Chances are, you’ll spot at least one photo of mouth-watering food the second you open your Instagram feed. You know, those carefully curated posts filled with dazzling colors of kimchi, home-brewed kombuchas, and vibrant açaí bowls that get your appetite immediately going. But the truth is, these are all trends that have filled our kitchens, plates, and bellies during these past few years. And if there’s one thing we’re sure of, they tend to come and go.
So a few days ago, Redditor AndShesNotEvenPretty felt inspired when she came across old recipes that looked completely unappetizing by today's standards. So the user reached out to members of the 'Cooking' subreddit with a very fine question: "What cooking/food trends will seem revolting in the future?" Foodies immediately jumped to the comment section and shared their sizzling takes about the latest fads that will age so bad, they'll turn sour.
From rainbow-colored meals to dishes decorated with gold, we’ve gone through the thread and hand-picked some of the most interesting responses for every cooking enthusiast to enjoy. So get your aprons ready and continue scrolling to upvote your favorite ones! Do you have any thoughts about what food trends should cease to exist? Be sure to tell us all about them in the comments, we'd love to hear them.
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it's not really a food trend per se, but i'm really tired of looking up a recipe online only to have to scroll through 20 pages of a life story full of anecdotes just to get to the ingredient list.
Fondant. Cakes are supposed to taste good first and look good second, not look beautiful and taste awful.
We managed to get in touch with the user who started this whole thread, AndShesNotEvenPretty, who was kind enough to have a little chat with us. When asked whether she expected her post to reach hundreds of people who wasted no time sharing their opinions in the comments, the user said that it was definitely cool. "But let’s not get too precious here. It’s a Reddit post. All it demonstrates is I had a passing thought that other people identified with," she told Bored Panda.
The user came up with the idea to ask this question while scrolling through the 'Old Recipes' subreddit. "It’s amusing to look back on the trends of yesteryear and realize how much our tastes have changed," she wrote in the post. "Gelatin abominations, iceberg lettuce creations, and protein loaf iterations abound, many of which sound unappetizing by today’s standards. It got me to thinking, what do we eat now that the next generations will find unappealing?"
Deconstructed food. I do not give a sh*t about your creative attempt to try to 'invoke' cheesecake by having all the elements on a plate separately. I want the damn, fully assembled cheesecake
Food decorated in gold. I don’t judge people for fine dining or enjoying expensive meals, but that gold leafing sh*t is over the line for me. It's pure ostentatiousness without even pretending that it improves the taste of food.
When asked about the reasons she finds it interesting to explore old recipes online, AndShesNotEvenPretty explained she enjoys looking at them because they serve as a social commentary of the era they once were popular in. Moreover, they can tell us a lot about what was valued at the time. "You can see the changes that were taking place in society simply by observing recipes over time."
"As women entered the workforce, for example, recipes became more compact, streamlined, and made use of convenience foods and canned items," the user continued. "During the Great Depression, recipes were barebones and made use of inexpensive staples and often involved innovative uses for cheaper ingredients so they could be used as substitutes for more expensive products like milk and eggs."
However, most of the cooking trends that were popular during that time have faded away. Once we take a look at the TV dinners, gelatin salads, and fish-shaped food that were extremely prevalent just a few decades ago, we undoubtedly scratch our heads from confusion. "I think many of these recipes fall out of favor as we begin to value different things, gain new technology, and as we continue to learn more about the world around us," the user noted several reasons why these dishes no longer seem appetizing to us.
I already think they’re gross but those “Stunt Burgers” that are stacked so damn high you can’t even eat it properly and the combination of all 25+ ingredients probably won’t even taste that good together. First We Feast Instagram I’m lookin at you.
I want to hope that future people will be revolted by the giant, flavorless beefsteak tomatoes we chose to selectively breed and then pick early and refrigerate into oblivion to be the way they are, right now, *on purpose.*
that is all tomatoes, not just beefsteak and many of the fruits and vegetables that you want to eat. buy local, support local farmers and grow your own, supermarkets just fill shelves with produce people will buy.
