It’s that time of year again and by “that” I mean, the beginning. January is the official month for looking forward and those of us in the food world have much to look forward to in 2011. Different forecasts for the year have begun to appear in earnest, so today we are looking at five of the trends most everyone seems to be able to agree on.

App is for Appetite

We’ve covered a few of the ways in which eating has gone mobile in the last year. If the last week is any indication, 2011 will see mobile devices give the fork some stiff competition whe…

A day built around great conversation with loved ones and an iconic feast- it should come as no surprise that Thanksgiving is the favorite holiday for many an Edelman team member. Like most people, our spreads are frequently made up of a motley mix of recipes passed down from generation to generation, spiced up classics from favorite food blogs and, in my family’s case, whatever is on the back of the bag of stuffing mix with a little white wine added in (in our defense, plenty is made from scratch as well).

As a way to demonstrate this and as a blog post inca…

Julia Child’s Boeuf Bourguignon in 140 characters- the length of an average sentence and a half. More recognizably, the maximum length of a single tweet. For scale, that’s a feast for six communicated in less than 10 seconds of reading. Thus, the scene is set for a book that has the curiosities of the digital food world peaked- Eat Tweet by Maureen Evans.

Frank Bruni, celebrated restaurant critic for the New York Times, wrote the foreword and among the byte-sized gems you’ll also find Marcella Hazan’s Pasta Carbonara. There is no shortage of food royal…

On the heels of the biggest nutrition conference of the calendar year, the ADA’s Food and Nutrition Conference & Expo (FNCE for short), we’re keeping a close eye on two mobile apps poised to make a big difference in helping consumers regulate the right choices for their diets- before they even get to the grocery store register.

In the last few weeks, both ShopWell and Fooducate have released new (or newer versions of) mobile applications tied to robust web presences. Both apps aim to make good choices simple for people with specific dietary needs- simpl…

The last few years have seen major changes to the average dining experience. Where once, a phoned reservation and the meal itself were lone components, a typical dinner out in 2010 could easily see itself on the following timeline:

Make reservations using a third party gateway like OpenTable

Arrive at restaurant and check-in to a geo-social site like Foursquare

Snap a photo once the food arrives to upload to sites like Twitter, Facebook or Foodspotting

Share post-meal thoughts on the experience on a review network like Yelp

Base…

It’s been said that eating is the original community effort. Since the dark days, we’ve delegated amongst ourselves to get a warm meal on the table. The advent of convenience cooking may have individualized the effort more in the last few decades, but the joy of sharing the work and sharing the table never left completely.

That said, we are ripe for a reintroduction of sorts to communal cooking (and eating) and there are a few folks at the forefront this week with innovative ideas on how to make that happen.

Thanks to PSFK, we heard about Vattenfall…

This entry marks the beginning of a new contribution to EdelmanDigital.com- Wednesdays, traditionally the day when newspaper food sections run, will now regularly feature a contribution from Edelman’s Food & Nutrition Practice.

There’s never been a more dynamic and changing food environment. Much of that change is playing out in conversations online. As a society we are literally redefining our relationship with food- how we think about it, choose it…where it comes from, who’s making it, what’s in it…how it impacts us, our community and our planet.

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