Equinox’s 2019 Food Forecast for High Performers

What should you be eating in 2019 to stay ahead of the game? Equinox breaks down the food trends for 2019 and why you should incorporate them into your daily diet.

Cassava: Gluten-free flour of choice.
Cassava is a root vegetable that’s common in Latin American cuisine. Tapioca, often used to add texture to dishes, is a starch extracted from cassava. “We’ll see more of cassava and tapioca,” predicts Katzie Guy-Hamilton, Equinox’s New York City-based director of food and beverage. Since cassava is more allergen-friendly than nut flour, she explains, it will be a popular ingredient in breads, snacks, and other baked goods.
  
Small Batch
Small-batch foods like granola, meat jerky, and bean-to-bar chocolates will continue to be pervasive, and the producers will take even more opportunity to celebrate origins, slowed-down artisanal processes, and innovative and unexpected flavor combinations. 

Good-for-you convenience foods will explode.
Combining ‘fast food’ and ‘healthy’ via at home delivery service or pre-prepared meals and ingredients.  Haven's Kitchenhas launched a line of prepared products using real food ingredients.  

Low-emission protein sources will be embraced.
Bethany Snodgrass, New York City-based operations manager at the Equinox Fitness Training Institute, expects a shift toward more sustainable food options—proteins like nuts, bugs (such as crickets), seeds, and beans—that require lower emissions to produce. 

Designer DNA diets will become more common.
More and more companies are emerging to assess one’s DNA and to offer an additional service of developing a personalized dietary plan tailored to the DNA results,” says Deanna Minich, Ph.D., Seattle–based Equinox Health Advisory Board member and author of The Rainbow Diet. “Preliminary research suggests that personalized diets may fare better when it comes to compliance and outcomes. It may take the guesswork out of eating for some.”
 
Tea will take over.
“Tea and its medicinal quality will continue to stake claim with both function and ceremony,” anticipates Guy-Hamilton. “Learning to harness chamomile, mint, fennel, pollen, rose, roots, and oregano and delivering it in a soothing product, which is tea, is not only calorie-friendly, it is a self-care habit that can be built into an energizing morning, stabilizing afternoon, or evening wind-down routine”
 
Food companies will respond to consumer awareness. 
“Consumers are becoming increasingly educated about food, ingredients, and farming practices, and what that means for their bodies,” says Brandon Marcello, Ph.D, a high-performance strategist in Sarasota, Florida, and member of Equinox’s Health Advisory Board. “As a result, there will be a lot of pressure on food companies to shift their business practices toward making better-quality food.

Read the full article by Lisa Fields here.