Keurig coffee. Passing boiling water through plastic cups for a burnt, under-extracted cup. If it doesn't turn out to be outright dangerous to human health, it's still an environmentally wasteful way to make a bad cup of coffee.
I have absolutely no use for anyone who uses any of these "pod" devices. 39,000 pods are produced every single minute of the day (20.5 billion per year) of those, 29,000 end up in landfills (15.242 BILLION PER YEAR) You couldn't recycle these things if you wanted to, and manufactures have resisted making that a possibility anyway. Testing has shown that the water in the machines doesn't even get hot enough to do a proper extraction, grounds are OFTEN stale, and there are a myriad of ways that are just as easy (if not more so) to get a cup, that offer exponentially better end product.
"Right now, we seem to value abundance (think burgers too large to eat and overloaded milkshakes) so a recipe that makes use of potato peels (as seen in the Depression) seems less alluring," she continued. "And whereas gelatin salads were once de rigueur, we’ve long ago been there and done that. When you can sous vide at home, a molded dessert with canned fruit suspended inside seems markedly less sophisticated."
Plus, the user explained that our ability to easily communicate and travel throughout the world led to our cuisine preferences shifting as well. "Whereas, at one time, American meals were relegated to a meat, a starch and a vegetable, in recent decades we have begun to see the introduction of more worldwide influences, flavor profiles, techniques, and ingredients in our recipes."
Hopefully sugar and corn syrup being put in *everything*. So much sugar...
Why is sugar needed in bread? US bread qualifies as cake in most other countries.
*Fois gras*. I think in the future the objections to *fois gras* will continue to grow to where it will no longer be found on menus. It will go the way of the ortolan.
I did not know about ortolans until today - and now I feel like puking!
Large portions — why? French cuisine is really rich, sweet, and salty, but their portions are just smaller. I don’t need to eat a 0.5-1 burger with all the fixins. Why are burritos the size of my arm?
Yes, I often wonder if Americans who come here think our portions are really stingy, but that's what we're used to, and they do fill you up.
The user’s question caused quite a stir on the 'Cooking' subreddit. Food enthusiasts from far and wide gathered together in one place to discuss the trends they wish everyone would just be done with, and they didn’t hold anything back. AndShesNotEvenPretty told us she liked seeing a lot of the responses. "Some of them I hadn’t thought of but totally agreed with — one person said foam looked like someone spit on your plate. I found myself thinking YES! THIS!"
I would add the milkshakes that have three desserts stacked on them and are spilling all over the place.
Foam. It's disgusting. And unfortunately appears on dishes in high end restaurants. Where it looks like something someone spit onto the plate. Horrifying.
"My favorite comments, and the most encouraging ones, were the people who think meat and factory farming will go the way of the dodo bird. I can only hope that one day my grandkids will be astounded that anyone ate an actual cow." But the user also mentioned that in the meantime, she’ll wait for some of these likely temporary trends to fizzle out.
"Since we are entering a time where everything is getting increasingly expensive, I’m guessing the Bloody Marys with 3 meals worth of garnish or the sandwich hybrids that use entire grilled cheese sandwiches as buns, will be viewed as wasteful and fall out of favor," she added, hoping these recipes and foods will be frowned upon all together.
The Instagram food era. Everything over the top so it looks great on insta but more often than not it's just a mess. It's all about how the food looks not tastes. Can anyone tell me that adding 25-30 toppings to an ice cream cone all made of sugar actually makes the ice cream better? At a certain point you have an ice cream sundae that is all toppings
I've heard stories of instagrammers sending back stacks of pancakes because the cook added syrup, only to have more made without syrup so they can pour it "their way" and take photos. And then leave them. "Influencers" are a boil on the rear end of humanity.
Stuff that's cooked inside of a plastic bag, liner, etc. Not to be a conspiracy theorist but I don't think we quite understand how bad plastic leeching is for humans.
When food is becoming practically unaffordable for so many people, the user believes people will change their attitudes towards meals with immoderate amounts of food. "I think it will be seen as tacky to create recipes for sandwiches stacked so tall with toppings so as to render them inedible, for example."
