The Trim, vol 342: Diet transition, Topjaw & 90s food

Hello

Here are my favourite food and drink reads from the past week. I hope you enjoy them.

Julia

What Caught My Eye This Week

How the meaty Danes embraced a plant-based diet plan: Food is deeply personal and has enormous cultural significance, making it a minefield for climate action. So the transition away from meat and towards plant-based eating had to be approached delicately, says Rune-Christoffer Dragsdahl, head of the Vegetarian Society of Denmark and one of the key actors in delivering the Danish plan. Dragsdahl says, appropriately enough, that carrots not sticks were crucial to getting agreement on the policy. “One of the key reasons was talking about what we want more of, instead of talking about what we want less of, that is how we got broader support,” he says. “There was a delicate balance. People had to feel welcome, even when they had not just differing opinions, but maybe even different versions of the truth. This was a tricky but important balance, because that’s how you secure the continued participation of people.” [The Guardian]

90s food and drink is back in fashion: “My daughter was obsessed with Cheestrings, which was a source of enormous distress,” recalls Matthew Fort. She wasn’t alone: the 1990s lunchbox staple was adored by millions, and as those 90s kids become parents themselves the nostalgia is powering back. The pizza flavour, axed in 2008, returned in 2024. “We’re seeing younger consumers embracing 90s snacking classics such as Discos, NikNaks and Club biscuit bars,” says Zoe Simons, senior brand development chef at Waitrose, referencing the power of “retro appeal”. [The Telegraph]

What does Ozempic mean for restaurants? As food companies such as Nestlé launch new brands specifically targeted at GLP-1 users (its Vital Pursuit range includes “portion-aligned” meals such as protein pasta and pizza that are high in?protein, fibre and vitamin A), so restaurateurs are reconceiving menus with restricted appetites in mind. “I’m?sure there will be investors who want to put money behind ‘Ozempic restaurants’, where portions are smaller and everything is designed to support the goal of losing weight,” says London-based restaurant PR Gemma Bell. “But I wouldn’t make Ozempic the primary message, as the?public could easily see these places as void of fun and entertainment. Restaurants should always talk about the ‘joy’ of their food, excellent produce and skilled team.” [FT]

Meet Topjaw, the foodies who eclipse Michelin: Twenty years ago, it used to be the Michelin Guide that foodies thumbed through for recommendations. Today, social media is where foodies, including myself and plenty of chefs I know, go for dinner inspiration. Topjaw is the most influential of them all with 1.2 million followers across social media. In the past six months celebrity guests have included the actor Idris Elba and the chef Jamie Oliver. But there are dozens of other accounts that people I know use to research the restaurants everyone is talking about. I go to @jamesdimitri (132,000 followers on Instagram) for his travel guides, @clerkenwellboyec1 (301,000 followers) for new openings, @emmahitsthespot (22,000 followers) for the best bakeries and @eatingwithtod (1.7 million followers) for cholesterol-surging food porn. [The Times]

The Mediterranean diet is a lie: Fifty years since the term was coined by the American physiologist Ancel Keys — and a decade and a half after UNESCO recognized it as an intangible cultural heritage of humanity — the Mediterranean diet has become a mishmash of hyperbole, half-truths and howlers, stirred together for political and commercial ends. Amid backlash against the Green Deal and agricultural protectionism hardening across Europe, southern politicians and lobbies have weaponized a series of recipes and ingredients to fry the European Union over its liberal climate and trade policies, while boosting lucrative — and often unhealthy — exports to America and Asia. [Politico]

How AI narrows our vision of climate solutions: AI-powered chatbots tend to suggest cautious, incremental solutions to environmental problems that may not be sufficient to meet the magnitude and looming time scale of these challenges, a new analysis reveals. The study suggests that the large language models (LLMs) that power chatbots are likely to shape public discourse in a way that serves the status quo. [...] The new study shows “that energy use is one small part of AI’s broader environmental footprint,” says study team member Hamish van der Ven, an assistant professor at the University of British Columbia in Canada who studies sustainable supply chains and online environmental activism. “The real damage comes from how AI changes human behavior: for example, by making it easier for advertisers to sell us products we don’t need or by causing us to see environmental challenges as things that can be dealt with by modest, incremental tweaks to policy or behavior.” [Anthropocene Magazine]

