Food trends come and go. Some stay longer than expected, and others come back a certain time every year. With their new project, The Rhythm of Food, Google News Lab and Truth & Beauty explore these patterns through twelve years of search trends.
As shown above, you get a circular timeline for each topic. Color represents the year, and distance from the center of the circle represents search volume. You can see the trend play out for each using a play button, or you can mouse over at the top to look at a specific year.
Fun stuff.
There are also a lot of thoughtful design touches that you might notice. A few off the top: annotation for the more trendy foods, notes for holidays or specific events that relate to the topic you view, and segments sized for area as you move from the center of the circle to the edges to compensate for visual attention.
Search and browse 195 food and drink topics. It looks like there’s a whole lot of peppermint and hot chocolate going on this time of year.
