Sam Worley: So this is the season for trend forecasting and the most encouraging headline Iāve seen was the one about how weāre all going to be eating chocolate cake for breakfast in 2017, which comes to us via Liz Moskow, who works for the ad agency Sterling-Rice Group. Usually I tend to think of this stuff as so much marketing, but this year Iām taking a different approach. The planet is dying, politics is depressing chaos, winter is coming. I donāt care if itās a big capitalist put-on. If nothing else matters, why not eat chocolate cake for breakfast?
I know you have opinions about both cake and breakfast.
David Tamarkin: I think itās hilarious that cake for breakfast would be a trend. This, to me, ignores the existence of muffins, which ceased being true muffins a long time ago and are now simply muffin-shaped cake. And these cake-muffins are everywhere! I canāt walk to work in the morning without passing, I donāt know, at least 50 muffins. Sometimes I break down and buy one of these muffins, and they are usually horrible.
SW: Muffins are almost always bad. A lot of breakfast offerings, particularly grab-and-go-type stuff, are already super sweet. I guess all the cake thing does is add frosting. (Assuming theyāre talking about frosted cakes.)
DT: Oh. Well, yeah. Frosting does seem intense before work.
SW: Why not cheesecake, though? Itās got a lot of protein. If weāre taking it there.
DT: Epicurious has gone on record as getting behind ricotta as a substitute for yogurt. Ricotta cheesecake is not so different. Still. Cheesecake for breakfast sounds gross. As does a slice of iced cake. So, so far, the trends of 2017 are making me feel sick. Whatās next?
SW: Youāll be pleased to learn that a growing popular interest in the problem of food waste has been forecast for 2017! At least by Liz Moskow, who says, "This is driven by millennialsā desire to make the earth a better place."
DT: Go millennials!
SW: And itās true that weāre simultaneously seeing a lot of movement in this regard: apps to help people and restaurants not throw their dinner away, campaigns by nonprofits (like the Natural Resources Defense Council) and government agencies (like the Environmental Protection Agency). I was at the James Beard Conference last week and food waste was a big topic of conversationāI think people were surprised at how much traction it's gotten.
DT: This is a good trend, not just for the earth, but for cooking in general. In order to not waste food, you have to cook it. And thatās encouraging to me, because if I am not mistaken, cookingātrue cookingāis on the decline.
SW: Iāve been happy to think more about food waste because it adds to a sense of challenge in the kitchenāwhat do I do with this broccoli stem?
DT: Exactly. That was really the justification for Epi doing food waste coverage in the first place. You have to get creative to use all those stems. When Kat Sacks blended kale stems into a creamy salad dressing, I was pretty psyched. Because one can only eat sauteed kale stems so much, you know?
Broccoli stems, on the other handāI can eat those all day. Better than the florets, IMHO.
SW: Oh my god, really? I hold this exact same opinion.
DT: Theyāre so meaty and delicious, and I love the shape, which is often a little geometric when I prep them because Iāve taken a peeler to it. Itās likeā¦I donāt knowā¦an English pound. Made out of broccoli.
SW: Letās switch to another prognosticator: this recent Wall Street Journal article on what food experts say weāll be eating next. It mentions jackfruit, which we know all about. It mentions spirulina, which figured into that fascinating recent Times magazine story on scientists trying to find a natural way to dye blue M&Ms. The unifying theme to the trends mentioned here is that theyāre all about conscious consumptionāhealthier, less earth-intensive. A whole slate of new kales.
DT: Spirulina sounds like a character Jane Fonda would have played. I donāt know that Iāll be eating it. Or jackfruit. Can I buy jackfruit at Whole Foods?
SW: Hell yeah.
DT: Fresh? Or in some sort of edible pouch?
SW: āIn some sort of edible pouch.ā Thereās a line of jackfruit meals made by a company called the Jackfruit Company. Barbecue, etc. You can get it fresh in Chinatown, I think.
DT:I donāt mean to sound cynical about this! I think it sounds like a great trend. Conscious eating. Love it.
But.
Just to get a bit more Oberlin here (class of 2000 HOLLA!)
SW: GO ON.
DT: The truly conscious eater knows that the answer is not to focus on one fruit, or one vegetable, or one nutrient. The very unsexy truthāI think, anywayāis, um, variety? Or, just, you know, not going in on something so hard that we deplete it, like we have with, um, the planet? But I guess jackfruit is part of the planet so weāre already screwed.
SW: YES, that too. The boom-and-bust-style craze for specific ingredients can wreak havoc on the planet and also the various economies that a product comes from. There was this recent piece in the Times wondering whether teff is āthe new super grain,ā which contained this sort of dark aside about how the government in Ethiopia, where teff was first domesticated, has banned its exportātheyāre worried that a craze for teff will make it unaffordable for Ethiopians, as the craze for quinoa may have in Peru. (Apparently whether quinoa actually had that is up for debate, but it still seems worth thinking about.)
DT: Well, at least the world is wising up to the fact that American food hipsters will destroy economies in the name of being on-trend. Man, we are monsters.
Do you have any trends to forecast for next year?
SW: Iāve only ever successfully forecast one trend. It was the height of the cupcake craze, and I thought that doughnuts would be next. And I was right! I shouldāve invested in something.
DT: I think 2017 is going to be the year things get real for the cooking kits. There are going to be winners, and there are going to be losers. The recent report that most customers only stick with the kits forāwhat was it? Six weeks? That was very telling.
SW: Only 10 percent of subscribers stuck with the kits six months later.
DT: I think some of these companies are going to finally give up.
SW: Do you think people find them too expensive?
DT: I wonder if people are dropping out because they donāt like to cook, and the cooking kits didnāt change that? Iām thinking about that article that came out a couple years agoā"The Joy of Cooking?"āabout how plenty of people just donāt like to cook. And why should they? Thereās no law. But I can imagine a situation where people who donāt like to cook get approached by one of the meal kit salespeople on the street, like I have.
SW: Like people who donāt like to cook are ordering the meal kits because they think theyāll be somehow fun and enjoyable, but it turns out that, in the end, it still requires cooking?
DT: They think, maybe this will spark my interest. And it doesnāt. Because itās just too damn similar to actual cooking. If that were me, I would cancel those boxes so fast.
SW: I saw somebody on Twitter speculating that the kits made people empowered to just cook by themselves at home, no meal kits required, so they stopped subscribing, but ā¦ that seems dubious.
DT: I saw that tweet, too. That conclusion is starry-eyed at best, completely insane at worst. What I think is really happening is that people are going back to their old habits. Be it cooking what they know, or not cooking at all. Because the truth is that cooking is a chore for a lot of people. And while the meal kits are exciting and new and fun at first, they keep comingā¦and coming. I imagine that might start to freak people out. "The box is coming! I have to cook it!"
SW: One article about that meal-kit analysis noted that while most people arenāt sticking to meal kits, the meal kit industry has grown something like 500 percent since 2014. Smells like a meal-kit bubble!
DT: Now if one of these kits could actually arrive in a real bubble...that just sort of hovers gently near your kitchen window...that company will be the one that wins.
SW: Meal kit by drone. Itās the obvious next step.
DT: Coming in 2018. Letās invest now.
