I get a kick out of trying to figure out what the next big health trend will be.  It amazes me how these trends just seem to explode overnight – it’s the epitome of viral marketing at its finest. 

The health kicks I’m talking about are the parts of our diet we need to watch.  These trends could end up lasting a few years, but it takes no time at all for all major products to adapt their marketing around these fads.  Don’t get me wrong, most of these trends accomplish one very important goal – they make us pay attention to what we eat. And when trends like this catch on, we get the benefit of healthy options to choose from.  They also tend to stick around even when the buzz dies down.

In today’s digital age, there are also online resources to help you reach your goals Calorie Counter at MyFoodDiary.com. So in essence, we really do have a lot of support to maintain a healthy lifestyle.

Let’s take a look at some of the past trends:

1980’s – Calories

Counting calories was the name of the game.  This is when we really started to pay attention to the amount of calories in food and how much exercise we needed to do to burn them.

1990’s – Fat

This decade we learned that burning calories may be important, but burning fat was critical to get that ripped body you desire.  We learned that your body doesn’t start to burn fat until you’re already exercising for 15-20 minutes. And now we start to see all the delicious “fat-free” food items come out – most with a laundry list of artificial ingredients we’ve never heard of.  Or that we can even pronounce for that matter.

2000’s – Carbs

It’s OK to eat a 64 oz. steak, just skip the potatoes. Now we learn of diets like “Atkins” or “Southbeach” that are big on protein and low on carbs. We also get educated and learn new terms like “net carbs”.

2010’s – ???

So what is your best guess for our next trend? Are we going to focus on cholesterol? Or maybe low sodium diets will be the wave to help us kick our salt habit. Maybe it’s finally time for us to stop the sugar binge and rescue our kids from childhood obesity. I’m on the edge of my seat with anticipation.