Trends That Are No Longer Cool!

Happy New Year and welcome to 2012—the year that we all need to eat local, natural and sustainable (but not necessarily organic). We want to relate to the person that manufactures our food, we want it minimally processed, clean labeled and affordable. We don’t want white tablecloths (or any tablecloth for that matter) and forget those stuffy French sommeliers and bring on Bob Cannon, from the Boston Beer Company! Molecular, scientific, mini French desserts and kitchy '50s retro? Forget all that stuff. It's soooo 2008!

There are tons of articles out there about all the latest food trends from retail to restaurant to foodservice, but I think it is equally important to point out the passé trends! We food scientists and culinologists need to be up to date on what is not hot so when you set up your next culinary tour you don’t embarrass yourself by taking them to the latest empty-on-a-Friday-night molecular gastronomy restaurant. Chefs need to say goodbye to your cupcakes, macarons and elaborate French techniques and say hello to the tattooed biker making beef jerky in a dehydrator tied to the back of his Harley and to handcrafted soda sweetened with agave instead of HFCS. Food scientists need to keep their labels clean and their grains ancient and start thinking about how to keep the food real, give it a story and use creative, honest marketing to make the consumer think you are manufacturing in a food truck and not a food plant (without actually doing so … because while people like to fantasize that their milk is raw and their sauces are being filled by hand into mason jars, they also don’t like getting food poisoning or hearing about recalls).