Looking back at the decade in food

Perhaps you have seen the ’10 year challenge’ popping up in your social media feeds: a photo of someone in 2009 paired next to one from 2019. Another decade has gone by, and humans love to take stock and reflect at the major tickmark on the graph of years. What people do for themselves, Tim Hayward of The Guardian is doing for food – it recently published an article that lays out the major changes in food culture in the past decade.

While the article focuses on the UK, the shifts it describes transcend national borders. One of the most noticeable trends is the diminishment of celebrity chefs. Jamie Oliver’s troubled restaurant chain, falling ratings for television series hosted by chefs, and the dearth of new faces ascending to star status show us that we no longer seem content to elevate food professionals onto ‘rock star’ pedestals. The ‘me too’ movement played a role in this, although other forces weighed into this shift. There is one food professional demographic that is garnering more respect: the decade saw the rise of more female chefs, bloggers, hosts, and writers coming to the forefront. People like Samin Nosrat, Meera Sodha, and Anna Jones brought new perspectives to the world of food.

It is difficult to overstate the role of the internet and social media in changing food culture in the 2010s. ‘Instagram-worthy’ is now in the lexicon of food writing and social media ‘influencers’ can make or break a restaurant. Unless you are living under a rock, you cannot escape seeing luscious, vivid overhead shots of bowls of food. Hayward dives into even more trends in the article, including the rise of all things fermented, and why avocados are the darling food of the decade.

Photo of Avocado bowl with quinoa, kale and tahini lemon dressing from Australian Gourmet Traveller