Put ginger in a bottle of water and suddenly you can charge 1.50 euros for it. It's riding every trend, from baking to superfood.
Martine Kamsma – 4 September 2017
Spotted on a menu in Bergen, North Holland: ‘what's also really trendy in the big city right now is ginger tea (3.50)’. 3.50 euros for a few strands in a glass of water, and apparently even outside the big city nobody bats an eyelid at that any more. Meanwhile, a kilo of organic ginger in the supermarket costs less than 7 euros.
If you google ginger, you mainly read about how healthy it is. The spicy root is said to strengthen the immune system, improve circulation, ease muscle pain, stimulate digestion, help against stress and bad breath and could even prevent Alzheimer's. That ginger can do something about nausea has been proven; the other claims are not undisputed, and health claims on ginger products are not permitted.
Nevertheless, ginger is popular. It's riding every trend, from baking to superfood. It goes freshly chopped into Asian dishes, it's an ingredient in biscuits and tea, in vegetable juices and flavoured waters – even cosmetics and cleaning products contain (the scent of) ginger. Consumption is rising worldwide; in Europe, it's mainly the Danes and the Dutch who consume a lot of ginger, according to a study by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Though it would be Eurocentric to think that the growth in ginger can be put entirely down to Western foodies. A great deal of ginger is also eaten by India's growing population, for example.
“Ginger is fun,” says Dennis Koemans of Davis, a company that imports, exports and trades in fruit and vegetables. “Because it's a developing market.” He's also doing good business in the United Kingdom. “The market is rising there too.”
These are exciting weeks for ginger, as there's a lot of speculation about the supply from China – one of the largest producers – over the coming month, and therefore about prices. “One says the harvests have failed, the other says speculators are buying up ginger and holding it back to drive up prices.” Consumers will notice little of this; shop prices for ginger root are fairly constant.
Ginger mainly makes money when it's in something. Put ginger in a bottle of water and suddenly you can charge 1.50 euros for it. They see that at Now Organic too, a company from Aalsmeer that grows organic ginger in China and sells it throughout Western Europe. Unprocessed, but also as juice. Because that's exactly where the growth is. “In Germany and Denmark, ginger is even more popular than here. In fruit and vegetable drinks, but also as a shot for young people,” says co-owner Hans Versteegh. He knows from his customers that many more drinks with ginger are coming onto the market. The newest trend, Versteegh predicts, will be drinks that contain not 1 or 2 percent ginger, but sometimes as much as 20 or 30 percent – quite a lot for a flavour that, apart from being fresh and sweet, is above all spicy. “The funny thing is: people are starting to like it.”
https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2017/09/04/allemaal-gek-op-gember-12812540-a1572074
