This year has provided its fair share of culinary controversies, from unpopular recipe changes and new ingredients to unusual dishes and crazy prices. Here are the food stories that hit the headlines this year.

Documentaries such as What The Health and Cowspiracy have got everyone talking about veganism this year, with foods such as the Impossible Burger catering to an increasing number of people looking to give up meat. The Impossible Burger looks, smells and even bleeds just like a meaty patty and is made from natural ingredients like coconut oil and potatoes. It’s environmentally friendly and totally meat-free.

Chocolate is chocolate, right? Think again. This year, Swiss confectioner Barry Callebaut said it had created an entirely new type of chocolate: ruby. Said to be the first new natural colour for over 80 years, the pink-hued chocolate has been in development for 13 years, made from beans grown in the Ivory Coast, Ecuador and Brazil.

Nutella fans were less than impressed this year by a recipe change that involved adding more sugar and powdered skimmed milk to the popular spread. After fans went nuts, the company behind Nutella, Ferrero, denied that they had lowered cocoa levels but some fans threatened to boycott the company.

Chocolate fans were excited to see Mars launching a Bounty protein bar to the market, joining similar Mars and Snickers products. Although some branded the taste “disappointing”, many health-conscious Bounty fans were delighted with the new snacking option.

One of Instagram’s hottest food trends, charcoal has been put in everything from toothpaste and pizza to burgers and ice cream. As long as food has been black this year, it’s been cool. Charcoal has even been said to offer health benefits, but some experts have pointed out there's little science behind the claims.

If we had a spare $25,000 (£19,000), we can’t say we’d spend it on a taco, but 2017 was a year for extravagance. The most expensive taco was revealed to the world in March, courtesy of luxury Mexico hotel Grand Velas Los Cabos. The $25,000 dish at least had plenty of premium ingredients: langoustine, Kobe beef, Almas Beluga caviar, black truffle brie and tequila all featured inside the gold-flake-infused corn tortilla.

A third of the world's food produced for human consumption gets wasted every year so it’s no surprise that companies are doing their best to find solutions. This year, inventive businesses made juices from discarded fruit (pictured) and brewed beer from old bread, and there was even a waste pop-up at Selfridges in London, where chefs bought waste-based dishes to the capital. Elsewhere, numerous restaurants are taking the waste-not-want-not philosophy to a whole new level.

Lots of fruit and vegetables don't make it to supermarket shelves because they’re misshapen or discoloured. This year, innovative companies capitalised on the staggering amount that goes to waste, creating produce subscription boxes full of “ugly” rejected items that would have otherwise gone in the bin.

We’re always happy to talk about pizza, but this year discussions reached new heights as the topic of pineapple on pizza became even more controversial. The debate peaked when Iceland’s president, Guðni Th. Jóhannesson, said he would ban pineapple as a pizza topping if he had the power to do so.

Oreo is always producing weird varieties of its famous cookies, including everything from fish and toasted coconut. This year, they held a flavour contest and invited fans to post their own ideas for a new 2018 Oreo cookie flavour. The winner is in with a chance of winning $500,000 and a trip to New York, as well as seeing their idea produced and sold. The results will be announced next year.

Every Australian’s favourite spread, Vegemite, caused tongues to wag this year when bosses announced a new premium version of the spread, entitled Blend 17. At double the price of the usual version, the new breed of Vegemite was said to be more similar to Marmite in consistency with a touch more sweetness than the original recipe. 

This was the year when blue wine entered the market. Spanish-based winemakers are behind the launch of Gik, whose blue hue is entirely natural and created from a pigment in grape skins and a dye extracted from plants. Not everyone is a fan – some have compared the taste to Capri Sun.

It was hard to outdo this headline-hitting story: Finnish researchers managed to make food from electricity. The synthetic food is created using electricity, water, carbon dioxide and microbes. One day it could be used to provide cheap and nutritious food as well as reducing the current impact of food production on the environment.

This is the year everyone went crazy for cookie dough, with shops and pop-ups selling the sweet treat. Despite food businesses insisting there was no possibility of customers becoming ill from the raw dough, debate raged online and in court about the safety of eating it, with one lawsuit alleging that several customers got sick after eating at a New York City shop.

A new book, Gastrophysics: The New Science of Eating by food scientist Charles Spence, taught us that it’s not what we’re eating, but how we’re eating it that affects how we enjoy food. The book explores how much more we eat when we’re with other people and how we choose our meals based on their description, to how different our meals taste depending on their presentation or colour. Spence also details how food companies capitalise on these discoveries.

Starbucks maximised its Instagram popularity this year by releasing the sickly sweet Unicorn Frappucino, which immediately went viral on the social media platform. The pink drink was in high demand immediately with many locations selling out of the frappucino entirely. It wasn’t popular with everyone though: one barista pleaded with customers not to buy it, complaining how difficult it was to make, while one reviewer wrote: “To be clear, this is the worst drink I have ever purchased in my life."

This was the year when we discovered Japanese designer square watermelons that cost up to $27,000 (£20,000). They are reportedly grown this way to fit more easily into the small fridges typical in many Japanese homes, and are popular gifts.

One of the biggest food stories this year was Amazon acquiring Whole Foods for $13.7 billion. It made Whole Foods a whole lot more affordable and Amazon products became available to browse in-store. Critics have expressed concern about Amazon’s takeover saying it might have ramifications on food delivery companies, small farmers and midsize producers.

In some places people eat raw chicken without thinking twice – in Japan torisashi is not an unusual dish – but this year, after someone tweeted “Is chicken sashimi safe?”, social media blew up. Fans praised its delicate, light texture but health professionals were unanimous in their response: try it and you're entering a game of potentially fatal Russian roulette with E. coli, Campylobacter and Salmonella. We certainly won't be trying it ourselves.