Food Trends to Look for Now

I love cooking a variety of foods, but preparing dishes from cuisines I’m not so familiar with can be intimidating. And I sometimes struggle to get enough whole grains and beans in my diet because they can take so long to cook. Several companies are producing foods that make both expanding the palate and eating healthy faster and easier.

• Doro is a brand of simple-to-cook Korean street-food-style meals, such as Tteokbokki Cheesy Korean Rice Cakes, Guksu Bokum Mushroom Udon Stir-Fry, and Guksu Bokum Garlic Udon Stir-Fry. The mushroom udon stir-fry serves up an intense umami flavor. The noodle texture is a big part of the experience, too, and these were packaged fresh and had a nice bouncy chew to them.

• Food Earth makes meals that take the work—chopping, dicing, grating, and spicing—out of making authentic Indian dishes. Their Hug in a Bowl five-lentil soup, packed with lentils, carrots, onion, tomato, corn, ginger, garlic, cilantro, and tamarind, tasted like what I’d find at an Indian restaurant where I live in Brooklyn.

• You can also get your lentils in fast and in a variety of flavors with Lentiful. Like instant oat cups, all you need to do is pour in some hot water and stir, and you have an instant healthy lunch or side dish. Some of the varieties are higher in sodium than we’d like—up to 470 mg per serving—but we tasted the low-sodium tomato Bolognese (50 mg) and vegetable harvest (140 mg) and didn’t miss the salt.

Environmental sustainability, fair trade, and buying locally are priorities for many food shoppers. And more companies are producing foods that not only cater to those needs but taste good, too.   

• People who fish worldwide work directly with Sea Tales, a company that sells tinned and packaged sardines, skipjack tuna, mackerel, anchovies, and more. The company is certified by the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) to have sustainable fishing practices, such as avoiding overfishing, which can lead to a shortage of fish in the future. 

• Generally, the more directly a food company works with actual food producers, the better. Nepal Tea Collective is a great example. This family business packages organic teas from small growers in Nepal. It also helps consumers support farmers directly. You can scan a QR code on the tea bag to leave a tip for the farmer and see the tea’s journey from the farm to you.

• Buying local fruits and vegetables means less energy is spent trucking the produce to you. Seal the Seasons brings the concept to frozen fruits and vegetables. The company works with family-owned farms across the U.S., but the produce sold in your area comes from your area. For instance, New Jersey blueberries are sold in the Northeast. 

Plenty of beverages on the market seem good for you, but many contain sugar substitutes like stevia or sucralose. And in the energy drink space, you also get colors and other additives that you may not want. We saw several brands that are focused on keeping the benefits that these drinks promise but delivering products with cleaner ingredients lists.

• Unlike many energy drinks, Huxley Plant Powered Energy Drinks contain no added colors, flavors, or sugar substitutes. Instead, you get fruit purée and just a little cane sugar (5 grams per can, or about a teaspoon). The 90 mg of caffeine in the drink (about the same as in a cup of coffee) comes from cascara, the husks of the coffee cherry, the fruit that houses the seeds that are roasted for coffee beans and usually discarded. The drinks come in three fruity flavors: mango, strawberry, and tangerine.

• Organic IAM SuperSoda comes in floral, fruit, and spice flavors such as elderflower, hibiscus, acai, and turmeric. It’s sweetened with apple, pear, or mango juice, contains no added sugars or other sweeteners, and has about 60 calories per 8.5-ounce can. Elderflower was my favorite. It starts with a hit of floral flavor, but as you drink it, pear becomes more prominent.

• Sweetened with honey or date syrup, Fresh Fizz Soda has more added sugars than these other drinks: 11 to 15 grams in a 12-ounce can. But that’s less than you get in other lower-sugar sodas and nearly two-thirds less than what’s in a can of cola sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup. The mint lemonade was perfect—refreshing, not too acidic, and not cloyingly sweet.

Spicy hot foods have long been popular, but what’s trending now are savory seasonings in unexpected places and foods with a “swicy” (sweet and spicy) flavor profile. These are some of the more interesting products we spotted.

• Savory flavors in typically sweet products, like granola and energy bars, are a growing category. The Sweet Curry version of For Good Granola, made of buckwheat, is one of the best examples. The flavors are layered: I got a rush of cardamom and maple syrup at the top, followed by turmeric, orange, and black pepper. It has a chunky and dense consistency and a satisfying crunch. Even some people who don’t love curry in general enjoy this granola, the company told CR at the show.

• And if fruit bars appeal to you, give Purposefuel Snack Bites a try. These little rounds of dried fruit and nut butter are sweet and savory and come in flavors like Mango Turmeric and Matcha Lemon.

• If you’re a fan of sweet heat, you might want to check out companies beyond the original Mike’s Hot Honey. For example, the classic Bone Suckin’ Sauce used for barbecue now has a Bone Suckin’ Hot Honey version. The produce company Melissa’s also sells a hot honey made with habanero peppers, which are sweet with a spicy kick.

• Tomato jam is a versatile, sweet, and savory spread you can use on sandwiches or burgers, in egg dishes, with cheese plates, or in sauces for meat or fish. Tommy Jam from Eltee’s Goods has a rich concentrated tomato flavor with a layer of heat underneath. An 8-ounce jar is made from a pound of tomatoes, the company says.