Turmeric is a hangover cure in Japan. (Photo: DANIEL LEUSSNIK/AFP/Getty Images)
What do you know about turmeric? For starters, it’s yellow, it’s a spice, and it shows up a lot in Asian cooking.
According to Google GOOGL -1.13%, it’s also the number one rising star among food trends over the past two years.
This spring, Think With Google, the company’s insight group, published a report called “2016 Food Trends.” It’s an analysis of where people are headed culinary wise, according to the volume of searches on food related topics.
Google pulled food search data from January 2014 through February 2016, and it divided the data into six categories.
They are sustained risers and decliners (foods that have been rising and falling in popularity for some time); seasonal risers and decliners (foods that are popular and fade according to the seasons) and what most interested me, rising stars and falling stars.
The rising stars, according to Google, are turmeric; jackfruit; cauliflower rice; sourdough bread; funfetti, which Pillsbury offers in multiple versions, and vegan doughnuts.
Turmeric is especially growing swiftly: Google says searches for it increased 56 percent in from November, 2015 through January, 2016.
I can attest especially to the growing popularity of cauliflower rice, or cauliflower that has been riced to look like, well, rice. I’ve spotted it for sale atWegman’s, the supermarket chain on the East coast and Mid-Atlantic, and atTrader Joe's , which has it both frozen and fresh.
