Everyone knows that food trends tend to come and go, and the 2010s have been no exception.
From trendy veggies to extreme desserts to the rise and fall of superfoods, here are
the food trends from the past decade that everyone has already forgotten.
In 2013, quinoa was the superfood that took the world by storm.
It was even dubbed the International Year of Quinoa by the United Nations Food and Agriculture
Organization.
So yeah.
Big year for Quinoa.
This superfood became especially popular on the health food market, offering a product
that was high in protein and fiber, all while being gluten-free and full of vitamins, minerals,
and essential amino acids.
And as this picture-perfect superfood grew in popularity, a whole industry grew around it.
In 2014 alone, the United States imported almost 70 million pounds of the hyper-popular grain.
But as the quinoa craze continued to blossom, people started to realize that the grain came
with its downsides.
In 2013, The Guardian reported that the price of quinoa had tripled since 2006.
And while Western consumers had to pay just a little bit extra for the superfood, the
people really affected by the price-hike were those in Bolivia and Peru, where the grain
naturally grows.
Thanks to its insane popularity overseas, the people of those countries were no longer
able to afford a food they had been accustomed to for hundreds of years.
Nowadays, it appears that Americans are moving on from quinoa.
Looking at Google Trends Data, the term 'quinoa' has plummeted in popularity, only occasionally
spiking around the time people start taking on New Year's resolutions.
"Need a little of the quinoa salad please, and uh, throw a couple extra cran-b’s on
top if you could, and uh, I kinda need you to hurry up chief, chop chop.”
The rise of the cake pop era really began when an image of some made by Angie Dudley,
also known as Bakerella, went viral after being posted on a cupcake website.
She was then invited to teach Martha Stewart how to make the bite-size treat in 2008, and
the world subsequently went crazy.
And the cake pop only grew in popularity as the decade turned.
A cake pop is made from a crumbed-up cake, mixed with frosting, and formed into a ball.
It's then coated with melted almond bark or melted chocolate, sometimes incorporating
fondant decorations along the way.
It's a treat that takes a number of steps, ingredients, and a lot of diligence to make.
As people have realized just how hard they are to make, the trend has fizzled out.
According to Google Trends Data, Cake Pops saw a huge spike in people's search histories
in 2011, and stabilized a little through the beginning of 2013.
Since then, however, the term has experienced a steady decline.
The cake pop still lives on, most notably at Starbucks, but it's certainly no longer
the wedding or birthday party sensation it once was.
The Bagel Store in Brooklyn, New York actually developed the rainbow bagel two full decades
before it became a hit in 2016.
During that year, a viral video of this colorful breakfast item turned the rainbow bagel into
a nationwide phenomenon.
People went so crazy for the rainbow colored bagel that the owner of the store, Scott Rossillo,
actually had to close up shop to catch a break from all the madness.
He ended up reorganizing his kitchen and storage to accommodate for the instant success, but
ultimately decided he'd still have to make customers wait, because sacrificing quality
for quantity just wasn't worth it.
But now, years after the rainbow bagel went viral, Google says the trend is dying out.
A Google Food Trends Report shows that search numbers for rainbow bagels fell dramatically
in recent years, and now the trend appears to have fallen away completely.
In the early stages of the last decade, coconut water seemed to take supermarkets by storm.
Suddenly, it seemed like this health-food alternative to H2O was sitting on every grocery
store shelf in the country.
At the time, it was touted as being ultra-hydrating, making for the perfect post-workout drink.
One of the largest producers of coconut water, Vita Coco, sold almost $270 million worth
in 2013, about 300 times what it sold in 2004 when the drink first debuted.
Another brand, Zico, went from $100,000 in sales in 2007 to $87 million in 2013.
And when coconut water first hit the streets, celebrities including Rihanna and Madonna
endorsed and invested in it.
Soon, however, word started to spread that the drink wasn't everything it seemed to be.
Testing revealed that many varieties of the drink didn't contain the nutrients they promised
on their labels.
These days, coconut water may still be on the shelves - but it's definitely not the
hit it once was.
Extreme milkshakes made their debut in Australia in 2016, and their popularity grew in part
due to their highly photogenic nature, which made them perfect subjects for viral social
media posts.
Their wacky aesthetic, piled high with all kinds of candies and confections and bright
colors, made them one of the most sought after treats of the decade.
But these tasty treats had a dark side, too.
According to CNN, the average extreme milkshake boasts over 1200 calories and 39 teaspoons
of sugar.
Considering that's nearly half the recommended daily amount of calories an adult should consume
and more than a day's worth of sugar, you can understand why these shakes started to
make a few people feel a little concerned.
"Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could,they didn’t stop
to think if they should."
A group calling themselves Action on Sugar is currently trying to ban milkshakes with
a calorie count over 300 calories in the UK, making freakshakes totally obsolete if they're
successful.
As people around the world have begun to realize just how unhealthy these Instagram-worthy
concoctions are, it seems they're happy to push them a little further towards extinction.
Cronuts were first introduced in 2013 at the Dominique Ansel Bakery in New York City.
