Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. You can learn a lot about a culture by how and what it eats. A new year gives us a new opportunity to forecast how food trends will change. Joining me now to talk about this is Kim Severson. She is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The New York Times, where she covers food culture. She is the author of the recent article, "How We’ll Eat in 2026: More Caution, More Crunch." Kim, welcome to All Of It.

Kim Severson: I'm so glad to be here. Thanks for asking me.

Alison Stewart: How are food trends figured out?

Kim Severson: Well, I think the top thing to remember is there is a food fad and a food trend. Food trends churn through as we know so quickly. If you remember the moment where people were like making nachos on their kitchen counter with a paint spatula. There were people melting gummies into-- the things that they can do on the internet these days is amazing. You don't want to be distract the food fads because those come and go. Right now there's a thing where there's a really creamy buttery cheese called Butterkäse, and everybody is stuffing it into baked sweet potatoes for lunch. It's like the big thing and people will show their lunch. They have the "what I ate today" videos. There's a million food fads. Very different than trends, which is what sociologists will look at, or people who write about food think about.

These are longer tailed ways that we eat things, things that we're eating and interested in that maybe say something larger about how we're living or are going to have. They're going to stick around for a little more sea-change ways in which we eat. You might look at grass-fed beef. For a while, it was the idea that you would eat animals that came off of pasture was a Chez Panisse–California idea that nobody did. I just saw today that Target is moving into its wellness space with enthusiasm. They will have a brand of grass-fed ground beef at Target stores.

A food trend, which is people want to start eating cows that are living on pasture started 20 years ago, and now we're seeing it all the way as an item at Target, and I can point to so many of those things. Salted caramel that came from Brittany was a small boutique-y way to-- a specific kind of caramel they would salt in Brittany. A couple of chefs in San Francisco brought it over and started cooking with it, and now you have salted caramel lattes at Starbucks. Those are trends that might have more impact.

Alison Stewart: How do you go about reporting about trends? Who do you talk to? Where do you go? How do you travel?

Kim Severson: The food world is full of marketing people who get paid a lot of money to try to get us to write about their products and to sell your listeners more products. Every year they try to put forth what they think will be the food trends of the year. McCormick Spice Company always puts out its flavor of the year. Black currant, I think, was this year. Their marketing departments do look at how people are eating things that are trending, online sales. They talk to a lot of consumers. There's some value in that.

There are also a lot of trend watchers. Food companies, like Kemin or Mintel is a big one, and they have people who go out and eat all year, and pull out trends. I talk to all those kinds of folks. I talk to a lot of my colleagues. I like to talk to chefs who really are the ones, at least the higher level that are doing things that will end up being those are more common food we eat. This year a big fermented food is big. The Noma chefs were fermenting food, and it was kind of a high-end, cool thing for a while. Certainly, you also had the rise of kimchi and fermented food that is big in Asian cuisines, that was kind of happening. Now fermented foods are considered, sauerkrauts coming back, and so all these ideas.

When I talk to high-end chefs, I sort of see what they're doing because I know eventually it may come down to the masses. I just talk to a bunch of people, I read a bunch of stuff, and just kind of mash it all up and see what comes out.

Alison Stewart: Just to give us a little bit of perspective, what were some of the food trends from 2025?

Kim Severson: So 2025, we were still riding a little bit of the post-pandemic high, right? We were all hunkered down. We were really tired of eating our own cooking. Although certainly home cooking got a big boost during the pandemic. You have to think an entire nation had to learn to cook overnight, essentially, so all of our home cooking skills got a lot better and the sourdough bread craze and all of that. Boy, by the time we were out of that, people wanted to go to restaurants.

Immediately after the pandemic, there was this kind of roaring '20s vibe. Everybody wanted to go out and eat at restaurants. The problem was a lot of restaurants were closed. There was not a lot of service. It didn't work out that well, but we were still riding that a little bit. We're going to take chances. The political landscape was all kind of topsy-turvy, anything goes kind of vibe. People wanted wild flavors. Hot honey obviously was on everything, but you started to see these crazy mashups, combos of flavors. You saw brands like Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and cereal, and you saw hot sauce being in ice cream, and people just wanted to mix it up.

