"Mm mm, oh oh, yeah yeah! I'm all shook up."

Elvis Presley's lyrics sum up how most consumers are feeling at the beginning of this new decade. We're shook up, all right. What with investment money lost, jobs down the drain and housing blues, the recession still is having an effect on the way we shop, cook and dine.

What worries people today differs from idealistic pre-recession issues, according to Joseph Baum and Michael Whiteman and Co., international restaurant consultants. With millions of people still in danger of losing their homes or jobs, they say people are, if not scared, at least gun-shy about spending. They're looking for safe and comforting pleasures and will be for the next five years or so.

Here's how that translates for food and restaurant trends in 2010:

• Home cooking. There's a shift away from convenience foods toward real, from-scratch cooking for at least one or two dishes in a meal. The bonuses are money saved and home-cooked, not manufactured, food. Don't believe interest in cooking is mainstream? Nintendo has new Wii games, "Cook or Be Cooked" and "Cooking Mama Cook Off."

• Eating less meat. The protein-heavy center of the plate is shrinking, making way for whole grains and veggies. If you need some help with this good-for-you trend, take a look at a new cookbook, "Cooking for Health," thanks to the Moosewood Collective and veggie maven Mollie Katzen. Despite the pedestrian title, the cookbook has a good collection of meat-free and vegan options.

• DIY. Expect more people to start canning, preserving and fermenting food, as well as experimenting with making yogurt and cheeses. Where zoning allows, expect neighbors to raise a few chickens or keep a colony of bees.

• Will barter for food. Your extra tomatoes for my too-many peppers? Some of your frozen venison for a few berry pies? Fresh chickens in exchange for music lessons? Bartering for consumables makes sense. Also watch for urban gleaning, reaching over the fence to pick the neighbor's apples, preferably with the resident's permission.

• The offal truth. Joining oxtails and liver are cheeks, chicken gizzards, tripe, trotters and tongue, along with other innards. In eateries, low-cost offal might be offered alongside a smaller portion of an expensive cut of meat. You might see steak with beef cheeks or filet mignon with a slice of smoked tongue. Other offal will be indistinguishable, as in oxtail ravioli. "I'll eat offal in a pig's eye," you say? Well, except for pigs' eyes, you might love them.

• Just desserts. Butterscotch, that blissful marriage of butter, brown sugar and cream, is nudging chocolate from the dessert throne. Look for pies, puddings, frostings and fillings. Marshmallow will find a home in whoopie pies, sauces and candies. Mallowmars, a circle of Graham cracker topped with a puff of marshmallow then enrobed in dark chocolate, look to have their 15 minutes of fame.

• Flavors. Once our palates craved mostly sweets. Then we began preferring bitter notes, as in strong coffees, dark chocolates, brussels sprouts and eggplant. Less dramatic is a shift to tart-sweet as in pickled vegetables, mouth-puckering candies and Southeast Asian cuisines. Why? As the Boomers age, their taste buds want more wake-up calls. Look for this shift in recipes, cookbooks, products and menus.

• What's "in." The last decade's sizzlers, such as molecular gastronomy, have jumped the shark. Taking their place are winetails (wine mixed with juices, spirits and soda), energy drinks, coconut water and "slow" beverages with chamomile, melatonin and valerian root that promote calming. Lamb over beef, farmed trout over salmon and gelati over ice cream. Sustainable seafood, nutrition, but also its evil twin, deep-fried everything. Regional ethnic cuisine, potluck dinners, bite-size and half-portions and homey favorites (comfort food should go into an annual menu Hall of Fame). Eggs all day in every course and drugstore soda counter faves. And a real hot button is coal-fired pizza (enough to make my coal miner grandpap turn over in his urn).

• Sex symbol. The butcher? Get out! Yes, that friendly guy in the blood-spattered apron behind the meat case is beating out chefs as this year's rock star. Believe it, though it's hard to picture hefty butcher/author Bruce Aidells on a pin-up calendar.

• Packaging. Labels have no place to hide. With growing awareness of how food choices affect the environment, look for detailed nutrition labeling and more "all natural" options. Consumers want "clean" labels with no double-talk. The green trend includes the food industry, and that means more green packaging on supermarket shelves.

