What You'll Be Eating in 2019 — Every Forecast Says Roughly the Same Thing

2019 will probably bring more probiotics and fewer straws, more hot nitro coffee in cafes, more CBD cocktails in bars.

Every year-end, every corner of the food industry starts guessing which food will take off in the coming year. Forecasters build their "top 10 trends" lists in different ways — Whole Foods, Pinterest, Uber Eats, The New York Times, Self — some mining data from their own users, others asking industry experts to draw up the list. Sometimes the guesses turn out to be remarkably accurate: last year the US organic grocery chain Whole Foods correctly called the rise of sparkling water. But sometimes it is precisely these influential companies' predictions that shape the next year's trends. Which means the guesses themselves, to some degree, decide who the food world's stars will be — and, to some degree, decide what you eat in 2019.

Across the major outlets' forecasts we found a lot of overlap. "Plant-based meat" is widely favored, and "cannabis drinks" come up again and again as marijuana legalization spreads in the US. Both Supermarket News and The New York Times think celtuce will be the next kale. Comparing the various outlets' predictions for 2019, we have gathered the ones mentioned most often (the outlets that named each trend are in parentheses after the heading):

The Pegan Diet (Pinterest, Whole Foods, The New York Times)

The Pegan diet is a way of eating that combines the paleo diet and veganism.

(Veganism means cutting out everything made from animals. The paleo diet means eating what people ate in the Paleolithic era, and refusing all processed food and refined vegetable oil. Unlike the salmon and chicken breast that gym-goers swear by, the paleo diet does not make a point of fat content; it asks for meat from animals raised naturally on grass and other natural feed. Searches for "paleo diet" on Pinterest rose 337% over the previous year.)

The Pegan diet really just means eating food that has not been finely worked over by human hands — plants first, meat in a supporting role. Fresh-squeezed juice still delivers less nutrition than eating the fruit itself, and it is easy to take in too much sugar that way; Pegan thinking tells you to skip the fancy stuff, wash it, and eat it as it is.

Kind Snacks predicts that in 2019 more snack makers will sell "minimally processed" as a selling point too.

And as the ketogenic diet, grain-free diets and the Pegan diet — all of which favor less sugar and fewer carbohydrates and more fat — grow more popular, both Whole Foods and Delish predict that the consumer fear of fat will shift, and that high-fat foods will come back in 2019: chocolate filled with coconut butter, butter coffee, nutrition bars with added medium-chain triglycerides (MCT).

Foil-Packet Recipes (Pinterest, The New York Times)

Searches for foil-wrapped dinner recipes on Pinterest rose 209% in 2018 over the previous year. Foil-packet cooking fits the modern wish to "dodge the hassle and still enjoy cooking for yourself": wrap the ingredients in foil, throw the packet in the oven, and you get little prep, little mess, and something good to eat.

Hot Brewed Coffee, Hot Nitro Coffee (Supermarket News, Nation's Restaurant News, af&co)

Cold brew will stay popular, but hot brewed coffee will gain ground in 2019, as plenty of coffee lovers complain that cold-steeped coffee cannot really draw out coffee's distinctive flavor. One study also shows that hot brewed coffee contains more antioxidants than cold coffee.

Enhanced Drinks, Like Ginger Water and CBD Beverages (Pinterest, Self, Greatist, Supermarket News, Convenience Store Decisions, Kind Snacks, Delish, af&co, Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants, Fresh Direct)

CBD (cannabidiol) is still barred from food under US federal law, but marijuana rules differ from state to state, so CBD still turns up in plenty of American snacks and drinks. With legalization spreading, no brand wants to miss the wave. For young people chasing cool, after all, a bar with CBD on its cocktail menu is a strong draw.

The predictions reported by The New York Times also include foods containing THC (tetrahydrocannabinol). That is still a long way from Chinese consumers, but the cannabis trend in American food is widely expected to continue.

New Probiotics (Whole Foods, Greatist, Convenience Store Decisions, Kind Snacks)

Amid the healthy-eating wave, probiotics have already become a regular in contemporary food, and 2019 is expected to put still more new probiotic products in front of you. New strains (such as Bacillus coagulans GBI-30 and MTCC 5856) let probiotics be worked into more foods more stably, and 2019's hit snack may well come out of this category: probiotic gummies, probiotic chips, probiotic crackers.

Whole Foods also notes that some beauty and skincare products are starting to add probiotic ingredients. It would be no surprise if the next beauty ingredient the industry hypes turns out to be a probiotic.

