Friends with benefits: the future of food may lie in the past

Fun fact: “friends with benefits” is not only about relationships. In food, it might be one of the smartest strategies we have. A small but important reminder from food history.

In the Netherlands, like many countries, meat was never eaten as “pure meat”.
For generations it was always mixed with vegetables, bread or grains.
Think of:

• meatballs with onion and breadcrumbs
• sausages with herbs, starch and vegetables
• stews where vegetables often outweighed the meat

Not ideology. Just common sense: meat was scarce, leftovers were re-used, and cooks were pragmatic. Only in recent decades did we start treating meat as something that should be:

• 99% meat
• ever bigger portions
• “the purer the better”

What we now call meatmaxxing is actually a historical anomaly. Of course, the meat industry itself seems to understand this very well and nostalgically returns to recipes from not so long ago. Companies like Van Loon Group, Vion, Zwanenberg, Plukon and others are actively investing in hybrid, or blended, products and plant–animal combinations. As a natural evolution of their craft.

That is why I enjoyed Jeroen Willemsen’s article “Friends with Benefits” on Eiwit Trends so much. Sometimes the future of food starts by remembering how we once cooked.