Appetizers

Plant-forward food culture has yet another new faction to consider: Vegganism. That’s right: You can practice a vegan diet, but now you don’t have to forgo the egg on top. Veggans eschew animal products and dairy, as vegans do, but opt to enjoy the protein and nutritional versatility eggs offer. Check out the hundreds of eggciting veggan possibilities on Pinterest and Instagram.

If ever a “detox” method made sense, the up-and-coming trend of “souping” may be just the thing to watch. Soup cleanses follow on the heels of the juicing craze, which many nutrition professionals have criticized as an extreme practice that often delivers a sugar shot to the bloodstream without the fiber balance of whole fruit. Soup—with a base of vegetables, beans or legumes—delivers less sugar, more fiber and more complex carbohydrates than juice. Most major cities have virtual ordering and delivery as well as brick-and-mortar locations where you can load up on convenient bottles or jars of soup smoothies to go.

As long as we’re still on the soup course, it’s noteworthy that Paleo aficionados who are obsessed with bone broth as a magic health elixir can now get their fill of the stuff in convenient “K-cups,” the little plastic single-serving pods made famous by Keurig coffee machines. A 10-cup pack of chicken or beef bone broth will set you back about $20; vegetable broth runs about $15. The cost of the added garbage in our landfills? Too high a price for this convenience food and fad.

There’s a new furrow in those glorious deep-green kale leaves that are the obsession of so many eaters. Apparently our penchant for consuming the veggie steamed, sautéed, smoothied and as chips has put a noticeable dent in the kale seed supply, and a kale production slowdown or even shortage could be on the horizon. It has been reported that farmers who have not secured their kale seed supply lines may need to rethink crop plans and investigate emerging supergreens, like Swiss chard and seaweed, in case they can’t find (or afford) kale seeds.