All major trends have two or three things in common; the food is inexpensive, boneless, bland and eaten from our hands. Hamburgers, hot dogs, pizza, doughnuts, tacos, bagels and ice cream cones all started life as fads. Croissant sandwiches were only a passing fad, not because they didn't taste good, but because they fell apart when eaten while driving. If any new food that comes down the pike can't survive on the highway, it will never zoom to the overarching success of the burger. Eating in the car is what it's all about. Nowadays the greatest food safety risk is on-coming traffic.

Food trends are not at all the same thing as food fads, though a genuine trend may start off as a fad before it gradually becomes accepted as part of our everyday eating patterns. The fad that became the biggest trend of all was the health food movement that could be classified under the general philosophy of "forty carrots, hold the hormones."

It all started in the psychedelic '60s, with funky little stores on side streets in the wrong part of town. There would be bins and barrels full of mung beans and garbanzos, strings of dried chilies and garlic hanging from the rafters, and dazed shopgirls in long skirts who would invariably remark, upon hearing of any natural phenomenon, "Oh, wow, Man!" Nature was a trip, then. And carrot cake and carob were king of the road.

Health food started as a fad. Became a trend. Now its mainstream.

Food fads come and go just as hem lines rise and fall. Oscar Wilde once observed: "If fashion wasn't so awful, it wouldn't keep changing so often." We could say the same about food. In other countries, settled people eat the same thing as their parents and their grandparents and their great-great-grandparents. In the U.S., we won't eat the same thing one year as we did the last. One day fondue is IN, the very next it is mammoth raviolis stuffed with miniature oxtails that we are clamoring for.

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One year lofty restaurants are offering beef stroganoff, lobster thermidor, chicken à la king, rolling silver carts of steamed "roasts," canned string beans, and iceberg lettuce with Russian dressing. And before we realize it, that old pendulum has swung from the stuffy to sublime. Shiny new neighborhood cafes are populated with young wait persons, wearing cheerful smiles and sneakers and snowy white aprons tied flatly around slim waists. They are interchangeable in every way with the smart, young guests.

Everyone is having a glorious time, sharing in the abundance of the good earth, and spurring the chefs on to compose new creations to delight us. The chefs themselves are like a jam of jazz musicians, playing set after set, spurring each other on with flair until we are presented with one of their awesome creations ¬ like five different kinds of smoked salmon reclining in four different rippling rivers of sauces, topped by three different kinds of caviar and counterpointed by a lone crawfish pirouetting on a single sublime pea. Yeah!

One day we think that only food that comes from abroad is worth revering and the next day we won't eat it only it unless it is grown within our own zip code.

One day we won't eat kiwis. We suspect they are small suede potatoes. Then they appear exotically in grand restaurants. A little later, they turn up as a garish on a plate of bacon and eggs in a highway truck stop.

One day we adore steak tartare, the next we cringe in fear of salmonella and switch to sushi.

By definition, a food fad has a meteoric rise, followed by a plummeting descent. Quiche, cold pasta salad, Caesar salad with grilled chicken and dozens of other dishes have turned up on menus countless times before falling victim to over-exposure and heartily bored appetites. What lasts forever are the classic dishes, born from great culinary traditions that have been hallowed for centuries past and yet to come.

In the meantime we exult in such glorious inventions as Pan Roasted Medallion of Hudson Valley Venison, on a puree of roast parsnips and quince with pan roasted Brussels sprouts and grain mustard, from New York's An American Place restaurant. Yum!

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