However, AndShesNotEvenPretty felt it’s important to remind you, dear readers, that it all comes down to choice. "Eat what you like whether it’s 'fashionable' or not. I know my husband will never, ever give up French onion dip and potato chips no matter who says charcuterie trays are the way of the future. And that’s ok!"
Artfully smearing a sauce so it looks like a s**t streak on your plate.
Who the f**k thinks that’s appetizing?
Hopefully - industrially farmed meat. It's an incredibly cruel system that inflicts massive amounts of suffering to animals _and_ humans and does great damage to the environment and atmosphere, all for cheap hamburgers. I think we'll look back on it and treat it like other barbaric systems of the past. My hope is that plant based options continue to grow in popularity and people who still choose to eat animal flesh now and then opt for less damaging ones.
I think I will forever eat meat but I do wish the meat I consumed was more sustainable and the animals treated better.
Same here. You can buy meat that comes from well treated animals but it's incredibly expensive and most stores where I live don't even offer it.
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I grew up in ignorance. My aunt is a cattle rancher and the way she treats her animals I thought was just standard practice. I was quite disturbed when I learned the truth that it was not and meat in the US is leagues behind her and her fellow cattle ranchers in South America. Fun side note: she found it hilarious that she was going to be paid more for "free range" because she was just treating her cows properly.
I'm from NZ and worked in food distribution, in NZ it's very uncommon for cattle or sheep to spend time inside so seeing 'free range' on our meat packaged for export was very entertaining, even funnier when I started to get friends FROM NZ asking me if I could source them free range beef because that's what the Internationally sourced recipes specifically asked for.
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why do we have to go straight to veganism? why not ethically sourced outdoor kept live stock. there aren't as many factory farms in Scotland as in America I guess. you guys need some serious overhaul of your animal husbandry laws
prefer to eat fresh whole foods over heavily processed vegan fake meats
This. I abhor mass produced meat. Do enjoy my local butcher over who knows what concoction that " tastes" like meat and always serms to come in wasteful plastoc packaging. I do eat legumes, etc. But if i am splurging ( with expensive meat ) , i want minimally processed food.
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We don't need meat for every single meal. Buy less but better quality from local farms when animal actually go outside.
This is what I started doing. Meat only a couple of times a week and from an local, organic small farm with happy, free range cows and pigs.
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You're telling me I can still buy cheap hamburgers. Where? I need to go there right now.
This goes to all what we eat. All plants and plant base products are not automatically good for you or the enviroment. Best thing you can start with is buy local products. So no need for long transporting of goods(less pollution/damageto enviroment). Then choose those wich are best in youre area/budget. Even if you eat meat dont buy meat from another side of the planet.
I know a lot of people are against the industrial farmed meat and i know its cruel, but dont get mad at the people who slaughter cows. I live in a heavily agricultural based community and I know multiple familys who raise grass, free ranged cattle. Most of those people because of the back lash of the meat industry have lost their house and land, because they cant get their cattle to a butcher. A lot of corapate businesses are trying to take over and kill the small business that need to sell these animals by sending out false implications about meat. There's not much we can do against this, except we can help others in the community. So please buy local products! So instead of depending on a corporation or large buisness that only are in to make money off your hard work, we as people can become more focused on helping each other. In anyway you can support small businesses and local buisness, becuase they will look out for you and right now through this tough time they need your help!
Animal welfare should be a concern for everybody. It’s in our own best interests to do so.
It will always be necessary and therefore never be eliminated, but I would love to see the return of small family farms.
Oh the ignorance is strong with this post. Farmers and ranchers go to great lengths to insure the health and welfare of their animals. They have to because if not. They'll lose weight and catch diseases making them unsuitable for sale at a profit. Why would anyone do something to hurt their own bottom line. Yet some insist on posting this garbage and others clap rather than coming out and doing ANY homework.
Of course we all want the animals to be treated better and there are places to get meat from 'well treated' animals... but many Americans cannot afford that, or do not have access to that. If you live in the suburbs, not near any farms- that's out of the question. Butchers- sure- I'd love to go the butchers- but I can't afford to. People eat c**p and consume the 'bad' meat because that's what we can afford.