• Food with benefits. After years of purging the negatives from food (trans fats, grease and questionable additives), companies are now including additives deliberately to seduce buyers, claiming to make them healthy and beautiful. They'll be adding, for instance, omega-3 fatty acids and plant sterols to breads to cut stress and lower cholesterol. Probiotics, friendly digestive system bacteria, will be showing up in ice cream, breakfast cereals, ketchup, teas and more. Beverages will goose their benefits, too, with acai, goji, hibiscus and green tea. Of course, buyers could just eat a healthful selection of real food as nature grew it. And many are.

• Eating the right stuff. Functional foods, those loaded with natural nutrients, will be on more shopping lists. Think blueberries, sweet potatoes, dark green leafy veggies. Notice that these are "whole" foods, not manufactured products. Sales of single ingredient items are growing, too, such as olive oil, flour, sugar and other basic pantry foods. Savvy grocery stores will pick up on and push this trend.

• Food vetting. Yes, sustainable is going mainstream. Food sourcing might be old news to foodies, but growing numbers of Americans will opt for organics and sustainable practices. That includes eating fresh, local and seasonal foods as much as possible and buying products with sustainable or biodegradable packaging. Farmers markets are hotter this year than last, as people search for food they can trust and vendors they know. And the foodies? They might go for less precious items and make more down-to-earth choices.

• Timing is everything. Diners looking for deals on food and drinks will eat by pricing. Happy-hour buffets can make a substantial supper, and late lunch menus often have the same food as dinner for a lesser check. Heck, Florida's early birds have known that for years.

• Healthy eating options. Menus already are scattered with those little valentines to lead diners to heart-healthy options. Now we'll see allergy-free and gluten-free dingbats preceding menu selections.

• Upscaling the downscale. Trade a pricey steak for a loaded burger, such as add-ons manchego cheese and jamon Iberico. Labeling is getting a semantic makeover. Look for steak-y names such as brisket burgers and grass-fed burgers. Look for artisan hotdogs labeled Kobe-dogs and housemade wieners. How about a dog with goat cheese and guac? Heinz goes on the back shelf as housemade condiments shine.

• Back to basics. A big shout-out to FLOTUS Michele Obama for championing a White House garden and Sam Kass, the White House chef who digs all things locavore. More chefs are planting vegetable gardens, out back or on the roof. And they're touting chef-pickled vegetables, house-cured meats, local honeys and locally made bread.

• Fried chicken. Korean, Latin and even Med-Rim cuisines are strutting their crispy, crunchy versions of the picnic favorite, making fried chicken one of the most popular trends of the year. Poor Colonel Sanders never saw it coming. He recently introduced his lower-fat "grilled" chicken breast at KFC. His bad.

• Poaching. Remember when pizza chains sold just pizza? Now they sell pasta, panini and wings. Juice chains fight back and sell pizzas and flatbreads. And everybody's adding snacks, hoping to capture between-meal customers. Think out of the box? How about thinking outside the restaurant? Street food vendors are big, and so are food trucks, with San Francisco and Portland leading the way. "It's the economy, stupid."

• Smoking. No, still not permissible for people to smoke inside. But smoking food with mesquite, hickory, alder and fruitwoods lets chefs incorporate layers of flavor into products without adding fat, sugar or sodium.

• Here kiddie, here kiddie. Cash-poor families are eating at home, staying away from eateries in multitudes. As bait, restaurant menus are catering to kids' tastes but offering healthful food menus, even in chain restaurants. Look for restaurants to offer cooking classes for youngsters and kids-eat-free promotions.

• The new experts. Old hands, we experienced, dues-paid reliable food journalists and reviewers, are an endangered species. Our authoritative voices are being replaced by Twitterers, texters and Facebookers of who-knows-what age, experience and motivation.

Trends. Are they real or just random marketers' self-fulfilling prophecies? If you wonder how trends develop, who's watching who, and just how many sightings and tellings are needed to tip a happening into a trend, do some homework. Read trend guru Malcolm Gladwell's book, "The Tipping Point," an analysis of how trends are sparked and take hold. You'll learn how ideas, products and messages are spread faster than the H1N1 virus.

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