The following food trends appeared in 2015 lists but as they say, there’s nothing new under the sun.
1. Bone broth: a staple in the Chinese Medicine diet, bone broth brings powerful nutrients to the body gently, strengthening the bones and boosting immunity. We recommend looking for bones from grass-fed beef, pork, and lamb and organically-fed poultry.
2. Cauliflower: Cauliflower is already entering the mainstream but it’s predicted to stay popular. It stands on its own as a grain substitute, and has a lot of health benefits, too. Cauliflower is in the same family as broccoli, cabbage, brussels sprouts, kale, and collard greens. This vegetable is rich in vitamin C, potassium, phosphorus, and calcium. We feel it is important to front-load on all veggies because they are rich in antioxidants.
3. Matcha green tea: Matcha contains 10x more antioxidants the your average green tea bags. Matcha also contains fiber, vitamins, and minerals.
4 Coconut sugar: A continuation of 2014, coconut sugar grows in popularity, and for good reason. While sugar is never really good for you, moderation in diet is more realistic. Coconut sugar has a lower glycemic index compared with regular cane sugar. It’s also loaded with minerals iron, potassium, zinc, and calcium.
5. Freekeh: This is considered the new super-grain. Freekeh is a Middle Eastern green wheat grain that is high in protein with a nice nutty taste.
6. Fermentation and Flavors: foods like sauerkraut and drinks like rejuvelac, a fermented grain drink. Bitter foods and drinks are also enjoying an uptick: deep dark chocolate and hops beer are both bitter. Both fermentation and the bitter flavor impacts your digestion in a positive way – worth a try if you’re having trouble in this department. Word of note: according to Chinese Medicine dietetics, a balance of five flavors: sour, bitter, sweet, pungent, and salty is the rule of thumb to promote optimum health. We are glad to see the movement towards balancing all the sweet in our diets with the umami trend of 2014 and now an awareness of the benefits of the bitter flavor!
7. Non-GMO: this one’s simple, the right to know what’s in our food and where it came from so the choice is ours when we are buying food.
8. Good Fats: admittedly a hard habit to break, but consuming the “good” types of fats help hormonal and brain health while stabilizing blood sugars and keeping your appetite in check. Research is shows fats help reduce inflammation. Here’s a starter list of great cooking oils.
Personally, we’ve tried many variations of healthy diets, from macrobiotic to raw to GF, and on and on. Each person has to figure out what works for them and this takes a bit of trial and error, but overall, consuming a diet high in anti-oxidants using the cleanest possible ingredients is a good baseline to start from. We have other blogs to give you some common sense ideas to of what might be the right diet for you. I would start by reading The Rainbow Diet and go through our many blogs on nutrition and we also have tons of recipes you could try.
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