Millennial Food Trends We Remember (And Some We'd Like to Forget)
Heads up: this isn’t our usual post. This is one part vent sesh, one part reminiscing, and one part poking fun at trends and fads. But there is a unifying theme throughout (aka a thesis statement, you’re welcome Mrs. Ernst): the food we eat — and how we cook it — has always been shaped by whatever health panic, diet craze, or marketing campaign was loudest at the time.
Hopefully at least one of these sends you straight to the comments to yell at us about something we missed.
The Food Pyramid
Let’s take a walk back to 1999 when we (Brittany & Trevor) were in Grade 1. At some point we would have been exposed to Canada’s version of The Food Pyramid. Which we called the Food Guide to Healthy Eating. The version we were exposed to in elementary school was the 1992 revision, so, you know, it was dated even then.
Look at that 90s design sensibility. Look at the…wait.
5-12 servings of grain products per day? 5-10 servings of vegetables and fruits per day? Only 2-3 servings of meat and meat alternatives? What?
It’s interesting to see how the 2007 revision changed a few things. We imagine that a lot of this guidance was probably less guided by actual science and more so by special interest lobbying groups like the Dairy and Grain Commission.
Milk Memories (Sponsored by Big Milk™)
Remember the mooing milk? How could you forget! We never won and don’t know anyone who did. If you did, tell us what you won in the comments below.
In Canada when we were growing up the dairy farmers also pushed a big “Got Milk?” campaign. If you don’t drink your milk you won’t get strong bones. You don’t want that, do you? Drink your milk, kids!
Yogurt in tubes also became a thing in the late 1990s. Apparently Yop, which we also remember fondly, was not a product of the 90s but actually 1974. However, the mid-2000s is when this gem of a commercial aired:
Did your school have a milk rewards program where you’d get points for every milk product you ate at lunch? So if you have milk, cheese string, and yogurt you got 3 points! There was a chart and you’d get different rewards after hitting different milestones, like the coveted cow eraser. (We think the program was called Club Moo. Does that sound right? Brittany cannot find any photo evidence that this existed…)
Salt vs Mrs. Dash
So, low sodium was a trend. This study is US-focused, but we remember the same messaging as two Canadian kids. Salt = bad. You gotta watch your sodium! Remove the salt shaker from the table! But you know what makes food taste good? Salt.
Mrs. Dash became more popular. Their tagline was: "A Garden of Flavor, Instead of Salt". 🙄
Wait. It’s just “Dash” now? No Mrs? Is this a Mandela effect? Are we being Mandela effected rn?
Maybe some of you can relate, but many parents took the marketing campaign as “don’t salt your food” instead of “hey don’t eat all that processed shit with high sodium”.
Popcorn Lung
Trevor doesn’t remember this, but Brittany does because her sister ate a lot of microwaved popcorn as a snack growing up.
Fact: popcorn is delicious. 🍿
Not so fun fact: popcorn lung was linked to diacetyl in the early 2000s when workers in a microwave popcorn factory got sick by breathing in the chemical. Diacetyl was used in microwave popcorn throughout the 1990s and early 2000s but stopped being used around 2007.
Brittany remembers people being like “yoU'Re goING tO get POPcorn lUNg IF YOu EaT PopcORn.” (There was probably no risk as a kid… unless you huffed your popcorn bag after opening it.)
What the naysayers thought happens.
Margarine vs Butter
When we were young, there was a BIG to-do about saturated fats. As a result, all the butter in our houses was replaced with margarine, basically overnight. Toast and butter? Nah. Toast and margarine. Baking cookies? Better throw some margarine in there. Trevor distinctly remembers his mom talking about how butter is bad for your health and so everything would be pretty much exclusively margarine from now on.
And then, just as quickly as it came, a new study, or report, or Dr. Oz episode came out, and now butter wasn’t the actual literal devil. As long as you consumed it in moderation (check out our post about food myths and misconceptions) you’d be fine.
So then margarine was out, and butter was back in. Thank god.
(But also, fuck Dr. Oz. And while we’re at it, fuck Dr. Phil, too.)
On the other hand, Dr. Oz is the actual, literal devil.
Weightwatchers & Atkins Diets
There’s always some new fad diet: paleo, raw food, vertical, etc. When we were youngins, Weightwatchers and the Atkins diet were HUGE. They were simple and marketable, and for the young, busy, middle class people of the late 90s and early 2000s this was a godsend.
