History and Mystery

There’s a popular quote from philosopher George Santayana: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” And some anonymous source also came up with a snarkier version: “History repeats itself because no one was listening the first time.” Whichever version you prefer, it has a certain relevancy in food-product development.

Last week, I read that one of my former companies is releasing a new, light and crispy cheese cracker. Now, it could be different from that old, crispy and light cheese cracker our group worked on long ago. Or the one that came after that. Or a similar concept that probably got traction once or twice in the last decade. You know, a baked product that was more like a chip… Then someone said “saturated fats are the new trans.” No … actually saturated fats are the old trans. Except nutritionally, the cure was worse than the problem. I haven’t heard the baking and frying industries are surreptitiously sneaking tubs of beef fat and lard through the back door. But part of the solution requires a review of, and partial return to, saturates for anything that requires a solid fat.

And that is the crux of most food-product development—building on the past is essential. In fact, Santayana prefaced that famous quote by saying: “Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute, there remains no being to improve, and no direction is set for possible improvement…”

This is evident in both of the above examples. Luckily, the industry has continued to evolve, so we don’t have to move en masse back to square one. In the case of the cracker, I’m betting oven technology has reached the point where more-precise temperature and heat-transfer manipulation to affect the texture is practical. And there are certainly more fine-tuned fat and oil options than existed 20-plus years ago. Plus, it’s useful to borrow from the past: Steamed foods are all the rage, but only if we don’t have to wash the pot and the little steam doodad.

But that doesn’t mean there’s not room for innovation or new ideas, or even simple serendipity. Did anyone realize 50 or 60 years ago microwave cooking would become ubiquitous and estimate the amount of time invested to make microwavable food products? Though I’m not convinced carbonated foods are the next aspartame, the occasional box of fizzy yogurt ends up in my refrigerator. (The little fussy eater in our house likes it, and maybe some day I’ll actually try the stuff.) The fun part of working with food is the thousands of things that people consume, the exponential number of combinations and the myriad physical forces that can lead to undiscovered—and sometimes unintentional—results. The difficult part is trying to figure out which of those combinations are going to appeal to that quirky collection of people known as “the consumer.”