In the next five years, restaurants will be staffed by more robots, menus will become healthier and interactive, while post-modernist cuisine will focus on more natural, “homeopathic” culinary alchemy.

These are among the major food trends outlined in a report out of SIRHA, a major food trade fair happening in Lyon, France this week and one of the most important events on the gastronomic calendar.

Alongside the trade fair, which serves as a launch pad for innovative products, the five-day event is also host to the Bocuse d’Or, known as the Olympics of the food world.

More than 3,000 exhibitors, spread across 130,000 square meters, are in attendance this year.

Here’s how the experts at SIRHA foresee consumers will be eating out in restaurants over the next few years:

Local, frugal cuisine

While the locavore movement -- spearheaded by chefs like Dan Barber and Michel Bras -- is nothing new, trendspotters predict that the emphasis on locally raised foods will gain even more momentum in the next few years. Old-fashioned cooking techniques like smoking, coal-fired cooking, fermentation and salting will also be revisited with a few modern twists. Likewise, the nose-to-tail concept will become increasingly mainstream, with chefs and restaurateurs cooking with offal, and humble fruits and vegetables (think root vegetables) getting their star turn on the dinner table. The overall premise? Zero waste, zero-mile dining.

Digital dining

Wearable technology and quantified health is poised to enter the dining room as a nutritional tool for increasingly health-conscious diners. Expect interactive menus, for instance, that allow diners to look up the nutritional information of their meals with the help of QR codes and the proliferation of smartphone apps that serve as nutritionists on the go.

Post-modernist cuisine

To cut down on labor costs, restaurants will increasingly hire robots to perform menial kitchen duties such as kitchen prep, garbage disposal, kitchen sanitation and hygiene. The quest for new and novel food flavors and pairings will move away from molecular gastronomy towards a style of cooking that depends less on food additives, more on natural innovations. IBM’s Chef Watson, which conducts creative computing, has already been put to work to come up with new and novel food pairings.

SIRHA runs until January 28.