Why Is the Consumer Searching for the Real Thing Again?
By Dr. Nurfer TERCAN
FROM THE AGE OF THE ALTERNATIVE TO THE AGE OF THE RETURN TO THE ORIGINAL
There was a time when the milk of the future was to come not from the cow, but from oats, almonds and soya.
Supermarket shelves changed. New words were added to the menus of coffee shops. The question “Almond, oat or soya?” ceased to be merely a choice of drink; it turned into a small symbol of the new consumer culture built around health, the environment, lifestyle and even identity.
But now something interesting is happening.
The consumer is remembering milk again.
The latest data, to which The Economist drew attention in September 2026, show that the years-long rise of plant-based milk alternatives has lost momentum, particularly in America and in some of Europe’s large markets. According to Circana data, while the sales volume of plant-based milk alternatives in the US fell by 5.4 per cent over the past year, the decline in almond milk, the largest product in the category, reached 7.9 per cent. While volume fell by 2.5 per cent in Britain, growth slowed in France, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain. By contrast, signs of recovery are being seen in sales of traditional milk, which had been declining for many years.
At first glance this may look like a minor piece of market news from the food sector.
It is not!
Because what a society buys does not show only what it consumes.
It also shows what it believes in.
Once, being “alternative” was a value in itself
One of the most powerful words of the consumer culture of the last twenty years was “alternative”.
Alternative energy.
Alternative protein.
Alternative meat.
Alternative milk.
Alternative living.
What was new was often accepted as progressive merely because it was new. What was traditional, meanwhile, was turned without question into the representative of the old world.
There were of course strong reasons for this. The climate crisis, the environmental effects of livestock farming, animal welfare, lactose intolerance and differing dietary preferences supported the rise of plant-based products.
It would therefore not be right to reduce the change taking place today to the simplicity of “plant-based products lost, traditional products won”.
Indeed, the plant-based milk market has not disappeared. In the US it kept its size of about 2.7 billion dollars in 2025 and accounted for roughly 13 per cent of dollar sales in the milk category. What is more, a significant share of the households that buy plant-based milk also buy traditional milk. In other words, consumer behaviour is not as simple as a war fought between two separate camps.
But something else has changed:
Being alternative is no longer enough, on its own, to persuade.
The consumer is reading the label again!
Perhaps this is exactly where the transformation begins.
People have begun to look away from the big promises on the front of the packaging towards the small print on the back.
It is not enough for it to say “plant-based”.
“Is it natural?”
“How much has it been processed?”
“What is in it?”
“How much protein does it contain?”
“How much sugar has been added?”
“And why am I paying so much money for all this?”
It is precisely these questions that lie behind the transformation The Economist points to. Alongside price pressure, growing suspicion of ultra-processed foods is leading the consumer to re-examine the ingredients of some plant-based drinks. At the same time, protein has become one of the strongest nutritional trends of recent years.
There is an important detail here: not all plant-based drinks are the same.
Their nutritional values can vary considerably depending on the plant used, the production method and whether or not the product has been fortified. The US Food and Drug Administration, too, recommends that consumers check the label particularly for protein, calcium, vitamin D and added sugar; fortified soya drinks stand closer to milk in terms of nutritional profile than many other plant-based alternatives.
So the issue is not the question “which one is healthy in absolute terms?”
The real issue is that the consumer has now begun to measure the distance between claim and content.
The meaning of the word healthy is changing!
The greater transformation appears here.
The 2026 IFIC Food & Health Survey shows that American consumers’ definition of “healthy food” has broadened. Freshness, naturalness, the product’s ingredients and the extent to which it has been processed are gaining ever more importance. In the same survey, taste at 88 per cent and price at 78 per cent are still decisive factors in consumer decisions.
This tells us something important.
The consumer is not behaving ideologically.
The consumer is behaving economically.
Behaving practically.
But behaving with more and more questioning.
Perhaps this is exactly the fundamental feature of the new consumer age.
It is no longer enough to define a product solely by what it is not.
Gluten-free.
Sugar-free.
Lactose-free.
Animal-free.
Additive-free.
