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Silkworm stir fry. Photograph by pinguino/Flickr
Food fads come and go, but here are food trends that are being discussed by experts in the business and maybe here to stay
Vegetable yoghurt
It’s time for fruit-based yoghurts to make space for a brand new variety of yoghurt on the shelf. British supermarket chain, Waitrose, has predicted that vegetable yoghurt will be one of the top food trends of 2017. Vegetable-flavoured yoghurts not only make for great dips but can be added to smoothies, salads and eaten on their own. Fruit-flavoured and fruit-filled yoghurt such as strawberry and mango are already popular in India. It’s only as recently as 2015 that Dan Barber’s acclaimed New York-based restaurant, Blue Hill, introduced vegetable yoghurts into the US market. Blue Hill Yoghurt is available in flavours such as tomato, carrot, beet and buttersquash at Whole Food Stores in the US. The probiotic properties of yoghurt aid digestion and control inflammation, and have been part of the Indian diet in the form of raitas and even desserts for centuries now.
Bugs for tea time?
Bugs have been a traditional snack in various parts of the world including north east India, Thailand, Japan and Singapore. Silkworms, crickets, ants, cicadas cockroaches, termites – you name it – they’ve been eaten. Bugs have been dry-fried, eaten in a stir-fry with vegetables such as spring onion, baked in cookies and batter fried. Pan fried silkworms are a popular choice for pub grub across Asia.
Recently, Pepsi Co’s CEO Indra Nooyi predicted that 10 years from now, bugs maybe the go-to snack. Bugs are an organic and cheap source of protein and the United Nations has also termed mealworms – the larvae of beetles – as climate food. This is because mealworms have a lower carbon footprint than milk, pork, chicken and beef. While we can only guess how Pepsi Co plans to transform bugs into processed snacks – crickets in chips, mealworms in corn puffs – Nooyi is sure that this might just be the next hot trend.
