Food Finds: Highlights From The Fancy Food Show

This is a guest post from my intern, Laura Malick. She’s a dietetic student at the University of D.C. studying to become a dietitian. She recently attended the Fancy Food Show in DC and offered to share her experience with you. Enjoy!

The Fancy Food Show is a trade show featuring delicious culinary finds from all over the world. Usually held in NYC, the show came to DC this year and last, and I had the good fortune of volunteering in the Caribbean Pavilion booth both years with the fabulous guys at Eve Sales.

For three days, foodies and food industry types convened and sampled from over 100,000 different new and known food products. Anything and everything you can imagine you could eat or drink were present. During my breaks I walked around the expansive two floors of the show, which was held in the convention center, and ate everything from savory rosemary, raisin, and pecan crisps (delicious), pomegranate lentil chips (just so, so), dried golden berries (amazing!) and lemon-hibiscus frozen fruit bars (too tangy). I ate my way through Asia, Europe, Africa, Central America and the Caribbean without leaving DC.

This year I noticed a lot of “gluten-free” products, Greek yogurt brands and products, plus a number of new foods featuring lentils. Interestingly, although these new foods contain healthy ingredients, most were still heavily processed and pretty far from their natural state.

Both years I swore I was going to make it down every aisle, and both years I failed, making it through only a quarter of the booths. There was just too much! However, a few fun healthy products caught my eye and I was able to snag samples to take home. Unlike other food shows, you are not allowed to home samples of food products unless you are an exhibitor which, luckily, I was.

Look for these fun foods on the grocery shelf soon!

Bird’s eye view of the floor