There are some past food trends whose popularity cannot be explained – gelatine salads, cheese balls and fish-shaped food to name a few. But the 1970s isn't the only decade to blame as more recent offenders include freakshakes, cloud eggs and unicorn food. Here are the crazy food crazes we don’t want to make a comeback.

The grapefruit diet has been around since the 1930s and made a number of reappearances over the years. Though there are different versions, including eating a high-fat and high-protein diet or a calorie-restricted diet, it fundamentally involves eating grapefruit at every meal. Enzymes in the fruit were thought to have fat-burning properties but these days it’s trendier to aspire to a balanced diet as opposed to believing fad claims.

While microwave meals are arguably as popular as ever, we’re talking about the original 1950s TV dinner that came in an aluminium tray with meat, vegetable and potato compartments. It took 25 minutes in the oven and was designed to be eaten in front of the TV (read more about its invention here). Flash-forward to today and you can make something way more appetising with fresh ingredients in the same length of time. Take a look at 36 super simple recipes anyone can cook for inspiration.

Jell-O salads were all the rage in the 1960s and consisted of vegetables, and sometimes fruit, nuts, fish, chicken or cheese, suspended in flavoured gelatine. Pictured is an advert for mixed vegetable and celery flavour. Despite their popularity at pot luck parties and picnics for so many years, we don’t know how people stomached it. We’d much rather our vegetables fresh and not wibbly wobbly on our plate.

In the 1970s, home cooks strived to be impressive hosts and loved to set foods into moulds to create showstopping centrepieces. Turning fishy dishes into the shape of fish was particularly popular – pictured is a tuna mousse shaped with gelatine. These days we prefer our food a little more unadulterated. Find our top tips for cooking fish here (advice on moulding into a fish shape not included). 

Any 1970s host worth their salt knew how to whizz up a cheese ball. Made with a blend of cream cheese, shredded blue cheese, goats’ cheese, cheddar or feta, plus herbs or spices, it was moulded into a ball then rolled in crushed nuts. The cheese ball was served as a dip alongside crackers and crudité. We think that if you have good-quality cheese, it’s best enjoyed as it is and shouldn’t need this much dressing up.

In 1977, SlimFast hit the dieting scene with its range of meal replacement shakes in strawberry, chocolate and vanilla flavours. The company suggested dieters have two a day, for breakfast and lunch, plus a low-calorie dinner. You’d probably lose weight in the short-term, but also be extremely hungry and bored. Thankfully the company updated its brand to include chocolate, snacks and smoothies, but we still find the mantra “a little of what you fancy” works best for us.

The bubble gum introduced by Wrigley’s in 1979 was one of the biggest trends of the 20th century. Its bright colour, sugary taste and ability to form huge bubbles boosted its appeal. However, we’ve all moved on since then and Hubba Bubba is a sticky sweet best left in the past. Check out these other childhood snacks you'll never forget.

Sugary, low in alcohol and made with low-grade wine and fruit juice, wine coolers such as Bartles & Jaymes were consumed in vast quantities in the 1980s – until Congress upped tax on wine. Next, spirit-based coolers such as Smirnoff Ice took over. They didn’t taste like alcohol and were everywhere at the turn of the millennium. However, these days they’ve thankfully fallen out of favour, replaced by more sophisticated looking and tasting beverages.

Popular with 1950s housewives and again in the 1980s and 1990s, the cabbage soup diet thankfully hasn’t seen a resurgence since. It involves surviving on just homemade cabbage soup for around one week. It’s a quick-fix diet and people are said to drop 10lbs fast. However, a lot of it is water weight which people regain just as quickly afterwards. Discover more horrible historic diets you're glad you didn't have to try here.

The king of fad diets, the Beverly Hills diet was published in 1981 by author Judy Mazel who claimed to have lost 72lbs on the programme. The dieter consumes fruit for the first 10 days, carbohydrates on day 11 and finally protein on day 19. It’s based on the unscientific notion that blending certain foods inhibits digestion and that undigested food is what makes people fat. Of course, this is thoroughly untrue and weight loss on this diet can be attributed to calorie restriction.

Bacon mania started in the 1990s. Outrageous recipes and viral videos of creations like candied bacon, bacon-naise, chocolate-covered bacon and bacon desserts were abundant. Although we still consume bacon in vast quantities, it’s nice to see the crazy bacon one-upmanship waning.

When EZ Squirt Ketchup arrived on shelves in 2000, it was one of the biggest food crazes of the decade with more than 25 million bottles of multi-coloured sauce sold. The crazy hues (green, pink, purple, orange and teal) were a novelty, adding heaps of extra fun to mealtimes. But by 2006, parents were becoming more cautious about artificial food colourings, the USP was wearing off and the line discontinued. Personally, we always preferred the original.

The cupcake craze was supposedly started by a Sex and the City episode where Miranda munches on a cupcake from Magnolia’s Cupcakes in New York. Artisan cupcake shops began popping up across the country and lavishly-iced mini cakes were the most fashionable item to serve at parties. However, we’re glad this trend didn’t last. As delicious as they are, your teeth feel like they start rotting by just looking at a cupcake and it was always a disappointment to find more icing than sponge.

The Atkins diet, based on the principles of Dr Atkins New Diet Revolution, became popular in the early 2000s. It had us cutting carbs to near zero and eating bunless burgers, bacon, cream, butter, chicken and steak every night of the week. Now its popularity has disappeared, only to return under a different guise: the ketogenic diet. It has similar principles with more of an emphasis on the consumption of healthy fats.

