Award-winning author David Sax gives us the 411 on the how’s and why’s of food trends.



From beet salad to Brussels sprouts, Americans have long been obsessed with the latest food fads and trends. Many trends start in forward-thinking, innovative culinary hot spots, and then fan out to more mainstream menus before becoming staples at fast-food restaurants. (How else to explain the Artisan Grilled Chicken Sandwich on McDonald’s menu, for instance?) We turned to James Beard Award-winning author David Sax (The Tastemakers: Why We’re Crazy for Cupcakes But Fed Up With Fondue) to shed some light.

Baltimore: How do you define a food trend?



David Sax: A food trend is a collective shift in our eating behavior and our collective appetite. The biggest difference between fads and trends is that food trends are longer-terms shifts in the way we eat. The rise in organic or seasonal—that’s a big trend. The growth in coffee cultures from Italian culture in this country to Starbucks culture—that’s a bigger part of the continuum. A food trend changes the ways we eat as a society and pushes the trend forward.

Why do food trends start?



Sax: More of us have become foodies. Once upon a time, that was limited to a highly educated, highly privileged class of people who traveled. But with the rise of the Food Network, blogs, Yelp, and Instagram, everybody who has some interest in food can indulge without having to travel to Spain or Norway.

You’ve written about different types of food trends, including cultural food trends. What’s an example of that?



Sax: A cultural trend is not a culinary trend as much as the reestablishing of some sort of value in a food that previously people didn’t think about, then all of a sudden it becomes cool—something like the cupcakes on Sex and the City. Friends drove

the coffee shop culture.

What’s a chef-driven trend?



Sax: Chef-driven trends are all about the new restaurant, or so-and-so is the hottest thing in town, then that spreads out to the other restaurants, and two years later it’s reflected on the T.G.I. Fridays menu. When something is a trend, it trickles out into the mass market. Wendy’s has a kale salad or suddenly McDonald’s cares about local sourcing. Even if 90 percent of that is lip service or marketing spin, there’s the hope that 10 percent of that is real. That’s what food trends do by collective interest. They change the priorities of the food system—from fine dining to mass market. Trends change culture and can influence food politics. At the end of the day, they are

big economic forces.

When does a trend get replaced?



Sax: It’s analogous to music and fashion. The fad parts of the style and season are fickle, but the appetite has grown for those longer-term trends. There will always be a pizza trend. The imagination around food is tremendous but needs to fall into familiar reference points. We all love pizza—even the gluten-free want their pizza, so we see iterations around the same trend. How many ways can we combine bread and cheese and dough?

How do you know when a trend is over?



Sax: In the world of fine dining, it’s that notion of exclusivity. There’s a lot of excitement built around that, but if it can be purchased anywhere, then it’s over. Take the early ’90s when the cappuccino-espresso culture was spreading around North America, where every corner store and every office had a cappuccino machine. At a certain point, when you could get a cappuccino at any corner store, is it over—or has it arrived? The trend then gets absorbed into the greater culture.

What else can lead to the death of a trend?



Sax: Trends can die when the science comes out that blows the other stuff out of the water—saturated fat is actually good for you. Margarine is going to kill you. When the definitive study comes out one way or the other—that will be the deciding factor. —Jane Marion