Owner Dominique Ansel had been told by a customer that he didn't offer any type of doughnut
style treat on his menu, so he set out to create something to fit the bill.
As you might have guessed, a Cronut is a cross between a croissant and a donut, made with
layers of laminated croissant dough that are then fried and coated in sugar.
It was pretty well unheard of that someone could fry laminated dough the way Ansel did
without the layers coming apart, so the fact that it had been achieved at all was enough
to make headlines.
Once word was out about this novelty pastry, the bakery's popularity spiked, and traffic
to its website increased by 300 percent.
But with that popularity also came trouble - namely, the fact that a number of other
bakeries throughout the U.S. began duplicating the product for themselves.
Ansel trademarked the name Cronut, but plenty of other shops still debuted a similar delicacy
under a number of variations on the name.
Eventually, the lines for Cronuts started to shorten.
That same year, supermarket chain Safeway started offering its version to the masses.
And at that point, it's hard to even call it a trend.
It's just normal.
Starting as a popular street food trend in Asia, rolled ice cream made its way to the
United States in 2015.
This frozen treat starts with a liquid dairy base, which is then poured onto a circular
slab that holds temps steady below freezing.
The ice cream maker mixes the liquid on the frozen slab, swirling it around and adding
flavor from fruits or candies, until the mixture begins to freeze.
Once the ice cream texture forms, it's smoothed out, scraped, and then rolled into pieces
resembling scrolls.
Each roll is then placed in a cup, often dressed up with additional toppings.
Once introduced in the U.S., rolled ice cream saw its popularity spike in the summer of
2017 and again in the summer of 2018 - but according to Google Trends Data, it didn't
reach nearly the same popularity in the summer of 2019, and has continued to see a steady
decline since then.
By summer 2020, there's a good chance that rolled ice cream will be a thing of the past.
What if turning copious amount of pasta into a health food was possible?
Well, in 2015, this possibility became reality.
Zoodles are thin, spiralized noodles made from zucchini, and they quickly became the
ultimate replacement for pasta, allowing consumers to enjoy a robust pasta-like dish without
any of the carbs that come with it.
Zoodles took social media by storm, with a host of food bloggers and TV personalities
producing endless new recipes based around zucchini spirals.
Unfortunately, the health benefits of Zoodles have since been called into question.
Kathleen Keller, professor of nutritional sciences and food science at Penn State University,
told The Atlantic that eating lots of fake junk food such as Zoodles has the tendency
to backfire.
When something is deemed healthy, people are more likely to eat more of it, just as people
began to do with Zoodles.
Since the vegetable noodles are not as filling as pasta, people started adding more toppings
than ever before.
And these toppings can often be pretty unhealthy, too.
Zoodles are still kina popular these days, but they're not the super-popular trend they
used to be.
And there's a good chance this is because people have realized they can eat pasta after
all - as long as they keep their portion sizes down.
So long, Zoodles.
Nutella certainly wasn't a new product when it first debuted in the United States - Ferrero's
legendary chocolate-hazelnut spread has been around in Europe since 1964.
But it wasn't until the early 2010s that the brand started to see an increase in popularity,
especially in the United States.
Nutella began advertising in the United States in 2009, and in just five years, sales for
the product tripled to more than $240 million.
But that was at a time when Nutella had a monopoly on the market.
Now, Hershey's and Jif both make chocolate hazelnut spreads, often offered at lower prices,
and Nutella's place in the market has changed.
Worse still, Nutella has made headlines in recent years, and not for good reasons.
In early 2019, one of Nutella's largest factories temporarily shut down due to quality issues.
[sounds of people panicking]
Then, in mid-2019, workers at a Nutella factory in France went on strike, demanding higher
pay and ultimately halting production for a period of time.
Even Google Trends Data suggests people are showing less interest in the chocolatey hazelnut
spread than they once did.
As the world enters a new decade, it seems that those iconic Nutella jars could become
relics of the past.
2017 saw the food world gripped by a truly bizarre trend: activated charcoal.
Before anyone could figure out what was happening, foods with a strange black hue had begun to
take over social media, and everything from ice cream cones, to lattes, to hamburger buns,
were incorporating this new craze.
The charcoal found in these trendy foods comes from the charcoal of burned organic matter.
Often, the remnants of wood or coconut shells is used, and once exposed to specific gases
at high temperatures, the charcoal becomes activated, giving it the ability to bind to
anything it touches.
This is actually the same concept that hospitals have used for decades to prevent overdoses,
with doctors introducing the charcoal into victims' bodies to hinder a drug's absorption
by the body.
As a result, activated charcoal became far more than just a colorful food craze, as people
began to believe it could help prevent hangovers, counteract food poisoning, or even work as
a detox ingredient with anti-aging benefits, weight loss benefits, and everything in between.
But with popularity came scrutiny, and questions were soon raised about the real effects charcoal
could have on your body.
Because, while activated charcoal might absorb all the bad stuff in your body, there's a
good chance it's taking away good stuff, too.
Today, people are still debating whether it's safe to add activated charcoal to food products,
but one thing that's pretty hard to argue is that people just aren't as interested in
this particular craze as they used to be.
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