Food adulteration had always gone on, but the new manufacturing process meant it was now big business.

The food shops themselves change as well, so you used to have a system whereby, for example, with bread, the miller was the same as the baker, was the same as the retailer.

Now the miller mills the flour, passes it to the baker, the baker bakes and the retailer sells.

So you've got divorcing all the way along the chain.

That depersonalises the food chain.

People don't have the personal relationship with their customers, therefore they think they can get away with it.

Anything that is made, manufactured, ...or passes through the hands of somebody who can adulterate it... ...by the mid-Victorian period, the chances are it will be adulterated.

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Food historian Annie Gray and Rob Lowry, VP of Marketing at PepsiCo UK, Ireland and Europe, sit down for a wide-ranging fireside conversation on where consumer food culture has come from, where it's heading and how to tell the difference between a genuine trend and a flash in the pan they cover how the health concerns driving food choices today from protein to gut health are less new than we think and what that tells us about what's likely to stick why personalized nutrition is still accelerating and what glp-1 medications are doing to consumer habits and food industry priorities and how fragmented eating patterns demographic shifts and the rise of remote working are reshaping the occasions food is designed around.

We are here to talk about insights and trends.

The idea of this session is really to put the whole arena into context, to give you a bit of flavour of what's coming up, to give you as well a chance to ask us questions.

What do you think is a fad? What do you think is a trend? What do we think are fads and trends? I'm a food historian, so my background is very much, I suppose, looking on at modern food and seeing the context of where we come from to where we are today.

And I'm going to be in conversation with Rob Lowry from PepsiCo, Europe, Ireland and the UK as well.

So what we're going to do is talk to each other, a fireside conversation, if you will.

Think of your questions on the way through because we will give you 10 minutes or so at the end to ask us anything that you want to and I hope that what we do is spark some ideas for you to go away and think about as you wander around the exhibitions and go to other sessions today.

So the opportunity for us is, as I said, to connect that need of the consumer and what they're trying to achieve and whether it's a chocolate cake or whether it's their morning oats or to connect the food, to connect the solution to their need.

How, how do you make it relevant to today? What, what, what are you hoping people will go away and, and do?

I think it depends on where people are coming from 'cause there's so many people from so many different backgrounds here.

You've got n- NPD people, you've got marketeers, you've got all sorts.

I mean, I think probably the biggest thing I hope people would take out is to check their historical facts if they're gonna start making claims on the packet, to be honest, 'cause authenticity is a dirty word, in my view.

But also, my experience is marketeers have a tendency to dream up something based on what they think of as the past, and it's not true.

Whereas actually, if you draw on what was really happening, it's a much more interesting story and can be a much more, much, much stronger marketing point if it's actually true.

Uh, beyond that, I think it's about, to me, it's the interplay of things like sustainability and, uh, and modern food.

And I'm not sure this was the main point of what you were, you were talking about, but one of the examples I heard you talking about was white bread and brown bread and, and maybe you could tell us that story, 'cause I think that's quite interesting in terms of h- uh, public perception of foods and how that changes.

So presumably as it's more tart, it goes completely against maybe something that's more sugary and sweet, hence why it can be good for puds?

Yes.

I mean, I would say it's one of the more versatile things for puddings.

It's quite high in pectin as well, so it sets quite nicely.

So gooseberries are often added to, now, often added to jam, and actually in the past also added to jam because they will add pectin to jam to make it set.

But in a, in a sweet context, and we're talking sweet as in sweet, sweet dishes, I really struggle with using the word pudding to describe all sweet dishes, which is the modern way of using pudding because to me, pudding is puddings.

It's not everything that's sweet.

... of the Victorian era.

Yeah.

Throughout the 20th century, we start to see the democratization of many, many foods.

We start to see the introduction of many industrialized foods.

We start [laughs] to see British cuisine become very bland, actually.

I'm not ...

Some British food in the 20th century is great, but a lot of it really, really isn't.

And after the war, I really tried hard to love 1950s food, I really, really have, but we've had 14 years of rationing.

Where do things like that come from?

See you this summer.

summer.[upbeat jazz music] Was there anything else that actually revolutionized baking and making cakes like this? Well, the invention of the egg whisk was quite a big thing.

Um- Not the bundle of twigs? Not the bundle of twigs.

Yeah.

But so there's two things which really, really do make egg whisking, and therefore cake making, much easier, and one is the copper egg mixing bowl, and the other one is the metal egg whisk.

The metal egg whisk seems to come into use in the 1840s.

I can't find an earlier reference to a metal egg wh- definitely to a metal egg whisk before about 1841.

all.If we come back to the topic of the Victoria sponge sandwich, how is it that we then see the democratization of this to the point that we could go to the supermarket and just pick up a nice cake off the shelves?

Presumably not a Roman pizza.

Well, [sighs] if you define pizza as a flatbread with stuff on, then yeah, it's a pizza.

It's a flatbread, and it's got figs on.

I don't think we would define it as pizza.

You can play with definitions, and they are quite slippery things, especially when it comes to food, not least because pizza has changed, as with all foods, a lot over time.

The thing that was uncovered in Pompeii is undeniably a flatbread with some stuff on.

I wouldn't call it a pizza personally, because we do know what pizza is, and you can play with the definition.

Tell us about the history of this.