Ask not whether your food tastes good – ask, rather, what your food can do for you. And if you do, you’ll be well positioned to join the expanding movement toward “functional” foods.
Google gathered search-query data about food, from January 2014 to February 2016, to pinpoint trends and “illustrate interesting shifts in behavior,” according to the company’s Food Trends 2016 report.
One top trend was “food with a function.”
“To eat right, people are going online to raise their food IQ and make more informed choices,” Google said in a blog post about the report. “In what-do-I-eat-moments, they’re searching for the best foods to eat for certain physiological benefits. According to Google Trends, ‘best foods for’ searches have grown (10 times) since 2005, often followed by terms like ‘skin,’ ‘energy,’ ‘acid reflux,’ ‘your brain,’ and ‘gym workout’,” the report said.
Interest in functional foods isn’t new, but it’s taken off lately, Google’s blog post said. “Turmeric, a spice that’s purported to cure everything from cancer to depression, is the breakout star, with searches growing 300 percent over the last five years,” the post said.
Google’s report ranked the functional foods by number of searches. After turmeric came apple cider vinegar, jackfruit, manuka honey, kefir, coconut milk, erythritol, bone broth, cauliflower rice and avocado oil.
The report contains a host of tasty tidbits about people’s eating habits. Most-searched-for recipe? Waffles. Highest-volume “how-to”? How to cut a mango. And it shouldn’t be hard to guess the most common dietary-restriction query: gluten-free.
In case you’re wondering where bacon fits into all this, the crispy pork slices do not fall under functional foods, but are the subject of many, many a search. Queries for “uncured bacon” rose steadily in the study period, but bacon cupcakes and bacon cinnamon rolls are trends approaching their expiration dates. However, if we’re talking solely of pork-related searches, bacon jam takes third, behind No. 1 pork shoulder and No. 2 Andouille sausage. Also, “how to bake bacon” was the second-most-popular “how-to” search.
So what else is hot? Ramen, rigatoni, bibimbap and linguine, to name a few.
What’s not hot? Gluten-free cupcakes, evaporated cane juice, and wheat-free bread, among other foods. Also on the way out: quinoa, kale chips and agave nectar.
Photo: Bacon, subject of many a Google search query (Tribune News Service)
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