Weightwatchers branded products hit the shelves and Dr. Atkins New Diet Revolution was sold out in Chapters and Barnes & Noble.
Do they work? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
They’re basically just a way to reduce calories. So yes they can work, but they’re not anything magic.
Being skinny was in when we were kids. This caused a lot all teens to have body issues. Fuck diet culture.
Overcooking The Shit Outta Meat
Our parents loved to do this, but it wasn’t until we got older that we realized that meat wasn’t supposed to be dry and tough. All of those poor pork chops, chicken breasts, and steaks.🥲 No pink was allowed in our households. Why was cooking meat well-done a trend during our childhood? Probably because our parents loved us and didn’t want us to die (see: safety concerns). But now we know better and have instant-read thermometers. We’ll never go back.
Fake Healthy Things
Remember Vitamin Water? It’s still a thing. But when it first came out it was like “WOWOW LOOK AT THIS SUPER HEALTHY DRINK”. Little did us kids know that it was a drink made by the Coca Cola Company — and there’s 27g of sugar in them. BUT THERE’S VITAMINS, SO IT’S HEALTHY OKAY?
Similarly, Gatorade and Powerade. It’s just salted sugar water folks. BUT ATHLETES DRINK IT. Yeah because they’re actually doing hard work and losing electrolytes. You’re no-lifing CS:GO with a plate of dino nuggets. Not really the same thing.
Michael Jordan sweating out Gatorade while playing basketball WAS a pretty good ad campaign though.
Also, Subway was huge. There was a Subway across the street from our high school and so many kids would get their lunch from there. Now, don’t get us wrong, Subway isn’t the unhealthiest fast food. But their bread has so much sugar in it that the Irish Supreme Court ruled that Subway’s buns were too sugary to meet the legal definition of bread. 🫢
You uh, you ever wanted to eat an entire loaf of legally-not-bread as part of your meal? Subway. Eat fresh.
Lastly, detoxes. These seem to pop up again and again but won’t seem to DIE. YOUR KIDNEYS AND LIVER DETOX YOUR BODY. IF YOU NEED ANOTHER SOURCE OF DETOX, YOU NEED SERIOUS MEDICAL INTERVENTION.
Current Trends & Our Predictions
PROTEIN IN ALL THE THINGS. Everything these days needs to be enriched with protein. That’s a current trend that we wouldn’t mind seeing disappear soon. Not everything needs to have protein added to it.
Colon cancer. It’s all r/Millenials can talk about these days. Which is valid. It’s on the rise as the leading cancer diagnosed in people under 50. Get your colon checked if you have a family history or if there is blood in your stool, fr fr. (One of Trevor’s family members was diagnosed with colo-rectal cancer several years ago. Take your shit seriously, pun intended.)
“If you get Colon Cancer, you gotta get your bum hole sewn up.”
As a result, we expect there to be a huge uptick in fibre enriched foods to help curb the rising cases of colorectal cancer.
Bonus Content: CDs in Cereal Boxes
Yes. There was a time when cereal boxes came with CDs. You could get whole ass computer games when you bought a box of Cheerios. That’s how some of us first got our hands on the classics like Roller Coaster Tycoon. (Also Freddie Fish, Pajama Sam, Game of Life, Clue, and so much more.)
Us vibing as we played cereal box video games on the Windows 98 family computer:
(>'-')> <('-'<) ^(' - ')^ <('-'<) (>'-')>
With 1990s promotions comes 1990s image resolution.
Bonus Bonus Content: Products We Wish They’d Bring Back
Brittany worked at the freezer aisle at Sobeys and stocked Bagel-ful. She regularly bought and ate them on her lunch break. RIP Bagel-fuls.
The Wild Berry flavour poptarts are Trevor’s favourite Pop Tart flavour of all time, ever. Sadly, they don’t exist in Canada anymore. He would just import a box now for the nostalgia hit, but the cost to import a box or two is the same as his rent for a month.
We also asked our friends and, in no particular order, they remember:
Kid Cuisine and Zap’ems
Lunchables
Scooby Snacks
Dunkaroos
Bagel Bites
Green & purple ketchup (🤮)
Pokemon Alphagetti
Sugary breakfast cereals like Trix
Gourmet doughnuts
Potato chips in a box (Shoutout Old Dutch)
The big Christmas popcorn tin (with buttered, cheddar, and caramel popcorn)
PIZZA HUT BUFFET
(So essentially, they remember the snacks.)