Whole Foods Predicts 2020 Food Trends

Whole Foods Market has made its fifth annual trends predictions, highlighting the most anticipated and innovative changes that will be seen in the food of grocery aisles in 2020. 

More than 50 retailer team members, including local foragers, regional and global buyers, and culinary experts, compiled the report based on decades of experience and expertise in product sourcing, studying consumer preferences, and participating in food and wellness industry exhibitions worldwide.

This year's top 10 trends are:

1. Regenerative Agriculture: We'll see farming and grazing practices that restore degraded soil, improve biodiversity and increase carbon capture to create long-lasting environmental benefits such as positively impacting climate change.
2. Flour Power: 2020 will bring more interesting fruit and vegetable flours (like banana!) into home pantries, with products like cauliflower flour in bulk and baking aisles, tigernut flour in chips and snack foods, and seed flour blends. 
3. Foods from West Africa: Brands are looking to West Africa for its superfoods like moringa and tamarind, and lesser-known cereal grains sorghum, fonio, teff and millet. 
4. Out-of-the-Box, Into-the-Fridge Snacking: The keyword is “fresh” in this new generation of grabbing and going — gone are the days when the only options were granola bars and mini pretzel bags. Now there are hard-boiled eggs with savory toppings, pickled vegetables, drinkable soups, and mini dips and dippers of all kinds. 
5. Plant-Based, Beyond Soy: Some of the products touting “no soy” in the next year will be replacing it instead with innovative blends (like grains and mung beans) to mimic the creamy textures of yogurts and other dairy products. In the supplement aisle, brands are swapping soy for mung bean, hempseed, pumpkin, avocado, watermelon seed and golden chlorella.
6. Everything Butters and Spreads: Think seed butters beyond tahini – like watermelon seed butter – and seasonal products like pumpkin butter year-round. Nut butters beyond cashew, almond and peanut (hello, macadamia), and even chickpea butters (no, it’s not a new name for hummus). 
7. Rethinking the Kids’ Menu: Many parents are introducing their kids to more adventurous foods, with great results and better-for-you ingredients.
8. Not-So-Simple Sugars: Syrupy reductions from fruit sources, sweet syrups made from starches like sorghum and sweet potato, and Swerve, a cup-for-cup zero-calorie non-glycemic replacement for sugar, are all gaining prominence. 
9. Meat-Plant Blends: Butchers and meat brands won’t be left out of the “plant-based” craze in 2020, but they’re not going vegetarian, instead adding plant-based ingredients to meat. 
10. Zero-Proof Drinks: Unique nonalcoholic options are popping up everywhere, many seeking to re-create classic cocktail flavors using distilling methods typically reserved for alcohol, creating an alternative to liquor meant to be used with a mixer rather than a drink on its own. 

Under its Austin, Texas-based Whole Foods Market banner, Seattle-based Amazon is No. 10 on PG’s 2019 Super 50 list of the top grocers in the United States.