We were coming off of this real, wild ride time. We were drinking a lot of cold foam matcha, like a lot of dips. Sauces were huge. In fact, Kentucky Fried Chicken last year, start KFC, they call it. They introduced a chain that was just called Saucy, which was 13 sauces based on their secret. Sauces, we were dipping everything. There was just this whole choose your own adventure vibe. Very different than what we're heading into this year.

Alison Stewart: Yes, and hearing you talk about food and how it relates to society, when you look at food trends, what does it tell you about America writ large?

Kim Severson: Right. Well, it's interesting because people say, well, how is America eating? There are many Americas. That's the first thing to realize. People eat at lots of different levels, right?

Alison Stewart: Yes.

Kim Severson: It's kind of hard to say America is like this, but there are some things that we see that are happening overall. The protein craze is certainly something, but that's really fed, kind of a return to beef, both at the super high end. You have people spending crazy stupid money on $400 Wagyu steaks. I think ground beef is getting some new popularity in all of this and kind of a new sheen. Price of beef is high, but the beef consumption in this country is certainly meat consumption overall is up.

I think plant-based food still, after having a real shining moment, is woven into how we eat now more. We are moving back into a meaty moment. That could be political. It could be that the protein wellness craze is taking on. We're pretty meaty right now. We're in a meaty moment in America. Money is a big thing right now, and that's really affecting how we eat. You can really tell a lot about the economy. This year is super, if you know what I mean. Jump in, stop me when you want, because I want to go on.

Alison Stewart: You know what? I'm going to reintroduce yourself. You are Kim Severson, food correspondent for The New York Times.

Kim Severson: Right. We're going to talk about food for hours. I love it.

Alison Stewart: [laughs] We're talking about your article, "How We’ll Eat in 2026: More Caution, More Crunch." Let's get into 2026. You have food maxing meets grandmacore. Grandmacore is kind of this postmodern twist on stuff your grandma would make. Where does food maxing come into it?

Kim Severson: Right. All of our imaginary grandmas. Everyone's like, well, my grandma. Like, what did our grandmas really make? They were making Snickers salad, I don't know, but weren't like on the farm. We all have this imaginary grandma, right? This sort of comforting imaginary grandma. The food maxing thing, as you probably notice from your very health-focused friends who are into fiber maxing, they're into really like, are they getting enough grams of protein?

People are adding supplements, and there's this real sense of trying to manipulate your macronutrients for optimum health, right? We really are in that moment. What's happening is people, and in fact, I love this phrase, no nostalgia, this idea for more comfort, for more grandma foods, for simpler. If you saw the dietary guidelines that came out yesterday, the new diet are really whole foods, like, let's go back to cooking. There's just this really pulling back away from science a little bit and moving into whole foods. However, people really are into a more sophisticated way of fine tuning their bodies. For example, sauerkraut, let's talk about that. This idea of gut health is big. People were drinking probiotic sodas and trying to add this for your gut biome.

Now, they'll be like, well, let's have some sauerkraut or some pickles, like, old-fashioned, simpler food. Sourdough bread is getting its resurgence. Food maxing, the idea that we want to pick specific nutrients for performance in our body, mixed with this real desire for real food and grandma culture, so grandmacore meets food maxing.

Alison Stewart: That seems almost like a contradiction in terms.

Kim Severson: Right, but apparently not in 2026, my friend. Here we are.

Alison Stewart: Why do you think there's a turn towards nostalgia?

Kim Severson: Nostalgia is something that every generation has, and I can tell I've been doing this for many, many years. The boomers, for a while, there was a resurgence of like Beeman's gum and Clove gum, or these gum that was big when they were kids. Every generation, when you hit about 30 or 35, you get very nostalgic for the food you ate growing up. For a lot of the millennials, it was like Totino's Pizza Rolls, or there's just this thing you want from childhood.