I feel like until lab grown meat becomes a big thing, we need to focus on regulating the farms and butcheries we have. Not everyone can (or will) go full plant-based, and it IS possible to raise food animals humanely in a way that doesn't cause them stress or pain.
industrial farmed meat isn't as bad as the nazi propaganda wants you to believe.
I think it’s impossible burger that makes plant-based burgers using a molecule from hemoglobin to give it that savoriness of real meat. I haven’t tried one, but I am curious. I the molecule is synthesized
We almost exclusively buy locally farmed, small business meats. It means we eat less meat because it's more expensive but it's better quality and feels better to eat.
One other thing: I’ve heard that people are investigating lab-grown seafood, too. I can see that being HUGE.
I’d love to see actual lab-grown beef become a real thing. I read someone involved in it saying “you just need two things: good ground beef, and a perfect steak.”
Researchers in food science are looking at and have invented all kinds of clever food producing tricks, including one where food is made from carbon extracted from the air. Look into it!
And people need to get over the fear of soy. Soy lecithin is not great cuz it's in junk food, junk food is bad. Tofu and soy milk are good and they Do Not have estrogen in them. There is an estrogen-like hormone naturally in them. This hormone is harmless because the acid in your stomach breaks it down. You would have to drink Gallons upon Gallons of soy milk to get any effect from this hormone
I took my daughter to a doctor for milk intolerance. genuine milk intolerance. they gave her soy milk (she was 3 month old). they did however tell me that she could only be on it 3 months because of the damage from the oestrogen present. I can assure you at 3 months she was not "drinking gallons". I had to wean her early. this was doctor. an MD. so yeah that's not true sadly
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Sloppy, wasteful, revolting food concoctions made for the purposes of entertainment. I would hope that in the future someone would be scorned and derided for doing something like covering your entire countertop in spaghetti and chocolate sauce. I would hope that future historians look back on phenomena like that and think something must have seriously been wrong with us.
Those dumb “hacks” or flashy foods on TikTok and Facebook.
Bloody Marys piled high with extra ingredients like bacon, shrimp, a lobster claw, and all kinds of pickled and spicy things.
Hot Cheeto Burrito
Hot Cheeto Fries
Hot Cheeto powder for your corndog or cheese stick
I don't get it. I loves me some hot cheetos, but they aren't an ingredient.
Hopefully all the pre-packaged and processed garbage our stores are filled with today. People need to re-discover actually cooking with real ingredients, not just re-heating processed industrial nonsense.
Then advocate for a better work-life balance and where needed better salaries. For too many people it is the most practical option given available time and money.
“Secret menu” food items got really old really fast. As a former barista, I was expected (by customers) to know every single “secret menu” item that some rando on the internet came up with? No thank you lol.
Meal prep delivery services. It seems like a step in the wrong direction when it comes to wasteful packaging. Every ingredient is individually packaged not to mention perishable ones need extra packaging.
I long for the day that people who use the word "EVOO" are expelled from polite society, then are forced to wander the wastelands to survive on beetles, and hair.
The pastries that are heavily preserved and sold in plastic packaging. Like the Little Debbie cakes.
Everything that is wrapped up in unnecessary amounts of plastic will be horrifying to us eventually.
deep fried foods like oreo, ice cream etc. stacking calories over calories.
Note: this post originally had 63 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.
Is it me or is BP being more and more judgemental posts - sure comment on people wasting food etc but what’s wrong with the occasional deep fried mar bar or whether if it makes them happy. If people more accepting maybe we’d have less suffering.
No, BP has always been on a bit of high horse of judgement.
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Some of these were right on. Others seem to be a matter of, "I really don't like (fill in the blank) so no one else should like it." Also, some of these things aren't trends. For example, people have been cooking with kale for over at least 2600 years.
I love kale. It's been used in the Dutch kitchen for centuries. The classic dish is mashed with potatoes and some smoked sausage on the side. Edit: I forgot the gravy :)
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Mine has to be fad diets. Honestly seems incredibly self obsessed to turn up to a meal with a list of stuff you won’t eat that’s longer than you are tall. It’s just a “look at me, I don’t eat carbs” thing. I have no problem whatsoever with people who have genuine allergies and conditions. You won’t find me eating peanuts on a plane or giving gluten to someone with coeliac disease. I just can’t stand stupid fads that just make life more difficult for people with genuine allergies because no one believes them when they say dairy will make them ill.
