Trends & Artefacts: luteal uglies edition
In this week’s edition of Trends & Artefacts, we round up the snackable trends, stats and insights from around the world, including:
Croissants Get Stuffed With Ice Cream
Peanut Butter Invades Every Menu Category
Japanese Milk Buns Surge At Waitrose
Explainer: luteal uglies
Oddbox & Fruits of the Forage Turn Surplus Veg Into Chutney
Croissants Get Stuffed With Ice Cream
A viral trend is turning croissants into ice cream sandwiches, slicing off the top, hollowing a small pocket, and nestling in a chocolate-coated ice cream bar before pulling out the stick. The pastry's flaky layers hold up rather than turning soggy, catching just enough melt to feel custardy against the chocolate crunch. When a good bakery croissant becomes the star ingredient rather than the side, what does that say about how far people will stretch a familiar staple?
Peanut Butter Invades Every Menu Category
Chains from Philz Coffee to Dunkin' and Culver's are stuffing peanut butter into cold brews, burgers, wings and cocktails, with Technomic data showing peanut butter mentions up 8.4% year-on-year in frozen beverages alone. The appeal blends nostalgia with the protein content consumers already chase, letting a comfort ingredient slide into savoury territory it never used to touch. When one flavour keeps colonising new categories this fast, is it a trend or just menu engineers chasing the same data point?
Japanese Milk Buns Surge At Waitrose
Milk bun sales at Waitrose have jumped 27% in the past month, with online searches for "Japanese milk buns" up a striking 617%. Waitrose credits London's smash burger scene and East Asian bakeries for pushing the fluffy, "bounce-back" bread from social media feeds into home kitchens, where shoppers now want that restaurant texture without the trip. When a bread's appeal comes down to its bounce, how much of food trending now is really about texture over taste?
Explainer: luteal uglies
Social media has coined "luteal uglies" to describe feeling less confident or attractive during the pre-period phase, a term that's moved from group chats into mainstream health coverage. Doctors say it's not a diagnosis but reflects real hormonal shifts, though women with conditions like PMDD and PMOS say the label still doesn't translate into better clinical support. When a cycle phase gets a viral name before it gets proper research funding, whose experience is actually being served? #
Oddbox & Fruits of the Forage Turn Surplus Veg Into Chutney
Oddbox and Fruits of the Forage have rescued over 350kg of surplus and foraged British produce, from carrots hit by gluts to fruit from neglected orchards, and turned it into a four-jar chutney range blended in Cheshire. Foraged ingredients like hogweed and wild garlic sit alongside rescued tomatoes and rhubarb, giving wonky crops a shelf life and growers a market they wouldn't otherwise have. If surplus produce can taste this considered, why does "wonky" still read as a discount label rather than a quality one?
