Proteins, snacks and indulgence foods find a place in the future of food trends
From market research firm Packaged Facts, here are 10 food trends (listed in alphabetical order) that you'll probably be seeing or start seeing more of in 2018. The trends are based on our upcoming 2018 Food Forecast ebook available soon on the company's website.
Aloha. The Zombies are back, along with the craft cocktail movement and the relighting of the torch for Tiki bars, with their outré, escapist karma. More than that, it's about the foodways of culturally polyglot Hawaii, where the East and West do meet. Poke has already swept the mainland. There's also Moco Loco and (you knew this was coming) Spam in sushi. Keep an eye out for malasadas, the Portuguese-origin eggy donuts iconic in Hawaii and popular in California. Hawaiian foods are DNAed for fusion, and especially primed for cities and eaters with complicated cultural geographies.
Color Is the New Sugar. In a good way. The eye candy colors of high-antioxidant botanicals signal natural and healthy, even if it's your matcha donut from Brooklyn's Dough or vegan turmeric ice cream from Van Leeuwen. Chefs have increasingly taken on a Jean Arp-ian aesthetic of juxtaposing and layering, more than blending, food ingredients and colors with sushi as hero on one hand, and the sensually duo-tone egg on the other. In this corner, too, the beet goes on: earthy, vivid, and almost-too-familiar yet endlessly reinvented, beet continues to gain traction, including for its color bleed. Plus there's purple cauliflower.