Eating Healthy at Santé Expo 2014
All sorts of culinary innovations are hitting the market, each promising to make you a better person from the inside out. But what products are actually worth exploring and what are purely marketing fads?
The Nation visited the Montreal manger santé et vivre vert (“eat healthy and live green”) exposition, which ran from March 21-23 at Palais de Congrès to give the taste test to food trends big and small.
While trends in previous years promoted the “super powers” of obscure berries or ancient grains, companies this year were pitching lifestyle changes based on eating better by going gluten free or by living vegan (eating no animal-based products).
Vegan themes were prominent this year, but let’s acknowledge right off that this lifestyle would prove difficult for most people living in James Bay.
So we instead decided to focus simply on what tasted good. This is what we found.
The first kiosk we visited featured cheeses from Fromagerie Bergeron, a company that produces dairy products on the south shore of Montreal. Well known in the province for their Gouda, we sampled their new 6% light cheddar that featured a lovely chewiness and robust flavour.
The ladies representing the company said that they have been on the market for a few years and have been enlarging their distribution network. All natural and delightful, have a look for them!
Also in the cheese aisle, Bio Bio brand were handing out their different varieties. It should be noted that all of this company’s products are 99.5% or completely lactose-free and organic. Increasingly available throughout the province, these artisanal cheeses were rich in flavour and have a lovely creamy quality. We sampled the old and mild cheddars and were hooked with one bite!
Attending this show means that you are often going to encounter products that you wouldn’t normally serve on your dinner table. Bioseaweed was one of those innovations that had us doing a double take. While seaweed has been a nutritional favourite for some cultures for thousands of years (Japan), the typical North American may not be as convinced to put them on their table.
Displaying a large casserole dish of some less-than-appealing looking greens, Bioseaweed’s pitch is that their seaweed is harvested at 30- to 40-metre depth, making it “pollution free” before maturity for maximum nutritive value.
“This seaweed has amazing properties for those looking to lose weight or for people with thyroid problems or are suffering from cancer,” said a company representative who gave his name as Lee.
The seaweed snacks were tasty and no doubt nutritious as seaweed is jam packed with tons of vitamins and nutrients. But I’m not sure I shop in a store that sold only seaweed products.
Moving along, we met Francine who was handing out some rather fanciful gluten-free delight Way Better Snack. This consists of a corn chip made from sprouted grains. The product came out last year and is packed with things like chia seeds and quinoa as well as radish and broccoli seeds.
Simply Sweet Chili variety is a grainy tasting tortilla chip flavoured with a lovely trifecta of salt, sweet and spice. While the all-natural product contains more nutrients than your average Dorito, it should never be forgotten that it is sill a deep-fried treat from a crinkly bag loaded with salt and other wonderful things that make it tasty but not necessarily ideal for the waistline.
Next up we encountered the Made Good organic granola snack product stand, which featured all sorts of little bars geared towards the lunch bags of little people (children).
According to Peter from Made Good, these products are all organic, school safe (peanut-free) and feature a full serving of vegetables in each tiny bar. They’re packed with the typical oats and other fruit goodies as well as things like vegetable powder with dried spinach, broccoli, carrots, tomatoes and beets. The toddler we had on hand gobbled it right down. These little bars may actually be a good alternative for parents who have a hard time getting their wee ones to eat their greens. For this reason it was my favourite find of the day!
Anyone who has ever spent a collective five minutes watching a daytime TV health show will likely have heard of the health benefits of green tea. From being an antioxidant to a detoxifier to being packed in ultra healthy chlorophyll, this beverage exudes a healthy glow.
A part of Chinese culture for 5000 years, Matcha tea is quite different from the typical tea bag preparation as it made from a finely ground tea leaf powder that is heated and frothed with a special brush. This is exactly what was happening at the Do Matcha table so that everyone could taste the traditional preparation.
Invigorating, warming and also refreshing, I was happy to walk away with my sample cup of Do Matcha in hand and will definitely consider drinking more of the beverage.
If you are looking for something to zest up your favourite dishes and are a fan of “terroir” or local products, La Fin Fleur de la Tapani half-salt herb grinders and herb mixes are a good way to enhance your food in an all-natural way.
These products are made uniquely with freeze-dried garlic flowers giving them a garlicky edge. They are blended harmoniously with anything from citrus to fine herbs to chives to a pepper blend.
Great for a summer salad or just to perk up the tomatoes in your sandwich, we loved what we sampled here and would buy the product for home.
Of course, if you really want to go out with something fabulous to perk up your home cooking, a fine olive oil is another great way to go. For some, buying olive oils is on par with selecting fine wines and can be about as expensive.
While there were oils of just about every variety under the sun available for sampling at this show, nothing could compare to Chateau Virant, a $27 prize-winning olive oil from France. Chateau Virant is a “finishing oil,” which means that it should never be heated but rather enjoyed as a condiment. Fragrant and grassy with a green artichoke flavour with just a hint of pepper, this product is one of the best sellers for its category in Canada and has won many culinary prizes in France.
Something else we found rather interesting was REELIV5, a specialty infusion beverage geared towards those suffering from things like arthritis, osteoarthritis, tendonitis, bursitis, sprains, fractures, sports injuries, inflammation and back pain.
While it really did kind of seem like the 5 Our Energy or Red Bull for the Baby Boomer generation, as it is a sports type “liquid nutrition” beverage for joint health, whether it is more than new fad in slick packaging remains to be seen.
The product contains homeopathic nutrients like glucosamine sulphate, chondroitin, Methyl Sulfonyl Methane or MSM, collagen and Devil’s Claw, all of which can be purchased at a health-food store. Whether the product actually contained enough of each of these to be effective as pain relievers is hard to judge as this product has to be taken daily over a period of time to be effective.
While it is an interesting concept and they do have Alexandre Tagliani as their spokesperson, hours after sampling the product, Nation editor-in-chief Will Nicholls had yet to notice a difference.