Dear eater, are your mushrooms dysfunctional? Do they just lie there on your plate, limply, underperforming? Then we have great news for you! Functional mushrooms are just one of Whole Food’s food trends for 2018. Yes, now your mushrooms can function again!

Well, not your mushrooms. Not the dull, familiar mushrooms you’re used to eating. They’re just edible, not functional – these days, merely functioning as food simply isn’t functioning hard enough. No, we mean mushrooms with names like “reishi, chaga, cordyceps, and lion’s mane”. Which are not a kind of massage, disease, surgical implement, or feline fringe, respectively, though we understand the confusion. Whole Foods explains,

Shoppers are buzzing about functional mushrooms, which are traditionally used to support wellness as an ingredient in dietary supplements. Now, varieties like reishi, chaga, cordyceps and lion’s mane star in products across categories. Bottled drinks, coffees, smoothies and teas are leading the way. The rich flavors also lend themselves to mushroom broths, while the earthy, creamy notes pair well with cocoa, chocolate or coffee flavors. Body care is hot on this mushroom trend too, so look for a new crop of soaps, hair care and more.

Yes. You are buzzing. Maybe you haven’t noticed the buzz yet, a sort of moo, like the sound of that cellphone you left on vibrate in your bag, but you, the shopper, want fungus in your coffee, candy, and smoothies this year. And in your hair and armpits. “Body care is hot on this mushroom trend” actually sounds a bit uncomfortable, but don’t let that keep you from buzzing. Just fish out the damn phone already, and answer it.

You know you want to.

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2018 is also the year when “Tacos Come Out of Their Shell”. Yes, your tacos are officially molting. You might think ethnic esculent ecdysis is nothing new – how long have taco salads been around? But you’d be wrong. This trend is fresh, because reasons.

This street-food star is no longer limited to a tortilla, or to savory recipes: Tacos are showing up for breakfast, and trendy restaurants across the country have dessert variations. Most of all, tacos are shedding their shell for new kinds of wrappers and fillings too – think seaweed wrappers with poke filling.

Poke is raw fish salad from Hawaii. Which is naturally why, when you wrap it in seaweed, it becomes a taco. We realize treating Pacific-island cuisine as if it were Mexican raises concerns of cultural appropriation, but calling a wrap a “wrap” is off trend now, no matter how well “wrap” describes, well, wrapping foods inside other foods.

The wrap trend had a good run – you had your pita wraps, your lettuce wraps, your tortilla wraps, your gift wraps, your ermine wraps… (To all those thinking the last is only an item of clothing we must ask, have you tried ermine meat yet? It’s gamy, but surprisingly versatile. And the inclusion of small bones adds calcium. It’s high up on the food chain, though, so it’s only a sometimes food. But we digress. Where were we?)

Ah. Tacos. Tacos that are nothing like tacos, but that won’t stop us. As our press release says, “Taco ‘bout options!”

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Continuing with the longstanding trends we’re regifting as fresh for 2018, we’re bringing you floral flavors (nothing like food or drink whose bouquet is… bouquet) and the “Feast from the Middle East”. The Whole Foods blog post goes on,

Things like hummus, pita and falafel were tasty entry points, but now consumers are ready to explore the deep traditions, regional nuances and classic ingredients of Middle Eastern cultures, with Persian, Israeli, Moroccan, Syrian and Lebanese influences rising to the top. Spices like harissa, cardamom and za’atar are hitting more menus, as well as dishes like shakshuka, grilled halloumi and lamb. Other trending Middle Eastern ingredients include pomegranate, eggplant, cucumber, parsley, mint, tahini, tomato jam and dried fruits.

Yes, after all this time, pomegranate is still trending. Truly, it is the superfruit, richly-seeded womb of inexhaustible trendiness.

Now, perhaps you’re a Midwestern paleface thinking to yourself, “Huh, I’ve used harissa paste for years,” or “I bought some za’atar at Trader Joes last spring.” Maybe. But ours will be Wholer. And Foodier. It’s what we do.

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We also do powders. We’ve always done powders, of course – green powders like spirulina, wheatgrass, and henna; brown powders like cocoa and flaxseed – but this year, we’re drawing your attention to a powder that’s bright and shiny yellow – and smells like cheap mustard: ground turmeric. The gods at Whole Foods go on,

Powders are serious power players. Because they’re so easy to incorporate, they’ve found their way into lattés, smoothies, nutrition bars, soups and baked goods.

“Also watch out for ground turmeric,” HealthLine comments on our hot powder trend. As well HealthLine should: turmeric is strongly staining, thanks to awesome power of curcumin, a beautiful red-gold pigment, and you definitely want staining power in your “lattés, smoothies, nutrition bars, soups and baked goods.”

Curcumin isn’t just a stain, though, it’s also a PAIN – a Pan-Assay INterference compound: it nonspecifically diddles with a buncha biological targets. Because curcumin is natural, the diddling is good. Because it is nonspecific, the diddling is powerful. Powerful, like the way you’ll smell when you’ve had lots of turmeric. Powerful, like the yellow stain on your teeth you’d get from eating turmeric straight out of the jar. With golden molars and a personal aroma which would gag a goat, you, too, could open your third chakra through the fierce yellow power that is the big T, becoming one of 2018’s pow(d)er players!

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Our most astonishing trend, though, for 2018 is undoubtedly vegan tuna.

If nose-to-tail is the cry of the ethical butcher, “Root-to-Stem” is the new rallying cry for the vegan. And in 2018, “High-Tech Goes Plant-Forward”. So we’re featuring plant-based proteins from Beyond Meat, a lab headquartered in California (where else?) which does some phenomenal science-y stuff to vegetal hemoglobin from soy root in order to make vegan burgers bleed tasty, iron-rich juices. But even that impressive wizardry cannot compare to the elegance of this high-tech vegan sushi:

In order to simulate the finest sushi-grade raw tuna, our “Ocean Hugger” suppliers take a tomato, skin it, and scoop out the insides. They then take this hollow shell, cut it into wedges, placing each wedge on a little brick of sushi rice. And there you have it: vegan tuna.

Simplicity itself. With all the translucent ruddiness of a premium tuna, who could ask for anything more? It’s technical genius!

Equipped with the most advanced food science, we have successfully deconstructed tuna into sliced tomatoes. We can’t think of a better summary of the sheer freshness of our 2018 trends. Dig in and bon apetit!