All of that always happens, I think right now, again, because things are so topsy-turvy, and look at Stranger Things, that a very '80s nostalgia-driven TV show, a big hit. Right now, again, there's a lot of economic uncertainty. There's a lot of political uncertainty, a lot of racial uncertainty. Things are crazy. That hold for that better time is really big right now. I think food's a great way to just drill down into your past, into when you thought you were happier. People are like, oh man, I just want to have some SunnyD. I'm like, that is like the most terrible thing to drink ever. SunnyD is horrible. I drank a lot of it. It's not good. People are forever loving those kinds of things that they remember from childhood.

Alison Stewart: Oh yes, but this is a probiotic SunnyD.

Kim Severson: Okay, see, there you go.

Alison Stewart: There you go. [laughs]

Kim Severson: That's a million-dollar idea. Let's talk after the show. That's great.

Alison Stewart: Ingredient of the year is vinegar.

Kim Severson: I know, it doesn't sound very sexy, does it? Last year, I think, and this year, cabbage is still very popular. I don't know why I keep calling these ingredients of the year that don't sound sexy, but vinegar, I think, again, the idea of dipping sauces, ranch, things like that. There's this particularly among Gen Zs, love to add Tang and things that are intensely flavored to their food.

Vinegar does have some health benefits to it. It really is a great way to change and enhance and make food pop. Filipino food uses a lot of vinegar. Japanese food is very big. Pickling is very big. This idea of that flavor, the vinegar is something that our palates are really interested in right now. Also, I don't think you can discount the rise of non-alcoholic beverages and the role vinegar can play. You can make a shrub, which is where you take vinegar and sugar, vinegar and fruit, and you let it kind of ferment for a while, and you get this kind of lovely vinegary beverage that you can add to things or drink with seltzer. Vinegars are a way to help make non-alcoholic cocktails to give them a little more body, the body that alcohol usually gives. Vinegar's coming up, I think, in lots of ways for lots of reasons, so look for vinegar.

Alison Stewart: Texture will play a role in shaping what we eat this year. You quote a consulting firm president as saying, “This is the generation of fluffy, chewy, smooth, crunchy, melty.”

Kim Severson: Right. It's so interesting, taste used to be the real driver in nutrition. You'd think, oh, is this healthy for me or is this delicious. Now texture is really like the third player. I call it like the three of those are now in a culinary throuple together. The idea that texture matters when you eat, and if you look at the whole world of cheese pulls, and things that are creamy, and gummy candy, in fact, was just more popular this year, at least. The Halloween chocolate is still the number one, but gummy candies is like going crazy, and particularly among Generation Zs who love gummy things, they love like super sour things. Gummy, that texture for people, but you cannot ignore crunch talk, which is huge, like so shattering pastry, freeze dried candy. They have freeze dried Skittles now. That crunch really a big thing.

The word crispy has been big on menus, like as a descriptor. We've really been into the crunch lately. There's a debate. Is it going to be creamy as the new thing that people want? Is it gummy? I don't know. It could be a combination. There's also gummy nerds, which is, I really love where they have the little Nerd candies wrapped around a gummy center. I don't know if you all have eaten those. I like it. It's a very good candy. Now they have one that also adds like a gooey center. You have the crunchy nerd candy, the gummy outside and a gooey center. You're seeing this layering of creamy and crunchies, but it's really fascinating. The importance of texture has never been as high in this country.

Alison Stewart: As you're thinking about RFK's new food pyramid, which he just released, does it fit in with 2026 food trends?

Kim Severson: Absolutely. It's interesting. I'm just fascinated in this moment, the sort of MAHA meets the progressive-left foodie moment, the place on the Venn diagram where Alice Waters and that like, guy in the Viking horns who took over the Capitol, are in the same Venn diagram. There's this place where healthy food and regenerative agriculture, things that are not manipulated by a food company are very popular.

