Next Year In Food And Nutrition

[This is the second in a series of six posts about trend sightings for 2015 and beyond.]

America circa 2015 is more obsessed with what it eats—and what it doesn’t—than ever before. And we’re tending toward extremes: Some of today’s culinary trends are almost ridiculously decadent, while others are equally virtuous. (Perhaps that’s why many people are starting to advocate an80/20 principle for healthy and indulgent eating.) Food dovetails with nutrition, which dovetails with health. I’ll get to that later, but first the fun stuff.

photo: creativecommons.org/Khairil Zhafri

It’s a Wing ThingChicken wings are hot right now—and I don’t mean just spicy—at cult-favorite foodie spots run by highly trained chefs and at cheap local chainsalike. The New York Times recently declared a “chicken wing boom,” and the National Chicken Council’s Super Bowl wing-eating forecasts rise every year. Plus, Tyson’s frozen Any’tizers Boneless Chicken Wyngz won a Better Homes & Gardens Best New Product Award. The ultimate finger food, wings are inherently noshable, reflecting a seemingly continuous growth in snacking.

Don’t Risk It; Eat a BiscuitThe Cronut has jumped the shark. Even as predawn legions line up outside Dominique Ansel’s New York patisserie and Ansel has trademarked the name of his cult-favorite creation, Dunkin’ Donuts recently rolled out (so to speak) a croissant-doughnut hybrid in 7,900 retail stores. And while the pastry’s runaway popularity spawned other imitators and new mashups like the cragel and the pretzel croissant (whose creator picked a public fight with Ansel, perhaps to get press), foodies have moved on to a more classic flaky comfort food: Southern buttermilk biscuits. The move is both a backlash to the hybrid trend and a chance for chefs to experiment and put their own stamp on a food that isn’t claimed or trademarked. Restaurants like San Francisco’s Biscuit Bender sell biscuits in creative flavors including pumpkin spice chocolate chip and also sour cream and sage, and the Maple Street Biscuit Company out of Jacksonville, Fla., and Biscuit Head in Asheville, N.C., stuff them with everything from fried chicken to goat cheese to brisket.

Rum: No Longer Ho-HumBourbon and whiskey are king, but signs point to rum soon becoming the life of the party. Tiki culture, with its ironically kitschy bars and sweet, fruity cocktails, is undoubtedly trending. And with the kitschy decor come Tiki cocktails that typically include a mix of light or dark rums, flavored syrups and fruit juices. Think the mai tai (allegedly invented by “Trader” Vic Bergeron, the godfather of Tiki), the Zombie and planter’s punch. The rum itself is getting better, too, with Caribbean rum makers upping their game. NPR noted that theMiami Renaissance Rum Festival, which drew 10,500 visitors last year, has become a central stage for what you might call the rum revolution—the recent ascent of high-end, premium rum.” U.S. craft distillers are in on it, too, with artisanal rum makers popping up in droves in New York City, Pittsburgh, Iowa and beyond.

#FoodPorn StarsEven though it originally meant provocatively photographed, ultra-gluttonous food, the term “food porn” has expanded to include glamour shots of healthy foods like ceviche, sushi and even salad. #Foodporn has become a popular hashtag on Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest, and it is a regular feature on Vogue.com. As Thrillist wrote in June, “Finally replacing some chick’s feet on the beach as the most popular theme on Instagram, food porn is now everywhere, and it’s delicious.”

Like any social media movement, #foodporn has its stars: @smittenkitchen(from the blog of the same name), @spoonforkbacon (by a food stylist and photographer), @andrewscrivani (food photographer and New York Timescontributor) and @howsweeteats (blogger, author). Instagram stars of gastro art, which is even more stylized than food porn, include @gastroart,@dianecu,@julieskitchen and @rawveganblonde. Smart brands like Whole Foods (@wholefoodsmarket), Evolution Fresh (@evolutionfresh), Kind (@kindsnacks) and Chobani (@chobani) are combining artful food imagery with commerce. In the near future, expect the #foodporn stars to partner with brands to produce sponsored content.

#CleanEatsThe other big trending hashtag, a favorite meme on the lifestyle blogs of celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow, Jessica Alba and Katy Perry, is also the biggest movement in food and nutrition right now. Trendy name aside, the concept is an old one: eating a balanced diet of unprocessed whole (or “real”) foods, especially fruits, vegetables, wild meats and unrefined grains like the now-ubiquitous quinoa. Food gurus such as Dr. Alejandro Junger, Terry Walters, Brittany Wright,Diane Welland, Tosca Reno and Alison Masseyevangelize it, and fans follow suit because it holds the promise of making you skinny while letting you eat like a gourmet. (There’s definitely a sustainability thing going on here, too.) The popular wellness website MindBodyGreen publishes frequent articles on the topic, with simple clean-eating tips like eating greens twice a day and aiming for three colors (from vegetables, not dyes) on every plate. Wright was just featured on the trendsetting fashion blog Man Repeller, and the website Clean Plates publishes a popular clean-restaurant guide every year. All of which point toward a proliferation of clean-eating marketing, from restaurants to—the irony!—food products.

Forget Hearing Crickets; Try Eating ThemCrickets and their ilk are hopping their way into energy bars, cookies, chocolate and chips, all in the name of good health, sustainability and … yumminess. You probably already know that insects—from deep-fried grasshoppers to ant eggs—have long been considered delicacies in many parts of the world. Now, as influential healthy living website Well+Good recently reported, these paleo-friendly delights are showing up on super-high-end menus (see D.O.M. and Noma), at farmers markets and in everyday foods made by trendy startups like Exo, whose protein bar business just received $1.2 million in seed funding, and Bitty, whose founder’s talk on the wonders of cricket flour was a big hit at TEDx this year. Insects are evenset to make an appearance on your next cross-country flight on JetBlue.

Move Over Kale; It’s Time to Try CoalSayonara, superfoods. You need to load up on clay and charcoal. Well+Good has deemed eating clay and drinking charcoal “the most talked-about natural-beauty and wellness trends.” The practice has strong roots in Hollywood: Actress (and eco-activist) Shailene Woodley has hailed the cleansing, system-regulating benefits of clay. Actress Shiva Rose, who blogs about holistic living at the Local Rose, is a known fan of detoxifying activated charcoal (which is also big with the paleoset). On her Goop website, Gwyneth Paltrow gave an enthusiastic nod to the charcoal lemonade at Los Angeles pressed-juice spot Juice Served Here, calling it “delicious, despite the suspiciousness of drinking montmorillonite clay and activated charcoal.” Juice Generation is tapping into the trend with a new juice that is said to help improve your skin. Its Beauty Bombs collection of five products—two clay shots and three raw activated-charcoal juices—aims, according toT, to “impart all the complexion-enhancing benefits of, say, a great face mask, while also benefiting the body.