The consumer moves on to the next question:
So what is in it?
And this small question may be one of the biggest questions of the global food industry in the years ahead.
When the spell of novelty is broken
The modern consumer economy has a powerful mechanism:
First it creates a difference we do not need.
Then it turns that difference into a need.
After that it builds an identity around that need.
Thus the product ceases to be merely a product; it turns into the consumer’s way of expressing himself.
For a time, even which milk you put in your coffee could become a small sign about your world view.
But no symbol of consumption stays powerful for ever.
After a while the consumer gets used to it.
Novelty becomes ordinary.
Out of the fog of marketing, three ancient questions begin to appear again:
What is this?
What does it give me?
Is it worth the money I pay for it?
Perhaps this is exactly what we are living through today.
Not a rejection.
A period of sorting.
Is what is “natural” always good?
Here one must not fall into another trap either.
Making the word “natural” sacred.
Just as not everything found in nature is healthy, not everything that is processed is harmful. Pasteurisation, too, is a process. Fermentation, too, is a method of transformation that humanity has used for thousands of years.
The scientific issue is not merely whether a product is “processed” or not; it is how it is processed, what it contains, in what quantity it is consumed and its place in a person’s overall diet.
The same caution is needed on the environmental question.
The strong arguments concerning the environmental advantages of plant-based alternatives have not gone away. Nor has the plant-based food and drink market in Europe shrunk as a whole; Circana’s 2025 data show that the total sales value of plant-based food and drink in six large European markets continues to grow.
So the picture before us is not a counter-revolution.
It is something more interesting:
The maturing of the consumer.
The new luxury: Intelligibility
Perhaps the true luxury of the coming years will not be what is expensive.
It will be what is intelligible.
Food whose ingredients we can read. A product whose source we know. Bread whose making we can understand. Grain of which we know the field it came from. Vegetables grown in season. Yoghurt produced by real fermentation. Cheese that has come from the hands of its maker. A product whose story began not in an advertising agency but in the land where it was produced. Because at the end of the age of excessive choice, an unexpected need confronts us:
Trust!
And trust is becoming perhaps one of the scarcest raw materials of the modern economy.
A return to the original is not a return to the past
When I say “a return to the original”, I am not talking about romanticising the past.
It is neither possible nor desirable for humanity to give up science, technology and food safety and go back to old forms of production.
A return to the original is something else.
It is technology taking its place not in front of the human being but behind him.
It is science trying to understand nature better instead of imitating it.
It is production learning to produce not only more, but more meaningfully.
And it is the consumer ceasing to call every novelty offered to him “modern” and every tradition “old”.
Because sometimes to progress is to rediscover a piece of knowledge we had earlier abandoned.
That is why sourdough comes back.
That is why fermented foods are talked about again.
That is why ancient grains are researched again.
That is why local cuisines gain in value.
At the most advanced point of technology, a human being sometimes rediscovers a truth already known in his grandmother’s kitchen: Good food does not merely fill the stomach; it builds trust between human beings and the soil.
The consumer of the future may seek not the “new” but the “real”
Perhaps the great transformation in consumption of the coming decade will take place here.
The question will no longer be: “Is there an alternative to this?”
The question will be: “What is the original of this?”
Where does it come from?
Who produces it?
How is it produced?
How much has it been processed?
What does it give my body?
What does it leave to the soil?
And how much of the price I pay goes to real value, and how much to a marketing story?
These are not merely questions about food.
These are the questions of the consumer ethics of the new age.
Because humanity has for a long time been learning to produce more.
Now, perhaps, it has to learn the harder thing:
To distinguish what is truly necessary.
Perhaps this is all that the debate which began around a glass of milk is telling us.
The consumer is not going back to the past.
The consumer is choosing anew what to take along on the way to the future.
And perhaps the real sentence that will change the direction of the age lies hidden here too:
From the age of the alternative to the age of the return to the original…
Because the most valuable product of the future will perhaps be not the newest one, but the one that has no need to hide what it is.
https://www.5gvirusnews.com/yazarlar/gidada-aslimiza-mi-donuyoruz-h1970.html
Translated from the Turkish original.