I’ve been wondering about this for a while and apparently I am not the only one because when I went online I found lots of articles. This is a summary of what I learned.
What is a Trend?
According to Vocabulary.com a trend simply reflects what seems to be going around at any given time. Trends have staying power because they are connected to bigger ideas, such as healthy eating (whole grains, unsaturated fats); concerns over the environment (global warming), technology (personal privacy), and economics (income inequality).
Fads on the other hand are a flash in the pan, think cronuts that apparently came and went without my even noticing. Multicolored foods and sprinkles according to my sources are on the way out although I am sure I saw a very multicolor sprinkled donut in a TV commercial recently, which goes to show there is not a science to these predictions
How Do Trends Get Started?
It used to be that food trends began with a chef creating a new recipe that captured the attention of other chefs and the professional food media. It might have used an ingredient that no one had tried before or used a familiar one in a new way. It originated in a top notch restaurant and appealed to diners as something new and delicious. It created a buzz there, but took quite a while to make its way to the food pages of newspapers and on the menus of local restaurants. When the ingredients show up on supermarket shelves we can all agree it’s a new trend.
Some trends still start at the highest level of the culinary world, but more and more of them come from the bottom up. Technology and social media now play a huge role in the creation of trends.
The Story of Kale
Kale is a great example of a vegetable that has been around for years but no one ate it. It was used on catering platters and salad bars and thrown away at the end of the event. Who would ever have thought it would become synonymous with healthy eating? Production of kale is way up as is its inclusion on restaurant menus. Today kale is used as a substitute for romaine in Caesar Salads. Kale chips are advertised as a healthy snack. Even McDonalds puts kale in its salads. .
But how did this happen? How did the buzz get started? Oberon Sinclair a PR professional known for helping to create trends is considered the queen of kale. Sinclair is one of the few people who actually likes kale so she went on a crusade to get others to like it too. She popularized the curly green by using her considerable PR skills and contacts. She put messages about its nutritional value on chalk boards all around New York City and asked upscale restaurants to put it on their menus. And so the buzz started. Bon Appetit magazine declared that 2012 was the year of Kale. Trends of course don’t last forever. Sale of kale is going down now, while sale of chard is on the uptick . I hear that watercress is the most nutritious vegetable there is. Will there ever be a “year of watercress”. We will have to wait and see.
The Story of Avocado Toast Avocado toast comes to us via Australia and a chef named Bill Granger who opened a small cafe in a Sydney suburb.in 1993. His lease said the cafe could only be opened from 7 AM to 4 PM, so Granger put avocado toast on his breakfast menu. Putting toppings on breakfast toast is commonplace in Australia. He said he’d always eaten it, and didn’t think there was anything special about it.
Another Aussie, Chloe Osborne, who is now the consulting chef at New York’s Cafe Gitane, first tasted avocado toast when her family visited friends in Queensland in the mid seventies. Osborne is credited with beginning the buzz about avocado toast in America where she put it on the restaurent’s menu in the early 2000s. Other restaurants followed suit and introduced their own versions of avocado toast. The foodie press picked it up and the internet spread it (no pun i ntended) far and wide.
Back in Australia Bill Granger opened more restaurants and continued serving avocado toast. He now has restaurants world wide, and yes , they all serve avocado toast.
A curious aside – Go to your browser and enter “Aztec name for avocados” you’ll be surprised by what you learn.
So What are the New Health and Faood Trends for 2021
There are many predictions on the web, but no consensus among the folks who research and write about such things. Here are a few that sound like they may actually come true.
- Plant-based meat and pea protein
- Movement away from single use plastic bags and containers
- Low alcohol beverages (millenials are trying to cut down on their intake)
- Intermittent fasting (check out the New England Journal of Medicine)
- Lasagna, so says the Wall Street Journal
- Sumac, so says me. I’ve been seeing it in recipes quite a lot recently.
Regardless of what will happen across America – what will be the trends in your kitchen?