Orange juice makers are desperate for a comeback: Juice makers are trying to get back into people’s refrigerators by spending more on marketing and rolling out a steady stream of products. Tropicana, the biggest OJ brand in the US, reintroduced its stevia-sweetened Tropicana Light (formerly Trop50) line in 2023 to appeal to carb-conscious buyers, and it plans to start selling a blended orange juice in March: a lower-cost mix of orange, apple and pear juice—plus water—dubbed Tropicana Essentials. The new offering will be 80% juice, contain no added sugar and sell for $3.89 for 46 ounces, compared to $4.69 for its Pure Premium line of 100% orange juice. [Bloomberg]

Turning beer sludge into vegan milk: Upgrain and other producers such as Agrain in Denmark and BiaSol in Ireland are already selling brewers' spent grain protein and fibre extract to food manufacturers for inclusion in baked goods, pizzas, granola and even crisps. It's also being used in plant-based meat alternatives, such as those launched last year by the Swiss supermarket chain Migros, and in a coffee created by Singapore-based company Prefer. Huge brewers such as the Belgium-based Anheuser-Busch InBev and Chicago-based Molson Coors have even created their own vegan barley milk spin-offs made from spent grain. Molson Coors claims its Golden Wing product has a "rich and creamy taste" and 25% less sugar than most oat milks. [BBC Future]

When an AI agent does your grocery shopping: I recently asked a new artificial intelligence tool from the creator of ChatGPT to do an impossible task: find cheap eggs in my neighborhood. In under 10 minutes, the AI called Operator bought a dozen eggs and paid a human to deliver them to my house. All on its own. That’s science-fiction incredible, except I never asked Operator to actually buy the eggs. The AI went rogue — without my approval, it authorized my credit card to buy a dozen eggs for a whopping $31.43. I was a little frazzled when I realized what had happened: a bad AI decision had cost me real money. [Washington Post]

Serbia joins supermarket boycott: The Association for Consumer Protection, Efektiva, called on consumers in Serbia to boycott five major retail chains, due to their excessive pricing. The boycott targets supermarket chains Delhaize, Mercator, Univerexport, DIS, and Lidl. Efektiva said it is normal for prices to increase due to inflation, but not by the amount that is reflected on the stores' price tags. The initiative to boycott was originally launched by Croatian consumer rights group, Halo, Inspektore (Hello, Inspector) at the end of January. The group had announced a week-long boycott of supermarket chains Eurospin, Lidl and DM. [Euronews]

Brain Candy

Trying to quit sugar: I love two things in this world: sugar and myself. One result of my nonstop efforts to delight myself is that I end up consuming, every day, vast quantities of sugar. Oh, my God, I forgot my husband. Sorry, I love three things in this world: sugar and myself and my husband. Now that you bring him up, my husband, who is very dear to me, is worth mentioning. He does not love sugar. [NYT Mag]

From streetwear icon to convenience stores: NIGO has added another string to his already expansive bow. The streetwear pioneer has announced that he is the creative director of Japanese convenience store franchise FamilyMart. [...] NIGO’s first action as creative director is expected to arrive in Spring 2026, his responsibilities ranging from designing its next generation of stores to creating marketing campaigns. [High Snobiety]

Heinz x Mustard: This past weekend, in the midst of Kendrick Lamar winning five Grammy Awards, his album collaborator, DJ Mustard, appeared alongside him onstage to celebrate. The hitmaker was the producer of the Grammy Award–winning song “Not Like Us,” which took America by storm over the past year. [...] But a moment outside the show grabbed much of the attention. During a commercial break, Heinz debuted a spot and website (aptly named MustardxMustard.com) showcasing their newly formed partnership with super-producer DJ Mustard—real name Dijon Isaiah McFarlane. And the company teased the release of its first-ever cocreated condiment in the U.S. market, a limited-edition mustard scheduled to be available later this year. [Forbes]

About The Trim

The Trim is hand-curated by me, Julia Glotz, a freelance writer, editor and consultant.

I spent nearly 15 years as a journalist, including for The Grocer. Today, I work on a wide range of trade comms, content and insight projects for the food industry.

Interested in working with me? Here’s how I can help

Want to chat? Drop me a line at [email protected]