Food Trends 2020: The Culinary Path to Sustainability

In spring 2020 we introduced three newcomers from the supermarket shelf that were meant to pave the culinary path to sustainability: pea milk, chickpea butter and tiger-nut flour. The short answer, five years later: two have stuck around, one remained a footnote. We checked what became of the promises-and why pulses make more sense today than they did in 2020.

Pea Milk: From Protein Powerhouse to Niche Product

In 2020, almond and oat milk were just the beginning. Pea milk was then hailed as the healthiest alternative to cow’s milk-and anyone picturing a thick, green paste is mistaken. The drink made from dried yellow peas is white, creamy, and surprisingly doesn’t taste like peas at all. Even in its unsweetened form, it retains a subtly sweet flavor that comes surprisingly close to cow’s milk.

The reason for the hype lay in its nutritional values. With around 8 grams of protein per 250 ml, pea milk is roughly as protein-rich as cow’s milk. It’s also lactose-free, low in fat, and high in fiber. One honest note that was rarely made in 2020: pea protein isn’t absorbed by the body quite as efficiently as dairy protein; its biological value is lower. For your morning coffee, that doesn’t matter-but if you’re looking to meet specific protein needs, check the label.

Pea milk hasn’t replaced cow’s milk. But it has proven that legumes can do more than just sit on a plate.

So what became of it? The German brand “Princess and the Pea,” produced by Rosenheimer DrinkStar GmbH, still exists-the pea drink is available in selected Rewe and Kaufland stores, online, and on Amazon, now even in a barista version for frothing. But the pea hasn’t achieved a major breakthrough. In 2024, plant-based drinks together hold about 9.8 percent of the milk market. Oat milk dominates, with nearly one in two consumers choosing it, followed by almond and soy. Pea milk accounts for around 3 percent-a solid niche product, not a mass phenomenon.

Chickpea Butter: The Underrated Winner

No, this isn’t a new name for hummus. Butter made from chickpeas is designed to be sticky and spreadable like peanut butter, with a balanced mix of sweet and savory notes. Those who’ve tried it say it tastes closer to peanut butter than to hummus. It’s also packed with plant-based protein, vitamins, and minerals. And since it contains no nuts, it’s one of the few creamy spreads that people with nut allergies can safely slather on their bread.

But the real point lies in the field. Chickpeas are legumes, and they’ve mastered a trick few other crops can match: through a symbiosis with rhizobia bacteria, they fix between 50 and 100 kilograms of nitrogen per hectare each year in the soil. That nitrogen becomes natural fertilizer for the next crop-making synthetic mineral fertilizers unnecessary and reducing emissions of nitrous oxide and ammonia. Add to that a low water requirement and genuine drought resistance. What in 2020 was vaguely described as “resource-efficient” now has a concrete agronomic foundation.

Notably, chickpeas are now being grown here in Germany. Around 1,300 to 1,500 hectares are dedicated to chickpea cultivation, and the trend is rising-something barely imaginable a decade ago. The brand featured in the original article, The Amazing Chickpea, still produces its spreads today. Making your own isn’t witchcraft either: roasted chickpeas, a little oil, a pinch of salt-done.

Tigernut Flour: The Misunderstanding About Its Origins

They look like nuts, taste nutty, and are even called tiger NUTS-so they must be nuts? Wrong. Tigernuts, also known as earth almonds, aren’t nuts at all, but small, starchy tubers from a sedge plant (Cyperus esculentus). That’s exactly what makes the flour so interesting for allergy sufferers and anyone baking gluten-free.

One thing we got wrong in 2020-and we’re happy to correct here: the earth almond doesn’t come from Ethiopia. Its native habitat is Africa and the Mediterranean, and it was domesticated in the region of the White Nile in what’s now Sudan. In ancient Egypt, it was among the oldest cultivated food plants, and it reached Spain in the 8th century-where it’s still the basis of “Horchata de Chufa” today. A plant with thousands of years of history, not a lab creation.

Flavor-wise, tigernut flour is naturally sweet and nutty, making it a great baking base. It provides prebiotic fiber, iron, potassium, magnesium, and zinc. Yet five years later, it’s still barely found on supermarket shelves-remaining a specialty item for health food stores and online retailers. If you bake gluten-free, you should know it. But it hasn’t made the leap to everyday flour.

What Sticks-and What We Learned

The honest five-year assessment: the real trend wasn’t any single exotic product, but the pulse itself. Pea and chickpea have endured because they deliver twice-on the plate and on the field. Tigernut flour shows the flip side: no matter how healthy a food is, if it’s cumbersome in everyday life, it won’t catch on. That echoes what we saw in the big Superfood Promise debate, and it ties into the question of whether veganism is just a trend or the future of eating. A year later, we tracked the evolution in Food Trends 2021.

And if you know pea protein mainly from the gym: when that post-workout shake actually delivers has been dissected by the team at InspiredBySports in their Protein Timing Check 2026. Bottom line: the source is secondary; what matters is the total daily intake.