The best years bring food fads that hit both the highs and the lows – 2016 for example saw the gold leaf ice cream cone and the Russian rat burger. Here is just a selection of quirky health food trends to hit our shores last year.
Artisanal teas (bad for your wallet)
What if the next time you asked for “Teh, Nasi Lemak”, you got a cuppa that smelled like everyone’s favourite pandan rice dish? This savoury smell is achieved through an infusion mixed with coconut flakes, dried pandan, and dried chili flakes. In a hipster-ish twist on tradition, other flavours include Chicken Rice tea and Ice Kacang tea. If you have an adventurous palette and don’t mind drinking tea that smells like food, these are definitely an option. Just be sure you can afford to pay $18 for each tea pouch.
Unrefined sugar (bad for your health)
Unrefined sugar has a reputation for being healthy… for its closer resemblance to topsoil perhaps. While standard white sugar cuts out some plant products, the brown stuff isn’t really much healthier (sugar is sugar, after all). Some kinds even gain their pleasing tan by being processed with animal bone charcoal. Plus, not all raw is even safe. Really raw sugar is illegal to sell, as it contains a cornucopia of natural components like sand, soil, mold, bacteria, yeast, and lice.
Quinoa (bad for South American people)
That wonderful white-curled grain quinoa (pronounced keen-wa) captured the imaginations of vegans for being a low-fat, and high-protein meat substitute. However its rise to prominence also propelled its price up, depriving some locals of their staple simply because the poorer ones could no longer afford it (believe it or not, quinoa out-priced chicken in Lima in 2013).
Healthy food delivery (makes you lazy)
It’s really great that food deliveries now offer healthy choices such as salad and pasta – sparing us the daily guilt of dining solely on oily, salty or sugary meals. However, this aura of healthiness could backfire by making us overlook real drawbacks, like if everything is delivered, we become collectively lazier as a society and never get out of our chair, or the distance our healthy meal was driven for delivery, which carries its own air pollution price tag.
Finally – believe it or not – here’s one strange trend set to take off in 2017:
Cauliflower Pizza (bad for taste)
Health experts have weighed in for 2017 and predicted that low-carb concerns would herald the rise of the cauliflower pizza. Yes, the cauliflower pizza, where the toppings are 100% veggie with a chopped-cauliflower crust. While great for cutting down on carbs and gluten, this variant betrays a central pizza tenet – a devil’s deal of cholesterol in exchange for cheesy, chewy taste. Trying to have the best of both worlds only turns comfort food into a half-hearted diet.
Lest we forget, the fast turnover of food fads also reveals the strong desire in us for all things innovative and healthy, a positive sign that can only herald more daring stabs at gastronomic genius in the future.
