The Internet Loves to Rename Foods
Your “boring” product might be one rename away from success.
Social media wasted no time in picking the trendy dessert of the summer: Dot cakes. The term, that was completely nonexistent a few months ago, now unanimously conjures a distinct image of small rainbow-colored sprinkles atop a Ramekin of sponge cake. It’s the most recent example of a food trend whose only real claim to innovation is a catchy name that social media embraces. The internet loves to rename things, and sometimes that’s just what a food needs to recapture the attention of consumers.
“Simplifying” Cultural Staples
Soon after the dot cake reached the feeds of practically everyone on Instagram and subsequently entered the aisles of supermarket chains, people were quick to point out that “dot cake” very closely resembled Cortadillo, a dessert that never quite gained popularity in the mainstream but is a traditional favorite in Mexican cuisine, also commonly referred to as “pink cake”. Often food renamings fit into this same category of dishes that are popular cultural staples get renamed to suit the American palette, whether that be with the multiple of examples from Mexican culture—elote as “street corn” and tostadas as “flat tacos”—or Birchermüesli, a Swiss classic that found its footing in American supermarket aisles as “overnight oats.” Omitting the titles that include words from non-English languages can make the names more comprehensible for a broader audience, especially those who gravitate more towards comfortable flavors—but it strips away important the inherent significance of a dish, often subjecting these trendy online recipes to backlash due to their ignorance and dismissal for international traditions and heritage.
Leveraging Cultural Romanticism
The internet’s propensity to rename dishes often works in the other way as well, by assigning an apparent cultural significance to a dish, snack, or recipe without grounds to do so. Take the Japanese cheesecake recipe “hack” on Tik Tok, in which users soak cookies in greek yogurt to create a cheesecake-like consistency. There is actually such a thing as Japanese cheesecake, a flourless souffle style cake that presents quite differently than the two-ingredient no bake Tik Tok food. It's no surprise that this cheesecake trend coincides perfectly with an era of cultural romanticism of Japan, exemplified in the “Japan Effect” trend where online users label mundane landscape pictures as being in Tokyo to highlight the psychological bias towards Japan as the image becomes markedly less appealing upon a swipe to reveal that the photo might actually be from Dallas, Texas.
“Buddha bowls” becoming the new moniker for a grain bowl, and the fact that froyo is making its return by leveraging its likeness to Greek yogurt are more examples of this rebranding technique, which positions a food as being more cultured than its previous name did. It presents an enticing opportunity for consumers to participate in a sophisticated and globally-minded lifestyle without necessarily seeking out anything new.
Lifestyle Appeals
Name-changes as an appeal to a desirable lifestyle exist also in the way that many dishes have rebranded in recent years to appear as being more health-focused. Labelling a melty oven dish as a “bake” rather than a “casserole” detaches it from the former’s less-healthy reputation; Desserts more often being referred to as “sweet treats,” and “clean” replacing “organic” on many packaged items are all ways that renaming trends follow closely behind the ever-changing landscape of health fads.
Finding Space in the Trend Ecosystem
When clean eating reigns supreme and health becomes an increasing priority, there is more room than ever for salad trends to proliferate. Spoon salads and dense bean salads are both having their moment on recipe sites, both examples of recent internet rebrandings: a spoon salad is a virtually identical concept to a chopped salad, and a dense bean salad is just a bean salad with a name that happens to be catchier. In both cases, it wasn’t that the old moniker was doing anything wrong, but that the new one gives creators and recipe-makers the opportunity to make their product seem trendy simply by virtue of using a newly created title that resides in the 2026 trend ecosystem.
Based on the success of dot cakes, Japanese cheesecake, and Buddha bowls, the insight that Forklift can offer to legacy marketers is an optimistic one: brands sitting on a stale product might be just one name away from reentering the sphere of internet relevance. Appealing to a consumer base that is in constant pursuit of novelty doesn’t always mean inventing a new flavor profile or mode of preparation, but rather understanding what fuels online food culture: To engage with a trend is to be a part of something larger than a single meal or plate of food. A new name should position the product as something that satisfies this craving to be a part of something larger, aligns with a desirable lifestyle, and draws upon inspiration from the broader cultural zeitgeist.
