Top five food trends for 2008

It's that trend-obsessed time of year when everyone's looking back at the past year and forward to chart the likely trends of the next. Here are some picks for the five food trends that you'll be hearing the most about in 2008:

Probiotics

The functional-food trend will probably continue to run rampant, with producers adding all kinds of nostrums to all kinds of products and touting them as formulations for the brain or for the heart, for older women or for the overstressed. But expect to hear the most about probiotics - beneficial bacteria. It's not just yogurt anymore; bacteria-enriched products are showing up all over the supermarket, from cereal to baby food to fizzy kombucha fermented-tea drinks. Expect, too, to see more "prebiotics" - foods that provide nourishment for the good-guy bugs in your digestive system.

Backlash against bottled water

Once so chic, bottled water is becoming, as one US newspaper put it, "the environmentally incorrect Humvee of beverages." It's under attack for its effects on the environment, from its depletion of water sources to its carbon footprint to the problem of all those discarded plastic bottles. Plus the fact that it costs more than petrol, while tap water, which is held to more rigorous contamination standards than bottled, is basically free.

Chemical-free food

Food producers are beginning to feel pressure to remove the additives - preservatives, stabilisers, colouring; all those chemicals and such that you can't pronounce - from their cans and packages. "In 2008," says market researcher Mintel, "we will see more products with ingredient labels that read like a home recipe rather than a chemist's shopping list."

Fair trade

With organic food now solidly ensconced in the mainstream, look for fair-trade products to become the next big focus of conscience-driven consumers. The movement seeks fair wages and treatment for workers in developing countries.

Fancy salt

While health activists press for lower-sodium processed foods, upscale "designer" salts are going mainstream. Black, pink, purple; flavoured with aromatics; from the Himalayas or Peru - fancy salts are moving from specialty stores to supermarkets.