5 food trends worth noticing

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock the past few years, you’ll know that clean-eating is firmly on the nation’s radar. Diets come and go, but there’s a few eating trends that have kept our attention for such good reasons. From spiralizing veggies to sipping on homemade juices, there’s no time like the present to seek a health upgrade. Here are our top five fave clean-eating trends.

1 Raw food

Is it time to ‘uncook’ your diet? You can’t get cleaner than a raw food diet, and this way of eating avoids heating foods above 40 degrees in order to keep health-giving enzymes and nutrients intact. If you’ve been thinking of joining the raw food movement, it’s worth stocking up on a few kitchen essentials like a good blender, a dehydrator and lots of glass jars for sprouting grains and soaking nuts and seeds.

2 Spiralizing

There’s an easy way to elevate a meal from good to great, and it involves a handy little gadget called a spiralizer. Used to create oodles of pasta-style ribbons on everything from cucumber to courgette, beetroot to butternut squash, adding spiralized veggies to your plate helps to bulk up a meal without resorting to bloat-inducing carbs and hugely increases the nutritional content.

3 Flexitarianism

Looking to cut down your meat consumption but not quite ready to go full-time meat-free? Then flexitarianism could be the way forward. This planet-friendly food trend, which involves eating a mainly plant-based diet with the occasional inclusion of meat, is not only a less expensive way of eating, but also a versatile way of upping your daily nutrient intake. Replace meat with plant-based protein sources such as chickpeas, beans, lentils and quinoa and pile in the veggies.

4 Juicing

Drink your way to good health! Juicing is going nowhere and it’s no wonder given that squeezing the goodness out of fruits and veggies provides a quick way to flood your body with loads of super nutrients. Keeping to a mainly veggie base will help keep the sugar content low, and adding in extras like ginger, maca and a sprinkle of cayenne pepper will give juices an exciting spin. Our favourite combo at the moment is spinach, parsley, cucumber, lemon, apple, ginger and mint.

5 Gluten-free

Sensitivity to gluten, (the key protein found in wheat, barley and rye products) is on the rise with most recent figures showing a 15 per cent increase in gluten-free product sales since 2013. For those with a genuine intolerance, symptoms include digestive discomfort, joint pain, headaches, fatigue and even depression. Good alternatives to gluten-containing grains include quinoa, millet, amaranth and brown rice, and if you buy branded gluten-free products, always read the packet labels and don’t assume gluten-free always equals healthier!