Latest Food Trends Described in the News Media

Sure, Americans want more healthful, sustainable, minimally processed, and local food.  But many consumers also want food products that make it fast and easy to prepare tasty, tangy, novel meals. Often, the second group of wants/needs comes in conflict with the first.  Let's see what the news media are telling us about what trends are available that are time-saving, a stimulus to eating veggies, and enticing to those that want new and dramatic flavors.  These trends will be noticeable on restaurant menus as well as supermarket shelves.

We'll also find supermarkets saving shoppers time by becoming more like restaurants.  That is, they prepare the food for you, deliver it to you, or, if you choose, provide both services. All this help makes the grocery bill higher, but the time-challenged multi-tasker may decide it's worth it.

Packing Pouches

Have you noticed the proliferation of pouches on supermarket shelves these days?  Many contain sauces to use in the skillet or the slow cooker.  No more do you have to search through cookbooks for international recipes and then run around the supermarket searching for the exotic ingredients needed.  Just buy some boneless, skinless breast of chicken, cut it up, add the contents of the pouch (and in some cases just 1-2 more ingredients), and you, can produce (for example) Campbell's Moroccan Spiced Stew or Thai Curry Chicken.  (The latter, in my opinion, tastes better when prepared with shrimp rather than chicken).  McCormick has a Sicilian Chicken pouch, and Progresso has one for making Skillet Beef Stroganoff. 

Other pouches are filled with soup, vegetable juices, snacks (Greek yogurt and fruit) even baby food.  All these are discussed in a lengthy Time magazine article based upon an interview with Campbell's CEO Denise Morrison.  The organic baby food in a pouch (made by Plum, a recent Campbell's acquisition) saves Moms time (babies can feed themselves) and also gets babies accustomed to the taste of healthful foods as they consume kale-apple-Greek yogurt and pumpkin-date-oats-chia.  For older kids, there's a lunchbox snack in a tube--Greek yogurt with fruit; it goes into the lunchbox frozen in the morning and (hopefully) defrosts but is still cold at lunchtime. 

Making Veggies Exciting

There are two approaches to achieving this:

1) the creation of  new hybrid vegetables and 2) the spicing up of familiar ones. 

The hybrid veggie getting the most media attention is what Consumer Reports calls the "genetic mashup of red kale and Brussels sprouts," which is aptly named "kale sprouts." The magazine calls this invention "delicious."  If you don't believe it, buy some yourself.  They're available in many chain stores (including Costco, Trader Joe's, Wegmans, and Whole Foods) under the brand names BrusselKale and Kalettes.  How to serve them?  The magazine recommends cutting the leaves off the stalk and then roasting, sautéing, or serving them raw.  They're excellent sautéed with olive oil and "finished with a spritz of lemon juice and a pinch of salt."  The AARP Bulletin recommends "roasting the leaves individually so that they're crisp, like kale chips."

Another hybrid veggie mentioned by the Chicago Tribune is broccoflower--of course, a combination of broccoli and cauliflower.  But the newspaper points out that hybrids may "have a very small presence in our lives" because they "can't be produced on the scale that will make them affordable to most of us."

AARP tells us that we'll also be eating more parts of vegetables, including the stem, leaves, and roots, for example sautéing beet greens and chard stems and adding celery leaves to salads.

The CEO of Campbells is proud of the company's veggie snackers, such as baby carrots (in a pouch) seasoned so they taste like ranch dressing.

Adding Zing to Everything

Putting more "bite" into the foods we bite into is not just for veggies.   Restaurants and home chefs are doing it with almost everything, and they're often using sriracha [see-rah-jah], a red (the color) hot chile sauce that originated in Thailand about 80 years ago.  Use it to make shrimp cocktail, add life to tomato juice, perk up your hamburger. If you like spice, it improves almost anything and everything except ice cream. Online, you'll find sriracha recipes galore.  There are also sriracha cookbooks.  According to a recent Chicago Tribune article, sriracha is already in 9% of American homes and, among households headed by someone younger than 35, about 15% have sriracha.  In short, it's on its way to becoming a household staple, perhaps, the article suggests, the new catsup?

But that's just the beginning of the story about more exciting tastes.  The Chicago Tribune also points this out: "Sour foods--pickled and fermented--are moving onto the plate."  Be on the look-out for sauerkraut and kimchee.

Foods flavored with smoke are also becoming more fashionable.  You may notice the hint of smoke in restaurant cocktails, butters, and vegetables.     

Adding New Items to Your Healthy-Food List

Bone soup: I'm not kidding you.  Soup made from assorted vegetables animal bones (chicken, beef, etc.) is, according to Time magazine, this year's "hottest energy drink." (If you drink it from a cup rather than spoon it from a bowl, you can call it "bone soup.") Yes, I know.  Your grandmother made it, and so did/does your mother.  Maybe you do, too. Maybe none of you used the word "bone" in the name even though there were bones in the pot.  But whatever you call(ed) it, now it's become a trendy health food.  Its fans (including some doctors) say this gelatin-rich broth can relieve joint pain, dry skin, and stomach problems.   Whether it really cures anything or not, it's a soothing comfort food.