It may be the one place that the left and the right can really stand on, this idea that we can all meet at the farmer's market and maybe everything will be okay. You're seeing that reflected a little bit in the food pyramid where, for one thing, the recommendations of last year's food pyramid, five years ago when they did the dietary recommendations, like 120 pages long. This one I think is like eight pages, very simple whole foods, although it's very meat centric and it's very big. Beef tallow is very big in it. This idea of saturated fats which has all the heart specialists and nutritionists kind of wringing their hands.

This idea that we're getting away from ultra-processed foods, and that's the snack foods, the things that are designed to make us reach into the bag, there's a real pushing back against that. I think the government's never defined ultra-processed foods before, and I will assure you every snack company in the country is freaking out because they make ultra-processed foods. Also the GLP-1s are making people less interested in them.

There's this interesting place where our desire to move and to eat healthier, and to eat more real food is really meeting with RFK food pyramid. Now there are lots of places where it breaks down. There's lots of discussions around science that are unresolved. I'm not advocating one way or the other because I think there's a lot of problematic theories with the MAHA movement, but I also think there's some real core tenants, which is we all just want to eat real food that tastes good, and that makes us feel better and makes us feel healthy. There's a real common ground there I think.

Alison Stewart: You mentioned weight loss drugs like GLP-1s. How are they changing the way we eat?

Kim Severson: Fascinating. Well, you probably are seeing, like, protein Cheerio. Everything has protein-

Alison Stewart: Protein, yes.

Kim Severson: -in it now. Instead of worrying about like our calorie count, people are doing the math around protein grams. The fact of the matter is, and most nutritionists will tell you that we get enough protein, that we're not in some sort of horrible protein deficit. The amount of recommended protein has gone up in the new dietary recommendations. I think GLP-1s, there's a need to get more protein, because you can lose a lot of muscle on those drugs. That's part of it.

Proteins really come to the forefront in part because of the GLP-1s. I think I heard a stat yesterday from a doctor that like one in eight people have tried or are on one of these weight loss drug. It's significantly changing that, so protein is big. Then again, the snack food consumption is going down, and there's a lot of consolidation. Instead of having several different lines of a Doritos brand or whatever, there's a much more streamlining in the snack food aisle. I think we'll see that. I think the food companies will come out with much more thoughtful expansions in their marketing of snack foods. I think GLP-1s will make us eat less. Now, whether it'll make us eat the right amount of less or not, I don't know. I don't think that anybody's going to stop eating Cheetos, but it'll be interesting.

Alison Stewart: We got about a minute left, and I want to know what food trend that you absolutely did not see coming, and it surprised you in its popularity.

Kim Severson: Oh, very interesting. Well, two things. One thing is chai raves are big, like this idea of booze-free daytime dance parties. They're getting big. I haven't been invited to one, but everybody's like, "Oh, you got to go to a Chai Rave," so if you get invited.

Alison Stewart: I'll let you know. [laughs]

Kim Severson: Yes. The other thing that I really didn't see coming because I thought hotel food was so terrible, but there's a real resurgence in hotel dining. People want to go get beef Wellington and shrimp cocktail, and hotel restaurants are stepping up their game, and it may be that we can't maybe afford a big vacation, but we can go. I have younger friends in LA who are going and eating at restaurants, and it's like their thing now. Didn't see that one coming. Japanese breakfast, didn't see that one coming. There are quite a few things that I was surprised about, but chai raves, if anybody out there is hosting one, please invite me. I want to come.

Alison Stewart: Kim Severson is her name. That's who you should invite. She's food correspondent for The New York Times. Thanks for your time, Kim.

Kim Severson: Always a good time. Thank you so much.

Alison Stewart: Coming up, I'll be running down the hall into WNYC's Studio 5, because the jazz collective Freedom Riders will be performing next, right after the news.