Trend forecasting has come a long way since the ancient Romans searched through goats' entrails to predict the future and the Azande poisoned chickens to plan their calendar. No animals are harmed in the making of Tony Bannister's predictions about trends in fashion, design and popular culture, which are based on market research and a global network of industry insiders. Bannister, the creative director of Scout, a fashion-trend forecasting agency in Sydney, suggests the fashion conscious will fill their wardrobes with blue clothes in 2014. ''It was black in the '80s and white in the noughties, but blue has been a force for the past couple of years now.'' Fashion buyers have also been resistant to jaundice-coloured clothing, believing it would not sell, but shades of yellow from lemon to chartreuse are another trend. Bannister is in good company when it comes to predicting trends, says Dr Rohan Miller, a senior lecturer in marketing at the University of Sydney. ''Nostradamus, the witches from Macbeth and economists jump to mind as prominent examples of trend forecasters.'' Trend forecasting involves predicting general directions of change over time and is used in industries from gambling to finance to environmental management and retail. Forecasters need to be able to gather and synthesise large amounts of information, and develop a broad picture of the area or variable of interest, he says. ''Technology will become even more pervasive. Play will become less and less physical and we will take more pharmaceutical products to try to manage excess calorie intakes rather than reduce our intakes and exercise more. ''The more things change, the more everything will remain the same,'' he says. Bannister's colour predictions might seem frivolous, but it is big business for retailers trying to lighten shoppers' wallets. Bannister's forecasts also surf the zeitgeist, reflecting topical issues such as sustainable living, fair trade and the state of the economy. As he puts it: ''Fashion mirrors what's going on in society and globally.'' The Slow Fashion movement, for example, promotes fair-trade practices and locally produced clothes. It grew out of the global financial crisis and consumers who had tired of and could no longer afford disposable fashion made in south-east Asian sweatshops. Likewise, pop-up shops emerged as economic times became tough, Bannister says. ''Designer brands were trying to be clever and not spend money, while thinking of new ways to reach their audience.'' The American College of Sports Medicine's list of expected trends for 2014 puts short bursts of exercise, or high-intensity interval training, at No. 1, followed by bodyweight training such as push-ups and burpees. These two forms of exercise require no equipment or instruction, but fitness fanatics still want people telling them what to do, with personal training and yoga still popular. Food, like fashion and fitness, is no less prone to passing trends, with Middle Eastern cuisine gaining traction in 2014. Caribbean cooking is likely to follow as flavour of the month. Artisan food halls such as Eataly, which is reportedly looking for a Sydney site, are also rising in popularity. Posh roast chicken, ''psychotasting'' and fancy butter are among the other dining trends identified by New York-based food and restaurant consultants Baum and Whiteman. A fear of tainted produce, especially from Asia, has prompted growing demand for organic and home-grown food. ''There's a sense we're not living in a healthy society,'' says Sydney social researcher Neer Korn. ''There's something wrong with society, causing illness, but we're not sure what causes it, so we look for purity of ingredients.'' It took three decades for Italian and Greek cuisine to be absorbed by the Anglo population, but Vietnamese, Middle Eastern and Latin American cooking has been accepted more quickly. This is bad news for potato farmers, as the humble spud is now less popular than pasta, noodles and rice, Woolworths' 2013 Trolley Trends report found. The survey of 9500 shoppers over two years also found a decline in ''Anglo'' vegetables such as carrots and broccoli and increasing sales of Asian greens and Middle Eastern foods, such as dates, figs and pomegranates. Age-old insecurities about Australia's isolation and cultural cringe show in our changing eating habits, Salt says. ''We define sophistication in metropolitan Australia by the breadth of our cuisine. How we can absorb, adapt and show off to each other about how cosmopolitan we are plays up to insecurity about how far removed we are from the rest of the world.'' Beyond the kitchen, demography has dramatically changed social behaviour. ''Men and women started to kiss each other on the cheek. That's a continental affectation that didn't exist in the 1960s,'' he says. ''Men began wearing black and shaving their heads. You could be in Milan instead of Paddington or walking up Flinders Lane.'' But a wedge has been driven between inner-city dwellers and people living on the ''American edges'' of Sydney and Melbourne. Terms like McMansion and ''nappy valley'' have been coined to disparage people living on the edge of cities. Salt believes that tension is intensifying as the inner city integrates further with the rest of the world. ''The centre of Sydney is a global city, but that global city stops at Burwood.''
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