Trending “healthy” buzzwords

When you think about healthy eating, what do you think about exactly? Low calorie? Vegetarian? Diet? Organic? All-Natural? Fresh? Fat-free, sugar-free, gluten-free? There is no doubt that each of these can have an effect on your health, and with just a quick internet search you can find the reasons that each style of eating is good for you—or even why it may be bad for you. And with each personalized diet taking on extremely specific forms as customers become more aware of how food impacts their individual bodies, as they strive to follow the diet that they have deemed healthy for themselves, restaurants have been scrambling in an attempt to adjust their food offerings to placate all diners who enter their establishment. Recently, though, the jargon is changing as rapidly as you can say “buzzword.” In addition to the “healthy” low-fat, low-calorie, sugar-free crazes that lately have reached almost commonplace status, new descriptors continue to crop up at an amazing rate. And restaurants have worked hard to offer variety to these fads as well. According to Entrepreneur, for example, “from 2010 to 2012, gluten-free options increased from slightly over 100 items to more than 1000 items on full service menus.”

So what is a restaurant to do? How can they possibly keep up with this ever-changing stream of hypes that customers latch on to? How do they accommodate vegan dieters while at the same time catering to those who eat strictly paleo? The answer, it seems, is to offer a “choose as you go” style for diners, the option to pick items that fit neatly into their regimen of choice. QSR Magazine notes that “In the past year, customization has become even more important. People like that they can customize and create their own experience.” And a growing list of restaurants across the United States are buying in to this customization concept as they realize they style helps them to reach more and more patrons. The simple truth is that when customers know they can rely on a restaurant to supply them with a meal that meets both their dietary demands while also satisfying their flavor desires, they will likely frequent that establishment. Welcome to the seventh restaurant trend of 2015, where chains are striving to offer a variety of toppings for their main food offerings that allow for different food tastes, different healthy requirements.