When it comes to snacking, you can't get much trendier than frozen yogurt. In my small hometown alone, which has too few people to support any restaurant for over a year, there are two frozen yogurt shops. These shops follow the typical fro-yo model: they are brightly decorated, always playing upbeat music, and feature unique chairs because apparently hip people cannot cope with ordinary seating options.
I'm a big fro-yo fan, mainly because I'm a big fan of pretty much all dessert. It's fairly obvious why frozen yogurt is such a big deal. Its low-calorie, low-fat, and you can easily trick yourself into thinking you're eating real ice cream. Getting fro-yo gives us all the fun of going out for ice cream with none of the guilt. Plus, no fro-yo shop can call itself a fro-yo shop unless it features an overwhelming topping bar that gives ample opportunity for expressing your creativity and getting a drool-worthy Instagram picture. Topping bars are great because they let you put blackberries and gummy bears on the same dessert (and the healthiness of the fruit totally cancels out the candy, by the way) and nobody will judge you for it. Fro-yo stores are all about options and they always let you do you.
Fro-yo is a food trend that I whole-heartedly support. But there are other trends in eating that really make me question the sanity of hipsters. Kale is one of these trends. Allegedly one of the healthiest foods out there, kale is also repulsive. It does not taste good at all. People have to realize this. There are plenty of vegetables out there that are probably just as healthy and significantly less sickening. So, why kale? Why doesn't the whole world swear by broccoli or cabbage or cucumbers or literally any other vegetable? The only possible explanation I can come up with is that somebody with a significant following on Twitter lost a ton of weight while eating a ton of kale, told some people about it, and word got out that kale is the miracle food. Whoever did this owes the world an apology.
Kale is not the only food trend I don't understand. While I love chopped salad, why is it exponentially more popular than regular salad? How does anybody find the chutzpah to maintain a juice cleanse? Chipotle burritos are good, but do they really deserve the cult-like appreciation they get? Why exactly do so many people blame gluten for all their problems? Who gave Starbucks permission to make people use fake words to order coffee?
I like to indulge in trendy foods as much as the next person, but I have never sworn by one the way foodies with pimped-out food blogs do. This is partly because a lot of food trends are too unappealing to be worthy of commitment (looking at you, kale). But, I also get bored too easily to swear by any one eating habit. For instance, in September, I decided to be a vegetarian. I was having fun with it for a while, but about a month after I said sayonara to meat I went out for Thai food. The woman at the table next to me was eating the most beautiful chicken Pad Thai I had ever seen, and that was the end of my vegetarianism. I think this is the fate of every food trend there is: they will be fun for a while, but something seemingly better will always come along. So, let's all continue to overeat fro-yo while we still can.
