People love getting permission to eat what they love, and so an array of sweetened superfoods is finding its way onto menus and into store shelves. That includes The Hummus & Pita Co.’s line of dessert hummus — heavily sweetened and with chocolate or cookie dough added (they introduced a pumpkin spice hummus shake this fall). It also includes gluten-free alfajores — a type of sandwich cookie — at Tanta, a Peruvian restaurant in Chicago that also sprinkles its chocolate mousse with toasted quinoa.

Hu Kitchen, a health-focused fast-casual restaurant in New York City (the “Hu” is pronounced like the first syllable in “human”) has an entire “Mashbar” where guests can assemble their own sweet not-terrible-for-you concoctions, or order curated ones, like the Taro Trouble No-Yo made with grain-free granola, taro pudding, seasonal berries (organic, of course), mango and organic puffed quinoa, or the Bonita, which has almond butter, grain-free granola, cashew cream and organic strawberries.

This is a trend with genuine legs as consumers continue to seek any excuse to indulge. If that means drizzling your ice cream with olive oil or adding chia seeds to your milkshakes, then so be it.

Dairy-free, nut-free, possibly gluten-free (depending on where the oats are processed), this milk substitute is drawing fans with its texture that’s creamier than most of its counterparts. It also has more protein than nut milks (but less than soy milk or actual milk) and more fiber than any of them. Oat milk is becoming more commonplace in coffeehouses, and it’s showing up on menus, too, like at Protein Bar, a chain of about 20 units based in Chicago, where the Big Date is a blend of dates, cocoa nibs, banana, vanilla whey protein and oat milk.

There are broader trends driving the oak milk craze: The Coca-Cola Co., citing Mintel data, said 36% of consumers said they would buy coffee with non-dairy milk, and 35% said they’d like coffee with added protein.

The trend will also be getting a boost next year when PepsiCo launches an oat beverage under the Quaker brand in January.

Cold brew coffee is here to stay, and will very likely become much more widespread in 2019, because many consumers like its smoothness, its hints of chocolate and its implicit sweetness, and manufacturers have figured out how to make a very consistent product and are delivering it in kegs or in concentrate to restaurants, bars and coffeehouses.

But some coffee aficionados are striking back, complaining that cold brew — made by soaking ground beans in cold water for 16 hours or more — doesn’t properly extract the more distinctive flavors of really good coffee, leaving the terroir behind in the beans. Add to that new machines that can quickly chill hot-brewed coffee to whatever temperature that operators like, and you have a convenient alternative that, cold brew detractors argue, lets coffee be served cold and quickly without diminished quality.

The anti-cold brewers are building some momentum, putting forward arguments that hot-brewed coffee is better for you (one study showed it has more antioxidants than cold brew), so more hot-brewed cold coffees are likely to join the marketplace in 2019. Then, consumers will decide what they like best.

Maybe it was sour beer that drove craft beer lovers and producers over the edge — that made them say, “You know what? It might be nice to have a beer that I don’t have to think about in order to enjoy.” Maybe hop bombs and brews infected with bacteria aren’t the be all and end all of what’s available from fermented malted grain.

These days craft brewers are talking about clean, crisp lagers.

American consumers never actually strayed too far from lagers. Despite the rapid growth of craft beer in general and India pale ales in particular, craft beer’s share of the national beer market is only around 12.7% by volume and 23.3% in dollar terms, according to the Brewers Association, the trade body of independent craft brewers.

Now those independent brewers are increasingly turning to what is arguably the most difficult beer to brew well: Lagers don’t have many funky or floral hops to hide behind and can’t be sweetened up with extra malt. They have to be balanced and easy drinking. A growing number of craft brewers are trying their hands at it (some have been doing it for years), and consumers are likely to respond.

Lab-grown protein is set to explode in popularity through 2019. Economically viable lab-grown-meat production is still years away, but if meat grown from cells becomes the norm, we would see monumental improvements in animal rights and environmental concerns, a report by food and restaurant consulting firm Baum + Whiteman contends. Just Inc. is set to test a lab-based ground chicken product at an overseas KFC by the end of 2018, and Tyson Foods and Cargill are also heavily invested in the emerging industry.

Superfoods were just the beginning. Now, more consumers — not just athletes and hippies — want to know exactly what their food can do for them.

Whether that’s plumping up cells to fight Mother Nature’s march across our faces or giving us the vital energy needed to make it through a day in modern society, people are looking to food for not just medicine but also for answers and solutions for everything from glowing skin to mental clarity. According to Datassential, more than 300 new products feature nootropics (aka “smart drugs”).

In New York City, a fresh nut milk bar and café, Tulo House, is set to open in January 2019 with fresh, organic nut and oat milks “custom-zhushed” with collagen, CBD, adaptogenic mushrooms and more. Christie Lombardo, founder of Freshyfare, has created collagen kisses, chocolate in the shape of plump lips on a stick. Lombardo says she’s looking ahead to working with CBD in the coming year.

It seems like the Atkins diet sparked an entire movement of diet-based eating. From paleo to keto and all the other “diets” out there, consumers are looking for food products that fit their specific dining patterns. Keto (low carbs, upping fats) was big in 2018 and isn’t going anywhere in 2019, and consumers will seek out — and pay for — those items that market to this dining dynamic.

Another trend to keep an eye on is intermittent fasting. With this diet, it’s less about the types of food you are eating and more about the timing. As the name suggests, followers eat during a certain time frame and fast the rest of the day.

“How do you create products for consumers who aren’t consuming food?” asked SRG Culinary Director Elizabeth Moskow. She said that’s the challenge being presented to her by CPG companies looking to get behind this new consumer trend. One solution is to provide a complete meal replacement in one drink, à la Soylent, a company that provides complete meals in ready-to-drink and powder formats.

When it comes to regional flavors, don’t limit yourself to barbecue. Nashville hot chicken is seeing a spike on menus this year, and retailers are getting in on the game too.

Kroger, which named regional flavors to its five food trends list for 2019, has developed a Nashville hot chicken potato chip. Other regional flavors to keep an eye on include Southern Appalachian pimento cheese.

It’s no secret that fresh is where it’s at, and some traditional center store items are switching up their formulations to get into the fresh section. Among its 2019 food trends, Northeast online grocer FreshDirect pointed to this evolution in shelf-stable products from the traditionally highly processed into fresher examples.

Take Perfect Bar, a protein bar that is made “using real food and clean ingredients to create a bar so fresh it belongs in the fridge,” according to marketing for the company. There’s also a Romesco sauce, traditionally found in the pasta aisle, that is refrigerated and olive oil blended, pressed and shipped directly from Italy that finds itself in the refrigerated section of FreshDirect’s site.