If innovation was one of the key food trends of 2015, I reckon the phrase "conscious consumerism" just about nails the zeitgeist for the year ahead, inasmuch as such a feat is possible.

According to the various predictions I've heard, food consumers are now a global tribe. We're collectively engaged, curious and sophisticated, and we'll have no truck with any rubbish. Literally.

As we become obsessed with process and provenance, mindfulness is a philosophy that can also be applied to food. We'll develop a distaste for over-sweetness and become fascinated with food biology. Much of it is good for Scottish food producers.

And we can thank what the Americans call the millennials – people born between 1980 and 2000 – for driving this positive change.

According to Lucie Greene, of trend-forecasters JWT Innovation, natural food (or junk, as she calls it) will be key.

Consumers have become distrustful of major food companies (the fallout from horsegate continues, coupled with suspicion around genetically modified ingredients), which means that snacks and takeaway food will have to be rethought so they contain only natural ingredients.

Some of the major global brands are already on the bandwagon: PepsiCo has announced the launch of a naturally flavoured line of sodas, to be called Stubborn, and Hershey's milk chocolate bars are now GMO????-free.

The explosion of small health food start-ups in Scotland and the UK, however, suggests a certain impatience with the speed of change. They're already devising snack and health drink recipes that blend vegetables and herbs with fruit and seeds to cater for our appetite for "swavoury" foods, influenced by Nordic cuisine.

Our relationship with meat will also change. We'll eat less of it, and when we do eat it, it'll be top quality. Other plant-based options will become a major component of our daily diet – burgers made with greens, seeds and grains will continue to be developed and honed to taste like real beef – which suggests to me that describing ourselves as vegetarian or vegan will become redundant. Apparently we'll all be flexitarians.

Byproducts will be used to create entirely new products as we embrace "closed loop living". Think probiotic health drinks made with excess whey from yoghurt production; artisanal, small-batch vinegar made with up cycled beer wort from local craft breweries, and so on. We'll drink cocktails of fermented ingredients.

Algae will also have a moment in 2016, as the first algae culinary oil makes its debut in the US. It can be grown in tanks, reducing the large agricultural footprint necessary for other cooking oils, and it's said to have low levels of saturated fat and a high smoke level for cooking. Likewise, seaweed is also set to make it big as it grows sustainably and cheaply, and is packed with natural proteins and minerals.

Crab will replace lobster as the shellfish du moment, as Orkney crab hits the shelves of Sainsbury's for the first time.

Chefs will continue to take a leading role as food becomes increasingly central to culture, consumer spending habits, and popular discourse – and as the debate continues on how to feed 9.6 billion people by 2050, while also addressing the rising obesity epidemic in the West.

Meanwhile, one of the more counter-intuitive predictions: that in 2016 field trials of genetically modified insects might take place. That's right, genetically modified insects.

Last month a House of Lords report recommended that the UK Government should encourage GM insects to be given field trials in Britain – without, as far as I can see, specifying which sites would be used for such trials of which species.

I wasn't aware that scientists in the UK have already pioneered the development of GM insects, which are said to help reduce the transmission of pests in crops or diseases in livestock and people. The Lords' science and technology committee argues that these insects could provide safer alternatives to highly damaging pesticides, or might reduce or even eliminate the transmission of lethal diseases such as malaria, dengue and West Nile fever.

The report claims that "highly-restrictive" EU regulations have effectively blocked field trials and recommends that Britain takes the lead to break this legal impasse and give frustrated British companies a chance.

Opponents of genetic modification and environmental campaigners have expressed surprise that the report doesn’t summarise the environmental risks that were highlighted in its evidence gathering, and instead recommended a field trial without making a clear case for a UK problem that needs to be tackled, or therefore, the type of insect to be trialled.

But supporters say that creating millions of sterile male insects, which cannot produce fertile offspring, and releasing them into the wild has been shown to be highly effective in reducing the overall population of mosquitoes capable of transmitting diseases such as dengue or malaria.

Oxitec’s sterile male mosquitoes, for instance, have reduced the local population by up to 90 per cent, which the company hopes will reduce or prevent the transmission of dengue fever, a disease threatening half the world’s population. Similar technology could be used on the diamondback moth, a serious pest of brassica crops.

I wonder what the millennials will make of that.