The Forces Shaping How We Eat

The population is getting older

5 min readJan 10, 2019

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Everywhere in the world, the population is getting older, especially in developed nations. Healthcare is getting better, people are getting married later, and couples have fewer children. In a few years, there will be more people over 65 than there are under 14. This means industries must be more efficient, do more with less. This also presents interesting challenges on social security systems, job markets, schools, service sectors, and many other parts of society.

Most women are working

As job markets open up, laws are passed to bridge the pay gap between men and women to encourage more women to work. Today more than 60% of women are working full time. This means tasks around the home once done by mostly women, must be shared among everyone in the household, in their free time.

Almost everyone will live in the city

The pursuit of economic efficiency also created mega-cities where millions of people live in concentration. Similar to Moore’s law, speed is a function of density, and being close to everything else, things happen faster. Today more than 81% of people live in cities.

Households are getting smaller and smaller

Density means building up, so land becomes extraordinarily scarce and expensive. The relocation from rural to cities also means larger households are breaking up into smaller households. The average household today has just over two people, and 30% of households only have one person. These include elderly and professionals. For them, all of the chores in the house is handled alone.

A large portion of meals are consumed outside the home

As people take on more tasks in a day, the need to outsource some of the tasks increases. As entrepreneurs recognize this need, many started food businesses. Today, people spend more money eating out than on home-cooked meals. For some people, all of their meals are cooked by others. The next generation is growing up detached from wholesome ingredients, all because they’ve stopped cooking.

Income hasn’t changed much, but everything costs more

It is now normal to have a debt-to-disposable-income ratio of larger than 140%. Consumers are on a hunt for deals, especially food.

Almost half of the population is obese

To provide meals to the masses at an affordable price point, calories have become cheap. It’s more profitable to increase the perceived value of a meal by using better marketing than it is to use better ingredients. As the need to outsourced cooking and the accessibility of cheap calories increase, too many fell victim to bad eating habits. 2 in 3 adults are overweight, where 1 in 3 is obese. Obesity creeps up on you in a world of instant gratification. But that sentiment is changing.

Information is easily accessible

Consciousness is correlated with knowledge. Over 87% of North Americans are now online, and people can access public information anytime, anywhere. Everyone has been burned from buying a low-quality product. Instead of depending on clever advertisements and salesmanship alone, consumers now depend on peers for product recommendations or establishing trust.

Connected computers are everywhere

As the cost of computation and information transport decrease, more and more devices are turning into mini-computers that connect to the internet.

Consumers are more health conscious

As more people recognize the need to maintain a healthier lifestyle, they’re looking for simple solutions that can fit into their busy lives. 18% of people have a gym membership in the US, and the organic food movement continues to double every five years.

Forces

It’s clear people live differently than 50 years ago driven by an ever-increasing need to do more with less. Less time, space, and money. At the same time, the ability to collect, store, transport, and compute information is getting cheaper. First interfacing with humans, then interfacing with devices. An architectural change is coming to the supply-chain of food, and our Kitchen.