Find out who stays and who goes.
I will be the first to admit, I love a good food trend. Whether it's to eat or to laugh at, I can't get enough of them moon-dried Himalayan salt soaked kale chips served on reclaimed wood spritzed with artisan sweet chilies and laid out in a perfectly instagramable flat-lay. *I'll let you decide if I like to laugh at or eat this one (or both!). It's both. Some of these trends are worth no more than their 15min of fame (if that) while others are worth keeping around. Here are my top KEEPS and KICKS from 2016's food trends.
KEEP
TURMERIC & GOLDEN MILK
While this could have been just another trendy flash in the pan, it seems turmeric & golden milk are more than just the hippest thing you could order at a café. Turmeric for years has been touted as a powerful anti-inflammatory with anti-cancer properties and several other health benefits. I've been adding it to my post-training protein shakes for years, even after that time I spilled it all over my gym bag and turned anything yellow. But figuring out how to get this golden spice into an average person's diet on a semi-regular basis was always a head scratcher to me. Then comes along these warm, milky drinks with turmeric & spices and BAM... everyone's slamming back health supportive turmeric like it's going out of style. Except I hope it doesn't because it's a delicious way to add an extra boost into your diet.
PLANT POWER
Omnivore, vegetarian, vegan... I don't care what you are. Eating more plants is just plum good for you (fruit pun intended). Your mamma was right to make you eat your veggies and seeing a trend that increases the number of plants we are eating is like music to my nutritionist ears. However, if you want to get even deeper into the benefits here, we can look at environmental. If you're eating more plants and reducing the amount of meat you're eating, you are setting a smaller carbon footprint - seeing as animal agriculture is the #1 source of greenhouse gases. Meaning this food trend is not only good for you but the very planet we live on. Which is why I vote for it to stick around for 2017 and (hopefully) years after.
FULL-FAT FOODS
Once upon a time, full fat foods were your diets worst enemy. Everything and I mean everything was being labeled as "low-fat". Even Jell-O, a food which had negligible fat to begin with! Simply because people were "fat-fearful", and marketers ate this up (again with the puns) by either slapping a label on something which was already "low-fat" or by removing the fat from a food and replacing it with heaps of sugar. The problem here is fat is not the enemy. It's all that added sugar! As long as you are aware of which fats you can have daily vs. the ones to enjoy modestly, there is no need to search out low-fat anything. So keep the comeback in 2017 and don't fear yo' fats!
KICK
FREAKSHAKES
I'll admit, these look spectacular. All my cheat day dreams basically blended into one towering milkshake. But there is a limit to how much "bad food" all at once is okay, and these surpass that limit many times over. The number of calories, sugar, bad fats and whatever other additives are in these will only be an incredible stress on your system - even if you're enjoying one on a cheat day. So much so it could take more than 48 hours for your body to recover from that massive hit. So, though I'm all for a cheat meal, leave these ones in 2016 where they belong.
PRICEY TOAST
Again, I must admit, I LOVE avocado toast. I love anything on bread, really. This trend I am not going to neg because it's necessarily unhealthy - though I'm sure there is stuff on toast somewhere that meets cheat day status. What I am not on board with is how much an avocado toast costs now! The sound of a slice of home baked bread towering with avocado, thick slices of tomato and crushed rock-salt instantly makes me hungry. But the idea of paying $23 for it is enough to turn my appetite around. I don't want these dishes to disappear, just the price tag.
RAINBOW EVERYTHING
Though by nature, we are honed to recognize that many different colours relate to nutritional diversity - I don't think that instinct was meant for literal rainbows. Fairy bread, cheesecakes, donuts and even bagels have been infused with artificial, chemical laden dyes to make them visually fun... but heaps bad, health-wise. Seeing as everything you eat looks the same in the end, these colourful chemicals simply aren't worth it. Did I miss any eats from this list you think should be kept or kicked? Comment below and let me know!
