How climate change can turn coffee and chocolate into luxury items

Ordering a lobster at a restaurant or serving it at a party is considered the height of gastronomic sophistication. But it was not always so. Lobster has climbed steps from its humble beginnings to becoming a refined delicacy.

In the 18th century, lobster was considered a highly undesirable food, from which wealthier families kept their distance. The crustacean was so abundant along the east coast of the United States that it was used as fertilizer and served in prisons. Kentucky politician John Rowan said jokingly, “Lobster shells in a house are seen as signs of poverty and degradation.”

It was the development of railroads in the US that turned lobster into a luxury food. Train operators decided to serve lobster to high-income passengers, who didn’t know the bad reputation of seafood. They quickly grew to like the food and took it to the cities, where it began to appear on the menus of expensive restaurants. By the end of the 19th century, lobster had consolidated its status as a luxury food.

What determines which foods are luxury items? Both scarcity and price play a role in this.

Like lobsters, oysters have long been associated with fine dining and special occasions, to a large extent because of their high price. But they also did not always enjoy this status. Oysters used to be eaten by the poorest of European society in the 19th century. “They were so plentiful and cheap that they were added to stews and pies to get rid of them,” says culinary historian Polly Russell.

In the early 20th century, oyster supplies in England began to decline due to overfishing and industrial pollution. As they became scarcer, their status rose, and oysters came to be seen as something special, says Russell. We see the opposite with products like sugar and salmon, which used to be difficult to acquire and available only to the wealthy. These foods lost their “aura of luxury” over time as people began to produce them, and as a result, they became less scarce, says Richard Wilk, professor emeritus of Anthropology at Indiana University.

Many fruits and vegetables used to be much scarcer than they are today. Some fruits, like strawberries and raspberries, used to be available only in the summer, but nowadays we can buy them all year round. “It changes the perception of luxury,” says Peter Alexander, Senior Researcher in Global Agriculture and Food Security at the University of Edinburgh (Scotland, UK).

Our obsession with acquiring scarce and luxurious food comes at a heavy cost to the planet. When a specific species of fish or seafood becomes more scarce, its price goes up. The increase in value gives people an incentive to fish harder to get the remaining ones, which can lead to a spiral of extinction, Wilk says.

When and where we eat certain foods also determines how much we value them. “The context in which we eat is really important for creating desire,” says Esther Papies, professor of social psychology at the University of Glasgow (Scotland). According to her, luxurious foods are usually associated with special occasions, such as eating at restaurants or vacationing.

Studies show that being in an environment associated with expensive food can increase the attractiveness of the food or drink typically consumed there and people’s willingness to pay more. A recent study found that people’s desire for sushi increased if they ate it at a sushi restaurant rather than at the beach.

Positive, warm memories of sharing a meal with others also increase the value people place on certain foods, says Papies. Luxurious foods are often shared with friends and family, at Christmas, for example.

During the lockdowns brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic, the experience of eating with others has become a luxury in itself, says Russell. “People were crazy about cooking together and eating in a social way,” she says. “In a world where resources are limited, and the availability of food is precarious, the experience of eating together can become a luxury item.”

The next luxury foods

While historically some foods, such as coffee, chocolate and spices, have been luxury items, today these foods are grocery items in much of the world. However, global warming and more intermittent rainfall could cause this to change again over the next few decades.

At the height of Mayan civilization, cocoa beans were a valuable currency, used to pay workers and traded in exchange for goods on the market. European traders brought cocoa to Europe, where it became a popular whim in the royal courts. In 1828, Dutch chemist Coenraad Johannes van Houten invented a process to treat cocoa beans with alkaline salts and produce chocolate powder, which could be mixed with water. This process turned chocolate into an affordable product that could be mass produced.

Coffee was once a little-known delicacy used for religious rituals in Ethiopia, before Western merchants brought the fragrant drink back to their home countries in the 17th century and began serving it in coffee shops, popular with transport workers, brokers and brokers. and artists. After the Dutch secured their seedlings, coffee cultivation quickly expanded across the world and became a popular drink, consumed daily.

“Chocolate and coffee could both become scarce and luxury foods again because of climate change,” says Monika Zurek, Senior Researcher at the Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford (England, UK) .

