I love a good trend story, especially when it supports what I've been sensing for years: People of every age, shape and size want to eat smarter. They just don't know how.

Your doctor isn't much help. Even if he studied nutrition for the required 45 minutes in medical school, it's almost certain he has no understanding of how foods and nutrients influence your health. Not really.

For all the good that MD's do, their real specialties are providing drugs and suggesting surgery, the one-two punch that makes modern American health care so expensive and often ineffective. But I digress.

Here are some of the nutrition trends for 2016, as researched and written about by Alexandra Williams in a recent issue of IDEA Fitness Journal. All of them can influence your health in positive ways, unlike, say, Frosted Flakes.

LOCAL, SUSTAINABLE FOODS. Americans got our first taste of the concept of "sustainable diets" back in 1981, and every year the movement grows and prospers. The basic idea is to eat real food that is grown and distributed locally, with as little processing and pesticides as possible.

"The percentage of consumers shopping for 'only ingredients I recognize' grew 15 percent from 2010 to 2015," Williams reports, "while choosing foods 'with the shortest ingredient list' rose 10 percent during the same time frame."

Yes! This is a trend worth chasing. Eat local. Choose foods with shorter ingredient lists. The greater the consumer demand for real food, cleaner food, the more Big Food companies will fall in line.

GLUTEN FREE IS STILL GOING, GOING, GOING. According to a Gallup poll, 20 percent of Americans say they actively try to eat gluten-free foods. Another research study found that sales of gluten-free foods increased by 63 percent between 2012 and 2014. That's huge!

In 2016, Williams reports, sales of non-gluten products are expected to be a $15 billion dollar business — including gluten-free water, gluten-free toothpaste and gluten-free almonds, which is the nutty part of this otherwise happy trend.

RISE OF ONLINE HEALTHY FOOD. This bucks the trend toward local, but it's a fascinating development in the healthy lifestyle world: the rise of Internet-based companies catering to people who want access to healthy food for less money.

"I like having organic, non-GMO, antibiotic-free food delivered to my doorstep," says a woman from Dallas quoted in Williams' story.

The trend toward online ordering is a great time-saver, and it helps consumers cut back on eating out, which saves tons of money — and calories.

Home-delivered (healthy) meals are projected to grow by $3 billion to $5 billion over the next 10 years, Williams reports. (I think that's wildly conservative, given the lines at my local Whole Foods.)

SUGAR SUBSTITUTES. There's a growing demand for plant-based sweeteners — including stevia leaf and monk fruit — and I find that a very encouraging trend, because artificial sweeteners are such a disaster. Those little pink and blue packages that millions of unsuspecting Americans use to sweeten their coffee, tea or oatmeal have been found to be seriously toxic, damaging to health and no help whatsoever in losing weight. So if you're not already, I hope you'll start trending away from these dreadful artificial sweeteners, too.

SUPERFOODS. The superfood industry is on steroids. It never stops growing, and it was expected to reach $130 billion in 2015, Williams reports. That gives you a taste for how hungry people are for real foods that have health-promoting properties, as opposed to many processed foods that have health-destroying properties.

What a delicious trend this is. My favorite superfood happens to be organic blueberries. They are so tasty, so blue, so high in antioxidants; I don't even mind if they get caught in my teeth and need to be flossed out after breakfast.

More from the list of superfoods: cinnamon, ginger root, purple corn, algae, maca root, shitake mushrooms (expensive, but great in scrambled eggs) and my new favorite spice, turmeric.

Whatever superfood you decide to add to your intake, don't be deceived by clever marketing. Superfoods are super when they are part of an overall healthy eating plan that suits your biochemistry. Big Food marketers are famous (and rich) for successfully passing off high-sugar cereals with sprayed-on vitamins as "health foods." Don't fall for it. Read labels and push for transparency.

ENERGY EXPRESS-O! CHEW ON THIS

"You are what you eat. What would you like to be?" — Julie Murphy

Marilynn Preston — healthy lifestyle expert, well being coach and Emmy-winning producer — is the creator of Energy Express, the longest-running syndicated fitness column in the country. She has a website, marilynnpreston.com, and welcomes reader questions, which can be sent to [email protected]. She also produces EnExTV, a digital reincarnation of her award-winning TV series about sports, fitness and adventure, for kids of all ages, at youtube.com/EnExTV and facebook.com/EnExTV. To find out more about Preston and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Photo credit: Carol VanHook