Top Healthy Food Trends to Expect in 2024

Every year has its food trends. One year, tinned fish was all the rage. This past year, we had TikTok-influenced trends like “girl dinner,” interesting ways to use cottage cheese and butter candles. So what healthy food trends can you expect in 2024? Get ahead of the curve and be in the know, with these six, expert-predicted healthy food forecasts.

Woman's hands holding a white bowl filled with cottage cheese and scooping out some with a spoon. — *AtlasStudio/Shutterstock*

1. High Protein Favorites Continue to See the Love

Some of the past few years’ food trends have followed a consistent pattern. When it comes to more cottage cheese making its way into recipes, and more tinned fish added to grocery carts, both point to a growing interest in high-protein foods.

According to Instacart’s 2024 shopping forecast, shoppers are going to continue to prioritize high-protein foods in their grocery carts and their diets in the year ahead. According to an Instacart poll, nearly 40% of survey respondents said they plan to adopt a higher-protein diet in 2024, and, as if to back that up, Instacart noted significant growth in orders placed for canned mackerel, meat jerky (not just beef), protein drinks, canned sardines, cottage cheese, and Greek and Icelandic yogurt.

2. More Mushrooms

An assortment of functional mushrooms arranged near a cup of mushroom coffee. — *Photo credit: Zu Kamilov/Shutterstock*

Instacart also predicts that mushrooms are going to be big in 2024, with growing interest from shoppers. Near 60% of survey respondents told the brand they want to eat more mushrooms or take mushroom supplements in the future, for the fungi’s immunity-boosting and brain function-boosting properties.

In 2023, Instacart saw orders for lions mane mushrooms jump by nearly 600%, orders for pink oyster mushrooms jump by nearly 400%, orders for hedgehog mushrooms jump by over 300% and orders for reishi mushrooms jump by nearly 300%.

Mangosteen fruit from Southern Thailand. — *chuchiko17/Shutterstock*

3. Unusual and Colorful Veggies and Fruits

Whether it’s just the colorful appeal or savvy shoppers are thinking about their food’s Instagram appeal, Instacart is seeing growing interest in vibrant fruits and veggies that you might not see at your local farmers’ markets. Current favorites include mangosteen, Mayan melons, purple broccoli, and purple asparagus.

An image of a woman making a smoothie using a blender. — *Luna Vandoorne/Shutterstock*

4. Trending Smoothies

Instacart isn’t the only brand monitoring and predicting upcoming food trends, though. Yelp did the same and while its predictions are a little more decadent (think inventive martinis and caviar bumps), there are still some indicators of newly popular and growing-in-popularity health foods.

For example, thanks to the growing media interest that Erewhon has received, Yelp anticipates that more consumers will continue to seek out colorful, social media-sharing-worthy smoothies.

Coffee cup and coffee beans on table. — *portumen/Shutterstock*

5. Less Coffee

But while shoppers and home cooks may be consuming more of all of the above, they’re cutting back in other ways. While the sober-curious trend has been a movement for a while, one expert told TODAY that, now, the sober movement is shifting to include not just alcohol, but caffeine, too. Is 2024 the year you finally give up your daily cup of joe for something a little healthier?

Blooming buckwheat field with white flowers. — *A blooming field of buckwheat | Anna-Nas/Shutterstock*

6. A Gluten-Free Super Food

Lastly, when Whole Foods analyzed shopper habits and predicted what we could anticipate in 2024, the brand pointed out one growing-in-popularity superfood that hasn’t received as much love as, say, blueberries or acai. Enter, buckwheat. This sustainable crop is gluten-free and comes with lots of benefits, like protein and fiber, and it can be found in a range of foods, from cooking and baking mixes to noodles to granola.