15 Absurd Food Trends We Need To Stop, Plus 5 That We Need To Embrace
Food trends come and go faster than you can say ‘avocado toast.’ Some are delicious innovations that change how we eat for the better.
Others are Instagram-friendly nightmares that sacrifice taste for likes.
Let’s take a fun look at which food crazes deserve the boot and which ones we should keep around for seconds!
1. Rainbow Everything Needs To Go
Remember when food was just… food colored? Now everything from bagels to grilled cheese gets the unicorn treatment. Sure, it looks magical on social media, but those artificial dyes don’t add flavor—just chemicals.
Your poor tongue ends up stained blue while you wonder why you paid extra for what amounts to edible food coloring.
2. Gold-Covered Food Is Just Showing Off
Gold leaf on desserts? Gold-dusted chicken wings? Edible precious metals don’t taste like anything except perhaps the tears of your wallet.
This gaudy trend is the culinary equivalent of a gold-plated toilet—unnecessarily expensive and ultimately useless. Besides, explaining you’re eating gold makes you sound like a cartoon villain.
3. Activated Charcoal Should Stay In Water Filters
Pitch-black ice cream and lattes might look dramatic on your feed, but activated charcoal can actually interfere with medications. That’s right—your goth food could be blocking your birth control or heart meds!
Plus, it tastes like… nothing. Absolutely nothing. Just regular food wearing an all-black outfit for attention.
4. Deconstructed Classics Are Just Laziness
Oh look! Your $18 lasagna arrived as separate piles of pasta, sauce, and cheese. How… innovative? Deconstructed dishes force diners to assemble their own meals while chefs call it ‘artistic expression.’
I didn’t come to a restaurant to build my own dinner like some edible IKEA furniture. Just put it together properly—that’s literally your job!
5. Extreme Milkshakes Are Heart Attacks In Glasses
Freakshakes topped with entire slices of cake, cookies, candy, and chocolate bars aren’t drinks—they’re sugar-coated declarations of war against your pancreas. These monstrosities contain more calories than most people need in a day.
You need three friends, five napkins, and an emergency insulin shot just to tackle one. Pure excess!
6. Cloud Eggs Are Too Much Work
Separating eggs, whipping whites to stiff peaks, creating a nest, baking, then adding yolks and baking again? All that for something that tastes exactly like a regular fried egg!
Cloud eggs are the definition of style over substance. They’re just eggs playing dress-up for Instagram, demanding 20 minutes of your morning for zero flavor payoff.
7. Avocado Everything Has Gone Too Far
Avocado toast was just the beginning. Now we’ve got avocado lattes, avocado chocolate, even avocado-shaped engagement ring boxes! The obsession has reached guac-bottom.
Millennials aren’t skipping homeownership for this green fruit—they’re just tired of seeing it shoehorned into literally everything. Let’s give other produce a chance!
8. Food Served In Anything But Plates
Your burger doesn’t belong on a shovel. Fries don’t need to be in a miniature shopping cart. Cocktails shouldn’t come in lightbulbs or spray bottles.
Restaurants, please note: we want plates! Actual plates! Not roof tiles, not wooden boards with splinters, not toilet-themed bowls. The r/WeWantPlates community exists for a reason.
9. Over-The-Top Bloody Marys Are Just Buffets
When your drink has an entire fried chicken, three sliders, and a pizza slice garnishing it, it’s no longer a cocktail—it’s a bizarre vertical buffet with tomato juice.
You need an engineering degree to figure out how to drink it without getting impaled by a skewer or wearing the toppings. Just serve the food on a plate!
10. Clear Foods Should Remain A Mystery
Transparent pumpkin pie? See-through ravioli? Clear coffee? Some things weren’t meant to be invisible. Food shouldn’t look like glass or plastic—it’s unsettling.
There’s something deeply disturbing about biting into something that looks like a paperweight. The whole trend feels like we’re one step away from eating actual window panes.
11. Rolled Ice Cream Takes Forever
Standing in line for 40 minutes to watch someone spend another 10 minutes dramatically chopping and rolling frozen cream on a cold plate? No thanks!
The end result tastes exactly like regular ice cream but costs twice as much. The entertainment factor wears off after the first time, leaving just impatience and melting disappointment.
12. Goth Food Is Just Food With Identity Issues
Black burger buns, black pasta, black everything! Squid ink is one thing, but artificial coloring just to make food look like it’s going through a teenage phase? Pass.
Food doesn’t need to match your soul or your wardrobe. Dark-colored food mostly just leads to panicked bathroom trips when you forget what you ate.
13. Unnecessarily Spicy Challenges
Ghost pepper everything! Carolina Reaper wings! These aren’t meals—they’re masochistic stunts designed for YouTube views.
When eating requires signing a waiver, it stops being food and becomes performance art. Your intestines aren’t asking for this kind of trauma, and taste buds aren’t meant to experience chemical warfare.
14. Pumpkin Spice Invasion Must End
Fall isn’t just a season anymore—it’s a pumpkin spice apocalypse. From lattes to dog food to dental floss, nothing is safe from this cinnamon-nutmeg assault.
The original PSL was fine, but pumpkin spice Spam? Pumpkin spice Pringles? Pumpkin spice Pepto-Bismol? (OK, the last one isn’t real… yet.) Enough already!
15. Molecular Gastronomy Has Gone Too Far
Yes, science is cool. But when dinner resembles a chemistry experiment more than actual food, something’s wrong. Nobody wants to eat foam that tastes vaguely of carrots or spherified olive oil droplets.
I appreciate the innovation, but sometimes I just want to recognize my meal without needing the server to explain each bite like it’s a TED talk.
16. KEEP: Ugly Produce Movement
Embracing imperfect fruits and vegetables is something we should absolutely continue! Wonky carrots and misshapen apples taste identical to their prettier counterparts but often get tossed.
This movement reduces food waste, supports farmers, and makes produce more affordable. Beauty standards shouldn’t apply to our potatoes—they’re all delicious inside!
17. KEEP: Fermented Foods Revival
Kimchi, kombucha, kefir—the fermentation nation deserves our full support! These foods aren’t just trendy; they’re packed with probiotics that support gut health.
Ancient preservation techniques creating bold flavors while reducing food waste? Sign me up! Plus, making your own fermented foods at home is affordable, sustainable, and oddly satisfying.
18. KEEP: Plant-Based Meat Alternatives
Mock meats have come a long way from sad tofu pucks! Today’s plant-based alternatives actually taste good while reducing environmental impact.
Whether you’re vegan, flexitarian, or just curious, these options make eating less meat accessible to everyone. The innovation happening in this space is genuinely exciting and planet-friendly.
19. KEEP: Zero-Waste Cooking
Using every part of ingredients—from carrot tops to cheese rinds to broccoli stems—is a trend worth celebrating! Creative chefs are turning would-be trash into treasure.
Vegetable scraps become flavorful stocks. Stale bread transforms into croutons or breadcrumbs. This approach saves money, reduces waste, and often results in surprisingly delicious discoveries!
20. KEEP: Global Fusion Done Respectfully
Thoughtful fusion cuisine that honors culinary traditions while creating something new? Yes please! Korean tacos, Japanese-Italian pasta, Indian pizza—when done with knowledge and respect, these crossovers can be magical.
The key is understanding the source cuisines rather than just throwing random ingredients together. Good fusion celebrates cultural exchange rather than appropriation.
