Help me write my next book.

What I talk about when I talk about writing about food, Generation Beta, and 2025 food trends.

Before I get into today’s newsletter, I have to comment on the devastating fires in Los Angeles. I’m heartbroken watching the destruction unfold. I grew up in LA and have many friends who are affected — losing homes, work places and so much more. Here are ways you can help.

Back to it.

Hello out there and thank you for opening up my first newsletter of 2025. And a special welcome to my many new subscribers. You’ve reached “Technically Food,” my newsletter about how technology is changing the food we eat. If you like the personal stuff (more me), you can find it at the end. Usually, my newsletter covers one weighty topic to kick off the show, but today’s newsletter is going to be a bit off spec.

If you’re just here for the newsy tidbits, keep scrolling.

As seen at CES 2025. LG’s latest design for indoor gardening, which I hope becomes a thing in 2025, is divine. It includes a lamp to grow plants underneath and it automatically waters them using a built-in tank. If your plants like to listen to music a speaker, too. Via The Verge.

My second book will be about navigating and understanding our current food system, and how New Foods (tech-food) is changing our relationship to food but how I tackle that topic is still up for discussion.

In that light, I have a request: I’m curious to know what are two burning questions — or two pain points — that you have when it comes to what or how you eat or how you feed the little people in your life? What can you never get settled on? Are you more interested in eating for the planet, looking out for your health, cutting costs, eating more sustainably, or animal welfare? (Hit reply to this email or the comment button below.)

Your questions could be along the lines of:

1. Why are seed oils suddenly bad for us? (This one aligns to one of my most popular newsletters, Peak Oil, on the same topic. I’ve unlocked it so everyone can read it.)

2. Which is better for my health: a plant-based burger or a grass-fed burger.

3. But wait, which one is better for the planet?

4. How do I navigate the constant alarms around ultra-processed foods (UPF)?

Your questions could also be none of the above. Maybe you want to know more about why our food system is failing us? Or more about the rise in GLP-1s? Whether plant-based foods are mostly UPF? Perhaps you want more about the new stuff you can’t get and what I’m tasting and finding out there?

Here’s another question:

Do you like reading profiles of people working in food or would you rather read about the history of something or learn about a New Food? Do you follow what our government is talking about when it comes to food? Do you care about what’s happening globally?

I appreciate any and all thoughts and feedback. My newsletters won’t always be full of questions and I won’t always ask you to do something. Promise. Anyways, hit reply to this email or hit the button below.

I’m just here for the tidbits:

1. That’s Interesting: Babies born in 2025 are the inaugural group being called ‘Generation Beta.’ Woah! That includes all the lucky Capricorns born through January 19th. (I love my fellow Caps.)

2. Time to rethink alcohol? Dry January will need to be rebranded or last all year now that the Surgeon General is getting extra vocal about alcohols link to cancer. Not just cancer—cancers plural. Seven kinds! Something we’ve had an inkling about since the 80s but that we haven’t wanted to accept—or it’s getting buried in alcohol lobbyists. I’m spending January off alcohol and a few of my favorite NA brands are: Kally, Surely, NON, and St. Agrestis phony mezcal negroni.

   

   A Phony Mezcal Negroni is my favorite cocktail no matter the month.

3. Will soda finally get the ax? A new study from researchers at the school of nutrition at Tufts University estimated that “2.2 million new cases of type 2 diabetes and 1.2 million new cases of cardiovascular disease occur each year globally due to consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages.” Conditions were shown to be “higher among men versus women, younger versus older adults, higher- versus lower-educated adults, and adults in urban versus rural areas.” Numbers were more pronounced in countries outside the US and the highest were found in Latin America, the Caribbean, and sub-Saharan Africa. Is this the year soda becomes cigarette bad? I really hope so.

4. That’s Hot: Kim Severson of NYTimes wrote that alt-coffee shops would reign supreme in 2025. She included Yemeni shops, and lo and behold there’s a new one in my semi-suburban Northern California town.

5. Once again but with more intensity: Big Food hopes that adding some spice will distract shoppers from the fact that most everything they produce industrially is UPF junk. Think Everything Bagel Mac & Cheese, pickle-flavored Heinz Ketchup, and Chicken of the Sea tuna made with Old Bay Seasoning.

6. Spice spice baby: NYTimes put its money down on spice. The Well asked chefs to create blends, called “flavor dust,” to make basic whole foods tastier. (Think sliced apples coated in cinnamon but more complex.) The Style section featured Burlap & Barrel for its work supporting small spice farmers around the world. (Its Royal Cinnamon is a spice I never run out of.) Jane Black wrote about saffron grown in California — a story I had earmarked to research and write. Wah.

Where you can find me:

1. I’m attending Startup CPG’s event in San Francisco on Wednesday, January 15th. (I’m so happy for in-person events.) If you’re there please say hi. I plan to bring a few copies of my book, Technically Food, and if you’re there I can sign one for you.

2. I’ll be at home making all the soups including this luscious lemon and pearl barley soup by Hetty Lui McKinnon.

3. I rang in the new year in Bishop, California, which is along Hwy 395 in the Eastern Sierra’s. It’s an incredibly beautiful section of the state that I haven’t seen since I was a kid—and when I was a kid I was usually asleep in the back seat. I highly recommend carving out time for a road trip of your own, wherever you live. Since food is key to everything I do, I’ll share how we got by over the eight days without breaking the bank or the scale. We brought everything we needed for breakfast — adventure bread, nut butter, berries and coffee — and we ate in the morning wherever we were staying. After we hiked or explored or did whatever, we sat on the edge of the truck and ate from our cooler — cheese, crackers, Brami beans, crunchy chickpeas, carrots, an apple and if I planned ahead, something to split from a bakery. For dinner we ate out. It was perfect. My only miss: we didn’t bring plates or a cutting board but we did have a sharp knife, a bottle opener, utensils and cloth napkins. I’m learning.

4. Do you follow me on Instagram? Please do.

5. Is there a hiking boot version of Sneex, as seen on Gayle King and Kathy Bates at the Golden Globes? If so, I’ll be wearing them.

   

   Sneex luxury hybrid stilleto.

6. Have you read my book? You can find it at the library, on Kindle, Audible and your local bookstore can order it for you. Yep, you can also get it at Amazon.