Environnement, food challenges, out of home catering, Public Health

The industrialization of meals: a locked market despite of sustainable solutions, health & pleasure of eating in communities

8 minute reading

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result!

Albert Einstein

FoodserviceEurope (FERCO)European Federation of Collective Catering Organization represents the interests of European, Canadian and USA meal service providers, intended for Communities, Hospitality, Events and Tourism and was created in 1990 to discuss and resolve key issues affecting this sector and declares, 👇

« As of today, we are more committed than ever to tackling the major socio-economic challenges ahead and driving sustainable growth for our industry and for Europe as a whole. »

http://www.foodserviceeurope.org/en/about

However, 33 years after its creation while the food volumes, upstream, increase exponentially, the catering tools, downstream (stoves, meal trays) remain narrow.

Outsourcing and industrializing meals has become a business model; on the one hand by circumventing the problem by reheating the portions on site, thus claiming to control health safety by applying HACCP standards (born at NASA), while the risks are multiplied due to thermal breaks throughout logistics (storage, transport, deliveries, unequal heating, lack of traceability and speculation of raw materials simultaneously harmful to public, human, animal and environmental health. The ONEHEALTH principle has been forgotten …epizootics, avian flu, swine flu, cow crazy, mountains of sacrificed animals…, contamination from animals to humans, pesticides, algae, lack of diversity and nutrients.

Come to nutrition, …. The project « From Farm to Fork and beyond: a systemic approach for implementing true cost accounting for food in switzerland https://www.letemps.ch/sciences/vers-une-sante-integree

Within the industrialized countries, FoodServiceEurope (FERCO) and the EFSA (European Food Safety Agency) do not really demonstrate consistency between the slogans « green deal », energy sobriety and « Farm to Fork » and the standards/methods imposed. The diversity of the content of the plates is however an obvious lever to modify supply and demand and ensure healthier and more equitable agriculture and meals.👇

« The supply of local products in collective and hotel catering constitutes a serious opportunity for the maintenance and promotion of local agriculture and the quality of the content of the plate »

AGRIDEA (AGRICULTURAL UNION).

In the name of economies of scale at all levels, in a gigantic market in materials and services, subsidized by all, they pretend to ignore the technical standards and social constraints inherent in the catering trades 👇

« In order to be able to apply quality standards, catering establishments must be provided with simple products which allow them to save time and which answer their questions about the offer of dishes and drinks to be offered as well as their preparation and presentation »

Source: Office Fédéral de la sécurité alimnentaire (OSAV) -Restauration collective, aliments et nutritio

To continue to dominate the market, corporatism exerts a strong and omnipresent lobby with politicians and all decision-making circles.

This was the case with the Nomadic Thermal Trolleys (DTN) presented on the market in 2008 which were acclaimed for their versatility, self-sufficiency, practicality, thermal reliability, by many distinguished professional users and following word of mouth alone, claimed and recommended by distributors and international equipment purchasing platforms (except in Europe ???) from equipment manufacturers who have remained deaf….. and published spontaneously on the Ecole Bocuse website or even published in Figaro Magazine

Self-sufficient and versatile, DTNs are eco-concepts capable of removing technical and societal constraints, while reducing resources. They diversify recipes as many times as necessary and therefore fragment local supplies. Working time and quantities are better managed, so many factors making it possible to break with the industrialization of meal preparation and to renovate canteens and create new catering concepts in hotels.

ACTION MECHANISM
The biomimicry of heat transfer gives DTNs high reliability and high energy efficiency and is particularly suitable for food processing. A generic and pioneering heat transfer techno logy in materials that cool with the benefit of CE certification, an Alungo Community Trademark, the creation of the Porcelain Model, stamped Alungo with two European Patents 2005 and 2015 followed recently by an Indian Patent 2022 https://www.en.alungo.com/technology

USE
In the service preparation phase, when the food has reached its point of cooking or reheating (assembly), it is erected, finalized in the DTNs in which they are distributed in equivalent volumes and passed through by damped heat from the thermal destocking of non-random level and dura tion throughout the implemen tation of the service, transport and the duration of consumption in various places where the service is carried out such as in hotels. When the temperature reaches its lower limit level, a brief rise in temperature restores it for a new extended autonomy More details https://www.alungo.com/menus-diversifi%C3%A9s

During this time, the industrials obtain subsidies for projects intended for the distribution of meals (by chance?): for one, (France) when it comes to coating porcelain with a layer money to make them compatible with induction cookers…. (antinomic combination); for the other (Fance) to create porcelain containers that can be preheated in ovens (replacing stainless steel containers), including a fluid core with a change of state aimed at increasing the thermal inertia of the containers… .well thought ! increased weight and increased energy in hours of preheating, burning out of the ovens, ……

Millions of subsidies hijacked by corporatism and monopoly and thrown out the window for « trompe l’oeil innovations » whose goal is to maintain the same model and continue to sell as much material as ever on the back of the general interest…. .