Food Trends for 2019

What will we eat in 2019? It could be ugly vegetables. These are vegetables people usually throw away. Or, we could be eating vegetables designed by chefs and grown at special farms. We might top that salad with watermelon seeds. We will be drinking pea milk and oat milk. Flavours from different countries will become popular. Plant-based foods will be eaten more. Special olive oils or freshly made granola bars will have to go in the fridge.

These are all predictions of trends. So, what is a trend? Well, there is no fixed way to measure a trend.

Jenny Zegler studies food for a company called Mintel. Mintel follows business trends. Some trend lists are made by professionals. Some are made by one person with a good sense of what others will like. The predictions mostly fall into four categories.

In the first category are the trends like “plant-based foods” and “specialized diets”. These are vague buzzwords. They mean everything and nothing. But don’t count them out, says Zegler. She predicts three trends in this category: sustainability, foods for staying healthy when you get older, and better convenience foods. Sustainability means making foods that do not damage the planet.

But what many of us think of as trends are actually fads. Thai rolled ice cream, soup diets, cake pops, these are all fads.

“A fad is something that kind of comes quick and goes,” Zegler said. But a trend is something that is around for longer.

Za’atar is a Middle-Eastern spice mix. Some western cooks have been using it for a while, but for other people it is something new. These people call it a trend. This is the second category: Predictions that are already trendy, in some circles, at least.

Michael Whiteman helps large restaurants make decisions. He says the big trends for 2019 are more robots in the kitchen and more meal kits. These kits are delivered to people’s homes. They contain ingredients that are already measured out and recipes. They make cooking easy. Whiteman said he might be wrong. That’s the third category: Trends that might or might not work.

The fourth category is foods that are not popular now, but that will be popular soon. That might include meat grown in labs, healthy desserts and Peganism (paleo veganism). Paleo means eating only foods that humans ate thousands of years ago, during the Palaeolithic Period. Veganism is to eat no animal products.

Most of the people reading the trend lists do not work in the food industry. Some of them are not even able to get these trendy foods where they live. They are just curious. They like to find new trends before their friends. It can make the foods more exciting.

Most of all, “they want to be able to post on Instagram,” Zegler says.

Based on: www.washingtonpost.com