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What Flavor Unlocks

Sustainable, healthy foods won’t win through guilt trips alone—they need to be irresistible.

Flavor is the most powerful force in our food system. Not nutrition labels, not health claims, not environmental impact. It’s flavor. It’s the gravitational force that decides what we eat, what gets produced, and what companies make billions from.

You know how I know this? Because entire industries exist purely because they figured out how to make food taste incredible, with no other redeemable attributes other than their taste. Chips, energy drinks, candy—these products don’t keep you healthy or feed you efficiently. They have little to contribute to a healthier agricultural system. Yet they exist because food scientists cracked the code on making your brain crave them. And it works. These companies rake in billions by hitting our pleasure buttons just right.

If junk food can build empires on taste alone, imagine what we could do with food that actually serves us.

The Business of Bliss

Every ingredient in a bag of chips is there for one reason: to trigger your reward system as hard as possible. Food scientists call these “bliss points“—the perfect mix of salt, fat, sugar, and crunch that makes your brain say “more.”

Companies making healthier or more sustainable foods face a different challenge. They’re working so hard on the nutrition, the sourcing, the environmental impact, that they can run out of bandwidth to make their products truly irresistible.

Many of these companies get so caught up in their metrics and mission that they lose objectivity about how their product tastes. They delude themselves into thinking their product is more delicious than it actually is. There’s almost an implicit assumption that the nutrition label or sustainable certifications it bears will get eaters to overlook that the thing might actually taste like shit. The result? Products that check all the right boxes on paper but fail the most basic test—do people actually want to eat them?

It’s noble to make food that’s healthy and sustainable, but the average eater can’t taste nobility. They need flavor. We need more brutal honesty about how our food tastes. Especially for the foods that are trying to create positive impact on the health of people and planet. Because if those aren’t also the foods that people crave, then that brand’s impact will never be realized. Flavor is the key to unlocking that impact.

The success of junk food actually shows us the path forward. Flavor isn’t the enemy of healthy eating—it’s the secret weapon we’re not using enough. Instead of fighting our love of delicious food, we should be making healthy food irresistible.

Breeding for Flavor

Dan Barber’s Row 7 Seed Company exemplifies this approach. By breeding vegetables primiarly for flavor first, Row 7 is doing what I think is one of the most important efforts in food today—closing the gap between artificially flavored junk food and real food.

The produce industry has spent decades inadvertently breeding the flavor out of basic vegetables to make them more compatible with the demands of industrial food supply chains. Carrots, potatoes, salad greens—most of what you find in supermarkets has been selected for everything except taste. Is it any wonder kids still have trouble eating their vegetables? We’ve created a food system where a bag of chips delivers more flavor excitement than a carrot and it doesn’t need to be that way.

Remember the first time you tried an in-season, heirloom tomato? I do. It completely scrambled my brain about the theoretical flavor potential of common produce. I felt like I was lied to by the mass tomato industry about how good these things could taste.That first bite was a revelation—sweet, acidic, and startlingly complex, as if I’d been eating tomato-flavored water my whole life. It made me think: what other foods had I been gaslit into accepting?

And how lucky was I to even discover this, when so many people go through life never knowing that vegetables don’t have to taste as bland as the specimens lining supermarket shelves? Of course, it’s not practical for everyone to spend $8 on an heirloom tomato—I get that this sounds like privileged foodie nonsense.

But what if we put the same energy into making vegetables irresistible that we put into perfecting snack foods? What impact would we have on the world getting people to eat more vegetables and fruits by showing them more delicious versions of things they didn’t think could be delicious? Imagine how much we could do to convince people to eat more real food if they understood there was a better, more delicious option waiting for them.

The Twilight of Universal Taste

It’s really hard to try and imagine what a critical mass of people can agree on is delicious anymore. In our increasingly fragmented society—split by culture, class, geography, and digital echo chambers—can we even create flavors that almost everyone agrees taste good? Flavor is so subjective and can often be altered by circumstance, mood, atmosphere, story, context, and a thousand other variables. This requires stepping outside your own taste preferences and imagining what deliciousness means to people from different backgrounds, with different genetics, different food histories.

A spice that seems mild to someone used to fresh, high-quality ingredients might taste intense to someone raised on processed food. Products designed for mass appeal often disappoint people looking for more complex flavors. The challenge is creating food that bridges these different flavor worlds without dumbing everything down to the lowest common denominator—but maybe that challenge is becoming impossible.

If this is true, then the basic assumption of Big Food—create standardized food for the masses—might be fundamentally eroding. Is it becoming a fool’s errand to try to make everyone happy? Perhaps the smarter play is to superserve the people we know who will really like something and forget about being everything to everyone. This shift is already slowly happening in our grocery store aisles, with endless micro-targeted products for specific dietary needs, cultural preferences, and lifestyle tribes.

