri­ous din­ner of the future is not lim­it­ed to the com­mon sole, deer meat or a fil­let of any kind. Cooking is some­thing that inter­ests and engages every­one, regard­less of gen­der, age or role in the fam­i­ly. And we always want to learn more.

The text makes me reflect on our own time – and future. It makes me think of the role sug­ar has in food and the fact that we his­tor­i­cal­ly not have been able to crit­i­cize this indis­pens­able ingre­di­ent. Sugar has almost been mag­i­cal but this has large­ly been due to the absence of real alter­na­tives with equiv­a­lent properties.

I asked a ques­tion the oth­er day to Ola Broström, Innovation Manager at Bayn. Do you think the 2020s will be the decade when we will see a par­a­digm shift for sug­ar reduc­tion and sug­ar com­pen­sa­tion? He answered yes with no hesitation.

And if you think about it, it is not dif­fi­cult to under­stand why. We have today high-inten­si­ty sweet­en­ers, dietary fibres and sug­ar alco­hols that togeth­er can give the sug­ar a good match. And research is ongo­ing and new ingre­di­ents pop up all the time.

You can even think of com­bi­na­tions of ingre­di­ents that not only mim­ic sug­ar but also excels sug­ar and fun­da­men­tal­ly change our per­cep­tion of what is per­ceived as sweet and tasty.

Maybe we will look at sug­ar with a roman­tic shim­mer, just as we view an old fan­cy Cadillac with a pushrod V8 and chromed grill. Or com­mon sole and quail for that mat­ter. Our view of lux­u­ry and van­i­ty has changed, so why couldn’t our view of sugar’s indis­pens­abil­i­ty also under­go a shift?

What will the store shelves look like 2073? It’s, of course, impos­si­ble to make cer­tain pre­dic­tions. But if I’m half as sure-hand­ed as H. Carlheim-Gyllensköld, I might see it as a feat. Perhaps I also have a future as a pre­dic­tor of the future?