Transparency, and Goodwill Toward Brands (Whole Foods, Kind Snacks, Benchmark, The New York Times)

Just as Whole Foods predicted last year with "Transparency 2.0" — shoppers wanting to know the story behind what they eat: how it was grown, how it was processed, how it reached the store — consumers now ask not only that the finished product be good, but that every step along the way meet their standards. Was the environment considered, and animal welfare? Does the company give to poor or disaster-hit regions? In 2019 you may see more lines like "for every bottle of our water you buy, we donate 0.1 yuan to protecting the Arctic Circle" and "for every bag of dog food you buy, we donate 1 yuan to a dog-lovers' association."

On transparency in the food chain, the forecast from Convenience Store Decisions adds "blockchain tracking of where food comes from." Expect to hear more in 2019 about blockchain put to work on "food traceability."

Artificial Meat (Whole Foods, Greatist, Kind Snacks, Supermarket News, Convenience Store Decisions, af&co, Fox Restaurant Concepts, The New York Times)

Unlike "Tang Monk's Meat," the dried-apricot snack Chinese kids born in the 1980s grew up on, today's artificial-meat technology gets plant-based snacks much closer to the texture of real meat. The pitches brands make for it — "more nutrition, less burden," "a world without slaughter" — will also win over plenty of people who care about their health and the environment.

Eco-Friendly Packaging (Whole Foods, Delish, af&co)

This November, McDonald's China began testing "no-straw lids" and a policy of not handing out straws unless asked, and Starbucks plans to retire single-use plastic straws from its stores worldwide within two years. More and more brands are putting environmental impact first in their packaging.

The trend has run for several years now. It has not moved fast, but the direction has not changed. "Reuse," "biodegradable," "use it again" — the brands with pull are turning an idea from a trend into a habit.

Pacific Rim Flavors (Whole Foods, The New York Times)

Food from around the Pacific — Asia, Oceania, and the west coasts of North and South America — may become the choice of more and more eaters: Filipino sausage, dried shrimp, cuttlefish. You might drink a bright tropical-fruit cocktail in a large Nordic country, and you are even more likely to eat shrimp paste and cuttlefish sauce on a heated kang bed in China's northeast.

The trendy fruits of 2019 will also lean tropical — guava, dragon fruit, passion fruit. This year matcha and ginger ruled the drinks menu; in 2019 you will probably keep spotting tropical fruit in what you drink (guava vinegar, passion-fruit sparkling water).

The forecast lists also mention these trends:

Drinkable collagen (Greatist)

Coffee beer (Greatist)

Chlorophyll lattes (Greatist), restaurants with Spotify playlists (AF&CO) (The New York Times)

Tea bars (Benchmark)

App-only restaurants (G2 Crowd)

Banh mi, a Vietnamese sandwich (Square)

Milkshake IPAs, a craft beer made with milkshake (Delish)

Sleep-aid drinks (Delish)

Tequila (Delish)

Seafood snacks (Whole Foods)

Mushrooms (Pinterest, The New York Times)

Oxtail (Pinterest)

Jam (Pinterest)

Smoothie bowls (Uber Eats)

Moringa (Self, af&co)

Middle Eastern spices (Self, Delish, The New York Times)

African spices (Self, Kind Snacks, Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants, The New York Times)

Oat milk and soy milk (Pinterest, Uber Eats, Self, Greatist, Supermarket News, Nation's Restaurant News, Delish, Square, Fresh Direct)

Fermented foods, such as kombucha made with a "Scoby" and Korean kimchi (Uber Eats, Benchmark, National Restaurant Association, Delish, Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants, Kroger, Joshua Korn of Cultivation Kitchen, New York Times)

Frozen desserts with fruit or plant ingredients added, such as avocado ice pops and chickpea ice cream (Whole Foods, Delish)

Orange wine (Self, Delish)

Cheese snacks (Greatist)

Light beer (Supermarket News, Nation's Restaurant News)

Meal kits (Supermarket News, Cacique Inc.)

Regional foods (Supermarket News, Convenience Store Decisions, Kroger, Joshua Korn of Cultivation Kitchen, Fast Casual)

Vegetables in place of grains (Convenience Store Decisions, National Restaurant Association, Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants)

Unicorn themes (Square)

Cocktails without alcohol (Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants, The Door, The New York Times)

Floral notes — floral cocktails and drinks, floral chocolate (Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants, The Door)

Plant protein (The Door)

Nutrition facts printed on menus (The Door)

Restaurants with no servers (Shaun King, Momofuku Las Vegas)

Cold-pressed juice (Shaun King, Momofuku Las Vegas)

Edible flowers (Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger)

Salad-making robots (The New York Times)

Cheese tea (The New York Times)

Cover image from: giphy @100soft