Vast areas of Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire (neighboring countries on the west coast of Africa) could become unviable for cocoa production if the global temperature rise reaches 2 degrees Celsius, according to a 2013 study. “Cocoa used to be for kings and no one else. Climate change is hitting production areas hard… Cocoa could become more of a luxury food again,” says Zurek.

Climate change could eliminate, by 2050, half of the land used for coffee cultivation worldwide, according to a study published in 2015. Another study suggests that areas suitable for coffee cultivation in Latin America could be reduced by 88% by 2050, due to rising temperatures.

For thousands of years, spices have been a symbol of wealth and power. The demand for aromatic spices started the first global trade routes, established vast empires and eventually defined the global economy. Today spices are everywhere and are often the cheapest items on supermarket shelves. But they can go back to being luxury items, says Zurek.

Spice crops are already suffering the effects of climate change. Heavy rains and humidity provide favorable conditions for pests such as aphids and diseases such as powdery mildew. In Kashmir, India’s largest saffron-producing region, dry conditions have destroyed crops of this eye-catching culinary ingredient.

Vanilla production in Madagascar (island in East Africa) has been hit in recent years by extreme weather conditions. A cyclone devastated 30% of the island’s crops in 2017, pushing prices to a record $600 a kilogram, which briefly left the spice more expensive than silver.

“The danger of everyday products becoming luxury items is bleak,” says Monique Raats, director of the Food, Consumer Behavior and Health Center at the University of Surrey (England, UK). United). “Too many foods can become inaccessible to many people.”

‘No meat’

It’s not just climate change and scarcity that can turn our everyday food into items for the few. Changes in people’s behavior and tastes will also have an impact on the status of these foods.

“Another way of thinking about luxury food is something you shouldn’t eat often or in large quantities,” says Raats, citing meat as a great example.

Meat, which is currently part of a regular meal for many people, is likely to become a luxury product in the coming decades, with more people adopting a plant-based diet to reduce their carbon footprints, she says. People can also adopt the change due to the large amount of agricultural land incorporated by meat production, which may no longer be viable with the population growth on the planet.

Eating meat can become socially unacceptable and viewed similarly to how smoking is viewed today, says Alexander. “It can get to the point where eating a hamburger isn’t a nice thing to do with friends.”

But getting to that point isn’t a straight-forward path, says Papies. “Eating meat is the norm, it becomes part of a national identity. Deviating from it is difficult,” she says, adding that many vegans and vegetarians struggle with the fact that they have to explain, or justify, why they don’t eat meat.

Veganism, in particular, seems to arouse strong emotions, from irritation to passionate fury. Offering more exposure to meat-free options, both in advertising and in stores, can help address the struggle with identity experienced by many vegans and vegetarians, says Papies. “It would help make things more equitable.”

The true cost of food

In an attempt to reduce their emissions, countries may also choose to tax meat, as many have done on sugar, says Alexander. The measure, controversial and with side effects, would raise meat prices and make it a more luxury product.

Raising animals on farms is responsible for 14.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and red meat production accounts for 41% of these emissions.

Global beef production causes emissions similar to those produced by India and requires 20 times more land per edible gram of protein than protein-rich vegetable crops like beans.

According to the UN food agency FAO, “there is a worrying disconnect between the retail price of food and the true cost of producing it” in many countries.

“As a consequence, food produced at a high environmental cost, in the form of greenhouse gas emissions, water pollution, air pollution, habitat destruction, may appear to be cheaper than more sustainably produced alternatives,” he wrote. the UN agency in a report on agricultural sustainability.

When we eat meat, says Alexander, we are not paying for the environmental degradation caused by the meat industry. “We are not calculating the value of these results and paying for them when we eat meat.”

A meat tax would reflect some of these harmful environmental impacts, but it remains a politically unpopular idea with potentially harmful effects on the poorest population, who already struggle to buy protein.

“That could change,” says Alexander, as more people see meat as “something we can’t afford to eat, in terms of sustainability.”

“Hopefully, in the near future, we will have more correct prices and farm subsidies that reflect the food we produce and help us create a more sustainable system,” says Papies.