MORE CAUTION, MORE CRUNCH

How we'll eat in 2026

- KIM SEVERSON

The way we ate in 2025 was a wild ride, a time to take chances on unexpected flavours and drink cold-foam matcha lattes and dip everything in sauce.

While many Americans agonised over the price of beef, others spent like crazy on A5 Wagyu. Classic chain restaurants like Chili's and Red Lobster were winners, but so were ingredients aimed at gut health, memory and mood. And perhaps — just perhaps — we hit peak protein.

The game has changed for 2026. Last year's anything-goes sensibility has given way to caution. Diners crave quality, reliability and small pops of pleasure. Quiet luxury is the catchphrase.

To make sense of it all, every December I consult an army of market researchers, food company executives, restaurant publicists and cooks and dissect their forecasts for the coming year.

Sure, I've been wrong in the past — like predicting celtuce would be the “it” vegetable in 2019. Turns out the thick-stemmed lettuce had absolutely no star power.

The goal is not to declare that “swangy” is the new swicy or that everyone will be eating whole baked sweet potatoes stuffed with butterkäse. Rather, let me serve you some educated guesses at where we're all headed, through the lens of how we eat.

We live in an era of strategic consumption: protein shakes, superfood bowls and metabolic maximisation, all aimed at hitting specific nutritional goals. Forecasters expect that precision targeting to continue but to start tapping into traditional kinds of cooking.

We're talking about the kind of warm, grounding foods your best imaginary grandma might have made, like sourdough bread, dried apples, sauerkraut and vegetables she canned herself. Some are tagging it “nonna-stalgia”.