Should You Care About These 2022 Nutrition Trends?

Should You Care About These 2022 Nutrition Trends?

New year, new trends. January is always an interesting time for seeing what’s new in food and fitness. But are these trends worth knowing about, or will they be gone this time next year? Here’s what 2022 (allegedly) has in store for the way we eat…

Personalised supplements 

Gone are the days of adding a pack of generic multivits to your supermarket shop. In 2022, micronutrients are getting the personal treatment. There are already several companies offering bespoke vitamin blends and curated supplements to your door. Expect this trend to increase in 2022.

Any good? People fall into two camps: no supplements at all, or far too many. This trend will help you buy only the ones you need. Just don’t get caught up in the marketing hype.

Plant based and vegan

With the plant-based food industry now worth an estimated $162 worldwide (according to Bloomberg Intelligence), we will all be seeing far more plant-based options and alternatives on offer in shops and restaurants. Whether you’re full-on vegan or just making small shifts to more plant-based, this will make life easier.

Any good? We could all do with adding more plant-based foods to our diet. But are manmade products the best way to do it? The jury’s out until we see the quality of all these new products.

Superfood lattes

Coffee lovers, listen up. You can expect the chalkboard of your local café to get even more confusing in 2022, with so-called functional ingredients entering the chat. Turmeric lattes are so 2021. You might be seeing matcha, cacao, reishi and other weird ingredients on offer.

Any good? Probably not. The research on these ingredients is still sketchy, and the amount you’re likely to get in a latte is hardly worth the inevitable price-tag.

New flavours to drive innovations

Have you heard of the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon? It’s the frequency bias that describes how food trends seem to accelerate out of nowhere (hello, salted caramel, oh hey cronuts). Food brands are using AI and social media to identify emerging flavour trends which will then drive their product development. 

Any good? We can’t say what 2022’s trending food flavours will be, but expect to see sudden explosions of random flavours across various food groups.

The death of big brands? 

Consumer research shows that some shoppers faced a lack of branded food goods during lockdown, and started buying smaller brands or own-brand products. This has opened up our food shopping behaviours, leading to more competition between brands (and more choice for us).

Any good? Traditional heavy-hitters in the food space may give way to smaller and more innovative brands, which means more choice for you (but there’s nothing wrong with sticking to what you like).

The Climatarian Diet

Environmental change and personal responsibility are big news, so it’s no surprise something called the Climatarian Diet is a 2022 food trend. This new way of eating could reduce your carbon footprint by focusing on buying more local produce and eating less animal products.

Any good? This diet’s heart is in the right place, but buying local and in-season is still too logistically challenging for most busy households. Gap in the market for an app, we reckon…

Nutrition for mental wellness

Mental wellbeing (and brain health in general) has been big news for the past couple of years, and 2022 could be the year we see a big focus on how food choices and nutrition habits can optimise cognitive health. There’s already something called the MIND diet (which has huge search engine numbers!) so expect this to filter down into more workable conversations around food, ingredients, and eating for mental wellbeing.

Any good? Anything that protects and optimises mental performance and wellness can’t be a bad thing, but as ever keep an eye out for faddy diets.

Microbiome nutrition

We’ve known about the importance of our gut microbiome for ages, but this could be the year more research emerges about how to fine-tune our food intake to care for your individual gut health.

Any good? With gut health linked to brain health, training performance, and longevity, we’d say so yes!