Top Five Food Trends

1 Functional Foods   

Understandably, we’re now paying even more attention to how we can protect our health through diet and educating ourselves on what vitamins and nutrients our bodies need. Expect to see more of functional claims, nutrient, and vitamin callouts to become a lot more prominent on pack.   

2 Plant-based – but make it healthier 

Now that plant-based is mainstream, consumers are becoming increasingly savvy on the health credentials. Top of the priority list is high protein (wanted by 41% of consumers), but also important is clean label – 25% of consumers say no to artificial preservatives, and 22% to artificial flavours. 

3. Low Waste Recipes  

Food waste is a big issue – the UK throws away 6.6 million tonnes of household food waste each year and in the US it’s more than 40 million tonnes. Food bloggers and chefs are stepping up to tackle the problem, starting from home, with recipes that make ingenious use of peelings, seeds and veg past their best.  

4. The next meat alternative

The big question is: what’s next for the category? One ingredient making big waves is the humble chickpea – protein packed, malleable and flavour friendly, we’re going to be seeing a lot more of it. Food labs are also paying attention to fermentation as a technology to produce alternative proteins and the ingredients that can help meat alternatives feel so real. 

5. Nostalgic Classics  

Lockdown earlier this year saw consumers turn to familiar classics for comfort – 76% of UK consumers cooked a traditional-style dish during lockdown, and 37% of revisited dishes from their childhood. And now we’re remembered how good they are, we’re not going to give them up easily. Expect this trend to continue through to plant-based, with classics reformulated into new vegan-friendly staples.