Having spent many years in the Middle East, I can’t forget what our highly packaged world has lost in terms of Mystery, Sensuality and Intimacy. The rise and rise of stores like Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s seems to reveal our growing desire to connect more sensually with food. That means being able to see it and smell it, as well as touch and taste it – once the hygiene inspectors have given the nod. The French understand. Sociologist Claude Fischler from the French National Center for Scientific Research asked a typically French question, “If you are what you eat and you don’t know what you’re eating, do you actually know who you are?” For retailers, letting us get closer to the food we eat is not easy. How do you remove as much packaging as possible to give shoppers a better idea of what it is that they are going to eat, and run an efficient operation, keep costs and waste down, and end up with the manufacturers still talking to you?