But I wonder: could anyone create a company today from scratch with as much mass flavor appeal as Coca-Cola once had? Or are we living in the twilight of universal taste, where the future belongs not to products that unite us, but to those that divide us into ever-smaller, more satisfied tribes?

Making Virtue Irresistible

We’re facing huge challenges in the food system: climate change, public health crises, food security. Flavor is the key that unlocks the innate potential of any food to address these problems. The most promising food innovations aren’t asking people to sacrifice pleasure for virtue—they’re making virtuous choices more pleasurable.

Consider the groundbreaking work that Mette Johnsen, CEO of Spora, described in our interview. Spora is a global food research center that emerged from Copenhagen’s revolutionary restaurant Alchemist, bridging avant-garde gastronomy with food science. Her team tackled the 80 million tons of rapeseed cake left over annually after oil extraction—a protein-rich waste stream that looks “more like something you feed a rabbit” and tastes intensely bitter due to compounds that suppress nutrient absorption.

Through fermentation, they transformed this industrial byproduct into what Johnsen calls a “gold standard protein” that’s as nutritionally valuable as soy. The result is a versatile meat alternative that can be formed into burger patties, used in bolognese, or incorporated into spring salads now served at Alchemist.

While Alchemist itself remains a rarified dining experience—accessible to only a privileged few due to cost and location—operations like Spora represent something far more significant: innovation sandboxes where extensive resources and world-class talent can identify patterns of deliciousness that could eventually reach mainstream food channels. The same fermentation techniques perfecting rapeseed protein for Copenhagen’s culinary elite could one day inform products sold at McDonald’s or Walmart. These high-end laboratories serve as proving grounds for flavor breakthroughs that, once refined, can be scaled and democratized.

This illustrates a crucial principle: without solving the fundamental flavor problem first—making something genuinely delicious that people would choose repeatedly—the enormous potential for converting massive waste streams into human food could never have been realized. As Johnsen puts it, they put “deliciousness first” as the essential vehicle for sustainable food choices.

Everyone in the food industry says “it’s gotta taste good,” but how many are actually successful at doing that? The gap between intention and execution is enormous. Too many companies are in denial about how their products really taste compared to what’s already winning in the marketplace.

Sustainable foods won’t win through guilt trips alone—they have to win in the arena of immediate satisfaction. The most exciting food tech focuses on unlocking new flavors that were previously impossible: fermentation that creates entirely new tastes from food waste, growing techniques that concentrate flavor compounds, processing that preserves the sensory qualities usually lost in mass production.

These approaches recognize that flavor isn’t frivolous—it’s the fundamental force that determines which foods survive. Products that taste better don’t just sell better, they reshape eating patterns and ultimately determine the direction of our entire food system.

This essay was inspired by a conversation about The Future of Flavor on The Tomorrow Today Show, featuring host Mike Lee with guest co-host Ali Bouzari (food scientist and co-founder of Pilot R&D), Mario Ubiali (Founder of Thimus), Ori Zohar (Co-founder of Burlap & Barrel), and Mette Johnsen (CEO of Spora).

This post was originally published on Mike Lee’s wonderfully written and informational substack. You can find the post here. You should subscribe!

And you know what? You should also definitely subscribe to Mike’s new podcast, The Tomorrow Today Show, from the Spoon Podcast Network. You can listen to this episode about flavor below.

After Leaving Starbucks, Mesh Gelman Swore Off The Coffee Biz. Now He Wants To Reinvent Cold Brew Coffee

Mesh Gelman didn’t set out to build a cold coffee company. In fact, when he left his role leading innovation at Starbucks, he didn’t want anything to do with coffee.

“I was interested in the left side of my email address and not the right side, the Gellman part, not the Starbucks part,” he told The Spoon. “I was like, okay, I’m gonna innovate and it’s not gonna be in coffee.”

That resolution lasted about six months.

Now, as founder and CEO of Cumulus Coffee, Gelman is back in the world he knows best, only this time he’s tackling what he sees as one of the most overlooked challenges in modern coffee: cold brew.

Cumulus is a countertop device that delivers nitro cold brew and cold espresso on demand, using a proprietary capsule system. It doesn’t require refrigeration or nitrogen tanks, and Gelman says it produces a café-quality drink in under 60 seconds.

“If we could deliver a premium experience every single time, better than café quality at the push of a button, why would you ever choose to go back?” said Gelman.

The epiphany that set Gelman on his journey to build a cold brew system came during a visit to Starbucks’ Roastery in Seattle, when he tried nitro cold brew for the first time. “I took one gulp of it, and I was like, my God, I’m gonna be in trouble. This is like full of dairy,” he said. “And the barista was like, ‘No, there’s nothing in it.’ It was a transformative experience.”