That has become such a big issue at restaurants. Everyone claims "I'm deathly allergic to X" just because they don't like a particular ingredient. Then when the person with the real allergies comes along everyone just rolls their eyes.
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I was beginning to think BP was starting to go a bit overboard but thought I was overreacting. Thanks for this comment. It seems like a flood of people who want to p**s and moan about someone or something they don't like. Too damn bad.
Some of the people on this article are misusing the term “binge eating”. Binge eating is disordered eating (an eating disorder) in which you eat excessive amounts of food because you’re experiencing anxiety, depression, stress, or really anything. This is not the same as just eating lots of food.
Cilantro. I'm one of those people who think it tastes like soap. I realize a lot of people like it and that's fine but it's in everything thing now and not always in an appropriate dish. What's next, cilantro milkshakes?
It's genetic. About 20% of people cannot abide coriander leaf. I've heard that Peruvian black mint (a herb that isn't actually a mint) is a good substitute but I've never been able to find it
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F**k mayonnaise in any form, I know it’s in all sorts of things but I can sniff it out in any meal. And I hate people who try and trick you into eating it. I would never put meat in a vegan meal and say “I tricked you”
Mine is the entirety of food shows and channels. The ingredients used in those shows is absolutely ludicrous. Especially the ones with kids in them. Not only can you not buy those ingredients where I live you could not afford them if you could. Just wastes time, money, and food on a bunch of s**t really. Pisses me off thinking about it. I need to go for a walk and cool off now.
The amount of privilege dripping from this list and comments is unbelievable.
Okay, i love cheese, but please Americans, it's okay to eat something that isn't smothered in melted cheese. I love you guys, but it's not healthy. Also not all Latinos were raised on tacos. Please don't ask me my opinion on what the best taco and burrito places are. That's not what we ate growing up. It's a norteño thing, not something we do in Brazil. Also Brazilian steakhouses. I think I ate red meat twice before moving to the US. This is a cuisine from a very specific part of Brazil. It would be like if I just assumed ALL Americans eat grits all the time. When i was growing up in Rio my base protein was beans. Sometimes with fish or maybe chicken. The red meat would be something like ox tail, not a slab of beef.
I would like to add charcuterie boards to this list. It's a meat and cheese tray for Pete's sake!!!!
To be fair, market forces steered towards this direction and we ourselves need to take the most blame. We let these trend chasing, attention seeking, limelight whoring disease fester for too long. We are all here shaking our heads but there are probably far more knuckleheads loving these pretentious, posh looking food that taste like play-doh fished out of the train station toilet. Because that's the cool thing right now.
The thing that I hate is fries getting served in tiny buckets, or things that look like miniature shopping carts.
One I didn't see in the list: Considering some foods to be better than others. Either stuff like "superfoods" that aren't a thing, or ingredients that are a little harder to get than others. I see so many "high end" chefs turn their noses up at stuff like canned products because for some reason that's considered below them. But then you challenge them to cook with those ingredients and, wonder of wonders, they can turn out delicious food. I'd also add demonizing certain foods for arbitrary reasons. Like GMOs. Literally the only difference between the food we call "GMO" and normal food is that the GMOs were created in a lab. The best example of this? Corn. Corn literally did not exist as it is now before humans started messing with it. Humans started to selectively breed it to become something we could make better use of, and now we have something that basically can not exist in the wild. It HAS to be cultivated by humans. "Non GMO Corn" is the biggest oxymoron I've ever seen.
Is it me or is BP being more and more judgemental posts - sure comment on people wasting food etc but what’s wrong with the occasional deep fried mar bar or whether if it makes them happy. If people more accepting maybe we’d have less suffering.
No, BP has always been on a bit of high horse of judgement.
Load More Replies... Some of these were right on. Others seem to be a matter of, "I really don't like (fill in the blank) so no one else should like it." Also, some of these things aren't trends. For example, people have been cooking with kale for over at least 2600 years.