Time goes on to say that people in New York City are now literally lining up for bone broth in (or outside) a new bone-broth boutique.  Bone broth is replacing lattes as THE fashionable energy boost.  Google "bone broth" to see where else in the country it's catching on. 

Claims that bone broth is healthful don't surprise me.  Shelf Life Advice has twice mentioned that scientists say chicken soup is good treatment for a cold. The compound cysteine in it helps to thin mucus and relieve congestion.  Chicken soup also helps to prevent the inflammatory responses that make people with a cold feel so miserable.

Dietician Ellie Krieger, cookbook author and host of "Healthy Appetite" on the Food Network, predicts (in the AARP Bulletin December 2014) that the following healthful foods will become trendy superfoods in 2015: 

Farro, described as a "nutty, nutritious ancient grain related to wheat," will appear on more restaurant menus and perhaps push quinoa out of the limelight.

Dried cherries, an American product, will be replacing goji berries, an Asian fruit, as a new superfruit.

Avocado spread, along with the already popular hummus spread, will be replacing butter as a healthier choice to smear on bread.  Sweet and savory toppings can also be added.

Getting Your Dinner Home

From mid-November 2014 to early January 2015, the Chicago Tribune ran three articles that touched upon ways to minimize the whole grocery shopping/cooking burden. Remember going to the supermarket (or a small grocery store), buying ingredients you had found listed in a recipe (after looking through many cookbooks), bringing the groceries home in your car or wheeled shopping cart, and cooking the entire meal? Well, you don't have to do any of that anymore.  Here's why.

Your neighborhood supermarket probably has cooked hot foods on an open buffet--whole chickens, sliced turkey in gravy, ribs, meatballs,  and more for your entrées, hot vegetables, pasta, and the like as well as cold salad ingredients, cut-up fruits, and, as in the past,  deli items.  Your entire meal is prepared for you. All you have to do is unwrap it, perhaps reheat it a bit, and set the table.  The food may not be quite as good as what you would prepare yourself, but, let's face it, when you delegate a task, it's almost never done as well as if you'd done it.  But, as the cliché tells us, there are only 24 hours in a day.  Do you worry about the safety of that uncovered food exposed to air and customers sneezing on it?  I did, too, but my spouse and I have been eating it anyway and have found it a blessing, for example, after I had surgery and wasn't up to cooking.  The food from the buffet was much better than most frozen dinners. Give it a try to get you through busy or bedridden days.  Whole Foods and Jewel are examples of supermarkets that have beefed up their prepared food options recently.

Another way to get good food that's ready or nearly ready to eat delivered to your home is, of course, to order it from a carry-out restaurant. Americans love restaurant food and spend nearly half of their food dollars on it. Here's a new twist on this type of dining.  Order from a company that will deliver restaurant-quality ingredients to your home and give you the opportunity to prepare the meals yourself.  Some companies offering this option are Blue Apron (based in New York), Cooked (Evanston, IL), Madison & Rayne and Meez Meals (Chicago).   This type of service appeals to people who want greater variety in the take-home meals they serve. 

Now suppose you don't want to give up cooking; you just don't want to (or can't) grocery shop. You can use an online delivery service such as Peapod, Amazon Fresh, Google Express, Fresh Direct, or, a newer one, Instacart.  According to the Chicago Tribune, these days, a large portion of supermarket shopping is done from home.  In fact, it "is starting to become the norm." 

Summation:

In general, foods and food delivery options do not become trendy overnight. As with political candidates, it takes awhile for a food (or a service) to catch on. Some of the foods predicted to be trendy in 2015 may have started on their journey to fame in 2014. You have been served some or even served them in your home. Other foods mentioned above perhaps you never heard of.  But if you're open to trying edible novelties, your taste buds are in for a treat (and an occasional shock) in 2015. 

Wondering how many Americans have to be consuming a food in order for its use to be called a trend? Sorry, I have no idea.

Want to know where most of the predictions the news media reveal actually come from?  Annually, the National Restaurant Association (NRA) surveys professional chefs and asks them which foods, types of cuisines, beverages, and culinary themes will be sensations in the new year. About 1,300 chefs participated in the Hot Culinary Forecast for 2015.  

Source(s):

Time, "Thinking Outside the Can," by Eliza Gray, February 2, 2015.

http://time.com/3678094/thinking-outside-the-can/

Consumer Reports Shopsmart, "The hot new veggie: Kale sprouts," January 2015.

AARP Bulletin, "Your Next Superfoods" by Ellie Krieger, December 2014.

Time, "Bone Soup. Traditional broths are back--and trendier than ever," by Mandy Oaklander,

January 26, 2015.

Chicago Tribune, Good Eating section, "What's Cooking in 2015?" January 7, 2015.

Chicago Tribune, Business section, "Good-for-your theme tops industry menu,"

 December 29, 2014.

Chicago Tribune, Business section, "Meals, sealed and delivered," November 17, 2014. 

IFT.org "The Weekly: December 10, 2014,"  "NRA predicts local sourcing, sustainability as top menu trends for 1015." 

http://www.ift.org/food-technology/newsletters/ift-weekly-newsletter/2014/december/121014.aspx#research2

(IFT is the Institute of Food Technologists.)