Most of the conferences we attend come down to being about consumption of one kind or another–usually the different ways we consume information. This week I’m in Portland attending the International Association of Culinary Professionals Conference, where we’re talking a lot about consumption from a couple different angles: the food we eat, the places we find it and the ends we go to learn more about it. Social media continues to come up as the game-changer, or in this case, plate-changer. Today’s Friday Five is dedicated to soundbites coming straight from food industry influencers and how the future of food could play out online.

Wanted: Digital Kitchen Curators

Thursday’s keynote included a particularly riveting portion wherein New York Times Food Editor Kim Severson interviewed former Gourmet magazine editor Ruth Reichl. One of the topics they touched on was the need for further curation of recipe resources online. While the growth in the number of people now looking for recipes exclusively online is staggering, the average consumer posting those recipes doesn’t have the professional level of skill or scrutiny that goes into published cookbooks. Both acknowledged that there are many exceptionally talented home cooks who have found a voice (and matching audience) through blogging, but a quality control problem does haunt the hallways of Google Reader. Kim credited Cooks Illustrated editor Christopher Kimball when she said “Do a search for green bean casserole online and make the first one that pops up. I guarantee you it’s awful.”

Severson did make mention of a few sites doing it right, including Food52, which regularly calls for recipe submissions, but entries are edited and tested by an experienced team of pros and run by Severson’s New York Times colleagues, Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs.

If You Can’t Stand the Heat

Members of the food world aren’t exactly known for shying away from conflict. In an industry in which every decision is nuanced (organic farming benefits to egg separating techniques), a healthy difference of opinion is to be expected. While there have been many debates onstage and elsewhere this week, the most infamous came yesterday during a panel entitled “The Death of Recipes?” with panelists Andrew Dornenburg, Karen Page and Michael Ruhlman.

Page loosely asserted that the taxing schedules encouraged by modern culture (including increased media consumption) has left people without time to cook with traditional recipes. Ruhlman’s colorful response can be seen on YouTube. He disagrees and has a few recommendations for finding efficiencies.

Twitter as Edible Equalizer

Reichl has, particularly in her post-Gourmet career, become well-known for her unique use of Twitter, something Severson was keen to inquire about. Reichl’s style comes across as vivid, full-sensory 140-character poetry. An example:

Of her devotion to the medium, she said “The perfect peach is open to everyone. I think of it as celebrating the ordinary–Twitter allows us to distill those moments. You can stay connected to whatever world you choose to join.”

A Seat at the Table from Kitchen to Boardroom

A 2009 study entitled Food 2020: The Consumer as CEO, presented by Linda Eatherton and Phil Lempert, talked about the future of food and, in many cases, how online crowdsourcing will continue to support the “democratization of the international food chain.” Consumers are “wired and powerful” when using services like 1) Twitter to find things like up-to-the-minute product recall information, and 2) blogs to demand a seat within the marketing mix. There’s still a potent amount of romanticism when it comes to consumer food priorities but companies engaging directly online are being rewarded with loyalty as well as consumer-driven product innovation.

General Mills, for example, credits its Open Source Innovation Network, an online tool in which the company poses challenges that are then addressed by site registrants. This process is yielding new products that move to market faster. When the ideas come from the consumer directly, steps can be removed from the long traditional roll-out process.

Karma Police: Consumers Demand a Shared Return on Investment… via Mobile Device

Not only are consumers saying they want a role in deciding the available products themselves, but they want a voice in spending the profits made from those purchases. A model reminiscent of Donors Choose was raised a possibility and has already begun to be implemented by a handful of companies letting consumers choose what worthy cause a portion of their purchase will go to. The build would be the ability to do this at check-out via mobile device.

A second mobile idea is less tied to re-investment from particular brands but instead spans every offering found on supermarket shelves. Using a mobile-enabled barcode scan, consumers can not only see a product’s comprehensive nutritional rating but a combined score that includes its carbon footprint and ethical production values (animal welfare, fair-trade, etc). The regulatory ramifications of implementing an international rating system of that scale are what keep it a decade away but it’s clear from many conversations at IACP this week that an increasingly aware consumer is hungry for progress in this arena.