This bright beacon of a cake supposedly dates back to the 19th century when cooks added almond flour, cocoa and cornstarch to cakes to give them a fine, velvety (hence the name) texture. During the 1900s, it gained popularity, appearing in cookbooks and on restaurant menus but its more recent resurgence is in part attributed to the 1989 film Steel Magnolias, in which it features in a scene. By the early 2000s, it was a staple item on every bakery’s menu and has since been infused into everything from lattes and spirits to air fresheners. It’s still fairly prolific but we think, why limit yourself to one flavour when there's a whole world of cakes out there?

Also known as the lemonade diet, the master cleanse was invented in the 1940s but saw a resurgence in 2006 after Beyoncé apparently lost weight for her role in the movie Dreamgirls by following the regime. The crazy programme involves a liquid-only diet for around 10 days, consisting of a lemonade-like drink, a salt-water drink and a herbal laxative tea. We don’t recommend anyone attempt to bring this diet back again.

These bite-sized treats rose to fame when blogger Angie Dudley, also known as Bakerella, posted a recipe for miniature cupcakes on a stick in 2008 and it went viral. They’re basically cake crumbs blended with cream cheese frosting, rolled into balls and decorated with chocolate. The problem is apart from being cute, there’s not much else to them. We’d choose a generous slice over a cake pop any day. If you do want to give them a go, try this recipe for vanilla and white chocolate mini treats.

This potent health drink was brought to us by American entrepreneur Dave Asprey in 2011 after his experience of finding mental clarity from drinking yak-butter tea while trekking in the Himalayas. The coffee, coconut oil and grass-fed butter or ghee blend is intended as a breakfast meal replacement. Dubbed bulletproof coffee, the fat and nutrients from the drink supposedly minimise hunger pangs. However, except for a few fitness bloggers and cafés, the trend never really caught on. It’s incredibly high in fat and calories, and the health benefits aren’t very clear or substantiated.

The ramen burger craze was a whirlwind. In 2013, ramen expert Keizo Shimamoto debuted the creation at the Smorgasburg outdoor food market in Brooklyn, New York. It’s a beef patty sandwiched between two boiled and seared noodle buns. You can still head to the market to try one but the hype has mostly died down.

The raw food trend goes hand in hand with the clean eating movement. It advocates that only whole and unprocessed foods are good for you, and people restrict themselves to eating only uncooked fruits, vegetables and nuts. Unsurprisingly, nutritionists do not recommend the diet. The bubble burst when bloggers started backtracking and admitting that the lifestyle was doing more harm than good.

Crazy milkshakes topped with cream, cake, marshmallow fluff, sauce and sweets, called freakshakes, started appearing on menus around 2015. The drink and dessert mash-up is extremely calorific with some drinks totalling more than 1,000 kcal, more than half the recommended daily allowance. However, soon the backlash arrived and novel appeal of them waned. We don’t believe a person could finish a whole one in a single sitting anyway.

The Bagel Store in Brooklyn, New York was responsible for catapulting the rainbow bagel to social media fame. The bread ring is made with a blend of different coloured doughs and served with Nutella or Funfetti cream cheese. They were the brainchild of baker Scot Rossillo who cleverly trademarked the name before the masses cottoned on. But it’s a trend we could have lived without really.

In the last few years, the world has gone mad for everything unicorn, including pastel-hued food and drink. Toast has been covered in multi-coloured spread and sprinkles; cupcakes have been adorned with cute accessories and horns; and even Starbucks cashed in on the trend and introduced the Unicorn Frappuccino. It was a brightly-coloured, sweet and sour drink containing ice, milk, mango syrup, vanilla cream, and pink and blue powder.

In 2017, cloud eggs was another lightning trend that was spurred on by a social media frenzy. The woolly-looking eggs are made by separating the egg white and yolk, beating the whites into a meringue-like fluff, then reuniting the two parts for cooking. The result is a silky yolk with a fluffy white, but personally we prefer a good old-fashioned fried egg. If you want to try it out for yourself, take a look at the recipe here.

In response to the wave of colourful unicorn lattes and rainbow bagels littering our social media feeds, black activated charcoal lattes, ice creams, pizza crusts and waffles hit back. Not made with the same charcoal that you'd use for barbecues, a food-grade version can be produced from burnt coconuts. However, there are no real health benefits to infusing food and drink with charcoal. Its main appeal is aesthetic so eventually interest waned.

Read more: Food fads from the year you were born

In the spirit of Halloween 2018, Burger King sold a Frozen Fanta Scary Black Cherry Drink and also the Nightmare King Sandwich. The latter featured a beef patty, chicken fillet, cheese and bacon, all sandwiched in a green sesame bun. But this isn’t the only instance of crazy coloured fast food. Taco Bell also trialled a Midnight Melt Taco made with a blue shell. We don’t know about you but we prefer it when our food looks how it’s supposed to.

Read more: Meatless meat and other food trends taking the world by storm

The Ainsworth in New York serves 24-karat gold wings – they’re deep-fried, glazed with honey, chipotle and gold-infused butter, then sprinkled with 24-karat gold flakes. At $45 for 10 wings, the item is more expensive than most – and we aren't convinced it's worth it. Following suit, for one day only, Popeyes rolled out its own version of boneless wings battered in champagne and coated in 24-karat gold, in 2018. While gold may look good, it doesn’t alter flavour and is a trend we’re glad to be leaving behind.

Read more: Retro dishes that deserve a comeback