Food Scholars Predict 2025 Food Trends
Out: Seed Oils. In: Snake Oil.
As a food scholar, I am frequently asked for quotes about food history, thoughts on a particular food or cultural food moment, and suggestions for historically analogous recipes. We’re always asked to look backwards and use our knowledge of the past and what has been to explain the food of the now. No one has ever asked me to predict the foods of the future (Note: I did get to do a modern baking prediction for my friend Bronwen’s list last year and it was an absolute honor). While my dissertation committee would push their glasses up and chastise me for even daring to suggest this, it’s not not wrong: history is kinda sorta cyclical. So if anyone is a good bet for food-related trend predictions, it’s a food scholar.
But since no one ever asks us, and because we’re in the business of critical analysis and cultural assessment rather than historically-informed divination, we take to our group text threads (I’ve already told you we have one) to share our hot takes smart thoughts.
So in the season of the rapidly incoming new year and in the spirit of attempting to foresee what it might hold, here’s some of my very brilliant food scholar friends’ food trend predictions for 2025. And because we are food scholars, farming and agricultural specialists, seasoned food writers and recipe developers, food historians, and cookbook authors, we’ve brought receipts (i.e. citations, please see links below).
Entries edited for length and grammar (because we food scholars can get quite angsty and/or saucy while texting about our food studies and are prone to typos). Also, DISCLAIMER these are jokes (but also maybe not entirely far fetched ones).
Buying conventional instead of organic. I’ll be sticking to natural wine, but when it comes to groceries I’m shifting back to non-organic because if we’re all drinking microplastics anyway, what harm could a little GMO produce do?!
Raw milk is the new panacea: for everything from rashes to bacterial infections, we’re chugging raw milk at rates unforeseen in human history, meanwhile, our ancestors just turned it into cheese and yogurt.
I think because we’re seeing an influx of white influencer *chefs* begin to cook “authentic” food from other cultures, we’re going to *finally* retire the word authentic.
Thanks to RFK Jr., America is the “first” to “discover” the dangers of ultra-processed food and promises to "Make America Healthy Again." Americans suddenly learn that what we eat impacts our health, and that industrial food manufacturers just might be part of the long standing problem with America's failed “standard American diet” and that pesky food pyramid that fueled so many of our crappy relationships with food.
Erewhon will start selling Hailey Bieber cosmetics in order to diversify as sales of their $20 celeb smoothies drop because people can’t justify $20 eggs AND a $20 smoothie in one purchase (even in LA!!!).
Just as Dan Souza of America's Test Kitchen predicted the return of iceberg lettuce as the year's hot new ingredient, I see a fresh interrogation of American food along narrow, obviously xenophobic terms. Not just raw milk, but whole milk, red meat, white bread, corn, will all get boosts under the Trump administration, with alternative meats and milks being framed as “radical” un-American choices.
Meanwhile, Americans moving overseas will bring a fresh wave of anthropological-style analyses of “foreign food,” reminding us that it's never too late for Americans to herald the “undiscovered” eats of other countries, and to fetishize the culinary cultures of their new homelands.
Costco just announced that it’s swapping its Pepsi products to Coca-Cola, and I can only hope that this means the CEO is ramping up to defend us from RFK trying to take Diet Coke from us via “If you raise the price of the f*cking hot dog, I will kill you.”
Book bans in public schools were just an aperitif, folks. Next on the menu: They’re coming for your cookbooks. It doesn’t matter why feijoada and Hoppin’ John are so similar; no more histories of curry, either. Take out all the stories about slave cooking and baking as resistance and culinary adaptation to oppression or climate or diaspora. Get rid of the gay recipes, the Jewish traditions, the Chinese calendars. And, most of all: Stop calling pepper “black,” okay? Enough is enough; all peppers matter. We are one nation under God. Indivisible! With liberty and justice for all!
Inevitably, with these grocery prices, we’re going to have to eat the rich, right?
BONUS! Because food scholars can be quite verbose, we’ve also put together a little In/Out list!
Special thanks to all my food scholar friends who lent their smart thoughts for this post. In intentionally randomized order: Carlynn Crosby, Madison Trapkin, Jess Carbone, Alexandra Domrongchai, Julia Skinner, Marcie Cohen Ferris, Catherine Piccoli, Vanessa García Polanco, and Esther Martin. Follow and learn from all of them!
Loved this snarky post! I'm one of those rare people still loving canola oil, and I really don't care what people say. It's got an awesome nutty flavor that no other oil can mimic. I use other fats and oils too, of course, but they each have their time and place.
I didn’t know a food scholar was a thing! I want to know everything about them now!