"It's Pure Ostentatiousness Without Improving Any Flavor": People Are Sharing The Popular Food Trends That Should Have Already Died Yesterday

Like all things in life, cooking trends come and go. Just look at the ever-popular TV dinners of the 1950s, gelatin-encased salads of the '60s, or even the glory days of kale in the 2000s.

So redditor u/AndShesNotEvenPretty asked, "What cooking/food trends will seem revolting in the future?" Here's what people said.

1."Food decorated in gold. I don’t judge people for fine dining or enjoying expensive meals, but that gold leafing shit is over the line for me. It's pure ostentatiousness without even pretending that it improves the taste of food."

2."Mason jar salads. Sure, they look pretty, but it's awful to try to eat a salad out of a jar. If you dump it into a bowl, you then have two dirty dishes. It just makes a whole lot more sense to prep and eat your salad in a food storage container."

3."Rainbow anything from rainbow bagels and pasta to grilled cheese. Yeah, it looks cool, but it doesn't taste like anything. The only purpose of rainbow food is that it’s visually appealing."

4."Keurig coffee and this whole idea of passing boiling water through plastic cups for a cup of burnt, under-extracted coffee. 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."

5."Any food containing charcoal — charcoal burger buns, ice cream, etc. Last I checked, I don’t recall charcoal being a part of the food pyramid."

6."Deconstructed food. I do not give a shit 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."

7."Pumpkin-flavored everything. I see pumpkin-flavored pretzels, applesauce, pancakes, hand soap, cereal, smoothies, even DOG TREATS. We’ve got to set some boundaries here."

8."Those over-the-top milkshakes that have three more desserts stacked on top — a donut, a cookie, chocolate-covered pretzels — and are spilling all over the place."

9."Bacon on top of everything. Sure, bacon is good and it's a nice breakfast side, but it doesn’t need to be in every dish. I can’t have a burger or mac and cheese without it getting invaded. Also, it’s practically forbidden to say that you don’t like bacon without people calling you a monster."

10."Sushi everything. You see sushi pizza; sushi burritos; sushi burgers. Just leave sushi alone in its minimalist form. It's perfect the way it is!!"

11."Those 'stunt burgers' that are stacked so damn high with toppings you can’t even eat them properly. Plus, the combination of so many ingredients probably doesn't even taste that good."

12."Foam. It's disgusting, and unfortunately it appears on dishes in so many high-end restaurants. It ends up looking like something that someone spit onto a plate. It's horrifying."

13."Bloody Marys piled high with extra ingredients like bacon, shrimp, a lobster claw, and all kinds of pickled and spicy things."

14."The whole idea of Instagram food porn. Everything is so over the top so it looks great on social media, but more often than not it's just a mess. It's all about how food looks, but not how it tastes. Adding 25 toppings to an ice cream cone doesn't actually make the ice cream better. It's all for show."

15."Overnight oats. They're awful — just a soggy, waterlogged waste of perfectly good oats that could’ve been used to make delicious porridge, granola, or cookies."

16."Foods made with Hot Cheetos: Hot Cheeto burritos, fries, corn dogs, mozzarella sticks, etc. I don't get it. I love me some Hot Cheetos, but they aren't an ingredient with which anyone should be cooking."

17."Instant Pot and Crock Pot recipes that call for cream cheese as a main ingredient. Cream cheese will be the Jell-O of the early 21st century, just wait and see."

18."Craft or homemade ketchup. I really hate when I order fries at a restaurant and they arrive with some fancy, homemade ketchup creation. Call me simple, but I just want some good old-fashioned Heinz."

19."Meal delivery services. It seems like a step in the wrong direction in terms of wasteful packaging. Every ingredient is individually wrapped in so much excess plastic and other materials."

20."IPA beers. Why is 80% of all craft beer IPAs?! Over-hoppy beer hides the flaws that are easily evident in well-balanced beer. Most craft beer these days is straight-up bad."

21."The whole obsession around 'secret menu' food items. As a former barista, customers always expected me to know every single “secret menu” item that some random person on the internet came up with. No thank you."

22."Cauliflower everything from rice and pizza crust to fried cauliflower 'wings.' Why can’t cauliflower be happy with what it is? It’s a perfectly delicious vegetable, and I fear we’re giving it a complex."

23."Charcuterie everything. At this point, anything thrown onto a cheese board in a fancy manner is called charcuterie. People put pancakes, syrup, and fruit on a board and call it 'breakfast charcuterie.' Let's go back to the days when charcuterie meant one or two nice cheeses and herbed olive oil with bread or crackers."

24."Truffle overkill, especially truffle-infused olive oils. Why do we need it on everything? I don’t want my mac 'n' cheese to taste like dirt."

25."Food blogs. It's not 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 full anecdote or someone's life story just to get to the ingredient list."

26."Fondant. Cakes are supposed to taste good first and look good second, not look beautiful and taste awful."

27."Calling stock 'bone broth.' It just drives up the price. You want to charge me $6 for a small carton of bone broth? I can make a huge batch of the same stuff at home for the same price."

What's a food trend you wish everyone would just be done with? Tell us in the comments!

Note: Responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.