I love kale. It's been used in the Dutch kitchen for centuries. The classic dish is mashed with potatoes and some smoked sausage on the side. Edit: I forgot the gravy :)
Load More Replies... Mine has to be fad diets. Honestly seems incredibly self obsessed to turn up to a meal with a list of stuff you won’t eat that’s longer than you are tall. It’s just a “look at me, I don’t eat carbs” thing. I have no problem whatsoever with people who have genuine allergies and conditions. You won’t find me eating peanuts on a plane or giving gluten to someone with coeliac disease. I just can’t stand stupid fads that just make life more difficult for people with genuine allergies because no one believes them when they say dairy will make them ill.
That has become such a big issue at restaurants. Everyone claims "I'm deathly allergic to X" just because they don't like a particular ingredient. Then when the person with the real allergies comes along everyone just rolls their eyes.
Load More Replies... I was beginning to think BP was starting to go a bit overboard but thought I was overreacting. Thanks for this comment. It seems like a flood of people who want to p**s and moan about someone or something they don't like. Too damn bad.
Some of the people on this article are misusing the term “binge eating”. Binge eating is disordered eating (an eating disorder) in which you eat excessive amounts of food because you’re experiencing anxiety, depression, stress, or really anything. This is not the same as just eating lots of food.
Cilantro. I'm one of those people who think it tastes like soap. I realize a lot of people like it and that's fine but it's in everything thing now and not always in an appropriate dish. What's next, cilantro milkshakes?
It's genetic. About 20% of people cannot abide coriander leaf. I've heard that Peruvian black mint (a herb that isn't actually a mint) is a good substitute but I've never been able to find it
Load More Replies... F**k mayonnaise in any form, I know it’s in all sorts of things but I can sniff it out in any meal. And I hate people who try and trick you into eating it. I would never put meat in a vegan meal and say “I tricked you”
Mine is the entirety of food shows and channels. The ingredients used in those shows is absolutely ludicrous. Especially the ones with kids in them. Not only can you not buy those ingredients where I live you could not afford them if you could. Just wastes time, money, and food on a bunch of s**t really. Pisses me off thinking about it. I need to go for a walk and cool off now.
The amount of privilege dripping from this list and comments is unbelievable.
Okay, i love cheese, but please Americans, it's okay to eat something that isn't smothered in melted cheese. I love you guys, but it's not healthy. Also not all Latinos were raised on tacos. Please don't ask me my opinion on what the best taco and burrito places are. That's not what we ate growing up. It's a norteño thing, not something we do in Brazil. Also Brazilian steakhouses. I think I ate red meat twice before moving to the US. This is a cuisine from a very specific part of Brazil. It would be like if I just assumed ALL Americans eat grits all the time. When i was growing up in Rio my base protein was beans. Sometimes with fish or maybe chicken. The red meat would be something like ox tail, not a slab of beef.
I would like to add charcuterie boards to this list. It's a meat and cheese tray for Pete's sake!!!!
To be fair, market forces steered towards this direction and we ourselves need to take the most blame. We let these trend chasing, attention seeking, limelight whoring disease fester for too long. We are all here shaking our heads but there are probably far more knuckleheads loving these pretentious, posh looking food that taste like play-doh fished out of the train station toilet. Because that's the cool thing right now.
The thing that I hate is fries getting served in tiny buckets, or things that look like miniature shopping carts.
One I didn't see in the list: Considering some foods to be better than others. Either stuff like "superfoods" that aren't a thing, or ingredients that are a little harder to get than others. I see so many "high end" chefs turn their noses up at stuff like canned products because for some reason that's considered below them. But then you challenge them to cook with those ingredients and, wonder of wonders, they can turn out delicious food. I'd also add demonizing certain foods for arbitrary reasons. Like GMOs. Literally the only difference between the food we call "GMO" and normal food is that the GMOs were created in a lab. The best example of this? Corn. Corn literally did not exist as it is now before humans started messing with it. Humans started to selectively breed it to become something we could make better use of, and now we have something that basically can not exist in the wild. It HAS to be cultivated by humans. "Non GMO Corn" is the biggest oxymoron I've ever seen.
