Food Trends from the Year You Were Born

From crickets to goats to vegetables, people are desperate to stay on top of the latest food trends.

But what about food trends of the past? Better than astrology, here’s a handy-dandy guide to what food obsession was in vogue the year you were born.  Bad news if you were born before 1970. Apparently, there were no food trends in 1969!

Here’s a look at a few of our favourites.

1973: Fondue
Though North America was introduced to Swiss fondue in the 1960’s, it was the 1970’s that saw a fondue bowl at every social gathering. As Sylvia Lovegren wrote in Fashionable Food, “Foreign, sophisticated, easy, and fun, fondue was served in a gleaming pot, which in its streamlined beauty bristling with long-handled dipping forks resembled nothing so much as the space-age satellites circling Earth’s atmosphere.”

1982: Crème Brûlée
Said to have originally been created at New York’s Le Cirque, their crème brûlée quickly launched a thousand copycats, and it’s now a restaurant staple, with variations ranging from fresh mint to pumpkin to foie gras.”

1997: Molten Chocolate Cake
Though it’s not clear who made the first Molten chocolate cake or how it came about, by 1997, recipes up in Joy of Cooking and Food and Wine, while restaurants at Disney World started serving versions of the dish.

1999: Cosmopolitans
Sex and the City premiered in 1998 and thanks to Carrie Bradshaw’s habit of having one with every meal; the “cosmo” quickly gained popularity and kicked off the speciality cocktail and mixology culture of the 2000s.

2009: Bacon
In 2009 bacon wasn’t so much a food trend as it was a food requirement. It turned up in everything; cupcakes, ice cream, breakfast plates, etc. According to St. Paul’s Pioneer Press, there had been a 40 percent increase in bacon consumption in the years leading up to 2009, and the trend hasn’t slowed down.

 

Images and story via Delish.