After three years of bootstrapping the product, Gelman raised funding, including a seed check from former boss Howard Schultz. In total, Cumulus has raised over $30 million.

For Gelman, the mission is clear: bring premium cold brew into the home and beyond.

“We need to take a step back and say, let’s delete everything we know and craft something for cold,” he said.

Cumulus has launched online and in select Williams-Sonoma stores and Gelman says they are targeting both consumer and commercial markets, including offices, cafés, and bars.

You can watch my full conversation with Gelman below or listen to it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Building a Home Cold Brew Coffee System with Mesh Gelman

Brian Canlis on Leaving an Iconic Restaurant Behind to Start Over in Nashville With Will Guidara

Brian Canlis didn’t expect to be in the restaurant business his whole life.

But as with so many family businesses – especially hugely successful ones like Canlis, which single-handedly put Pacific Northwest cuisine on the map – life and careers happen before we know it.

And there’s no doubt that the brothers Canlis, Brian and his brother Mark, have done a masterful job since taking the reins from their parents (who themselves inherited it from Peter Canlis, who started the restaurant back in 1950). Today, Canlis is as relevant and forward-thinking as ever, a rare achievement in an industry where even the most legendary restaurants often have a shelf life.

So after nearly two decades at the helm, it would have been easy (and expected) for Brian to continue leading the restaurant, enjoying the perks of running a world-famous dining institution perched above Seattle’s Lake Union. Instead, he decided it was time to blow it all up.

“When I became a restaurateur in my 20s, I was single and I tried on the shirt called running this restaurant—and it fit,” Canlis told me on the Reimagining Restaurants podcast. “Twenty years later, I have four small kids and the shirt doesn’t fit in the same way.”

So what does a new shirt that fits his 40-something life a little better look like? As revealed in February in the New York Times, it’s a new chapter in Nashville, where he’s joining forces with his best friend from college, Will Guidara—co-founder of Eleven Madison Park and author of Unreasonable Hospitality—on an open-ended creative partnership.

The two have been close since freshman orientation and even worked together in New York during a brief sabbatical Brian took in 2013. Now, they’re reuniting, potentially for the long-term, but with a little ‘try-it-before-you-buy it’ twist: “We said, ‘Let’s date before we get married’,” Canlis said. “Let’s just work together for a year and see what happens.”

The move reflects more than just professional curiosity—it’s rooted in a desire to be more present as a father and partner, and to explore what work and life can look like when untethered from legacy.

“I started to grow an imagination for what it would look like to have a career where I could be more present to these kiddos every day,” he said. “Where I could exercise a different piece of my brain, and maybe move closer to my wife’s family.”

Leaving wasn’t an easy decision, but it was one supported wholeheartedly by his brother and business partner, Mark.

“He said, ‘You should only be working here as long as you are flourishing as a human,’” Brian said. “‘Our values are only our values if they cost us something.’”

That ethos – prioritizing people over plates – is the red thread throughline of Brian’s journey. Whether it was converting Canlis into a burger drive-thru during the pandemic or hosting wild, pink-painted Barbie-themed fundraisers, the Canlis brothers infused hospitality with heart and a willingness to take creative risks.

Their guiding principle? That a restaurant should be a place where people are inspired to turn toward each other.

“We’re not in the food business,” Brian told me. “We’re in the people business.”

As for what comes next, Brian is embracing the uncertainty. He and Will haven’t put anyting in concrete just yet, just an agreement to explore new ideas and opportunities in hospitality, with Nashville as their testing ground.

It’s a leap. But then again, so was opening the first restaurant in Seattle with a liquor license in 1950. So was putting a fine-dining spot on a cliff above Lake Union. So was painting the walls pink.

Turns out, reinvention runs in the family.

You can watch my full conversation Brian below or find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or where you listen to podcasts.

Brian Canlis on Leaving an Iconic Restaurant Behind to Start Over in Nashville With Will Guidara

How Eva Goulbourne Turned Her ‘Party Trick’ Into a Career Building Sustainable Food Systems

Eva Goulbourne didn’t study food systems in college – she studied the Cold War, intercontinental ballistic missiles, and art history – but her lifelong obsession with food would eventually shape a career that’s taken her across the globe and put her at the center of the global food systems transformation conversation.

I recently caught up with Eva for an episode of The Spoon Podcast to talk about her journey and hear more about her vision for her new podcast, Everything But the Carbon Sink.

“I started subscribing to Martha Stewart Living Magazine when I was about seven or eight,” Goulbourne told me. “What can’t you learn about food systems from Martha Stewart?” That early curiosity became a foundation for what she describes as a “very long-term relationship with food,” one that she would eventually channel into a mission-driven career.

After a short stint at the U.S. State Department, Goulbourne took a job focused on financial services for tobacco farmers in Kenya and Malawi. “That was again like a continued access point to agriculture [and] international development,” she said. The project, funded by Nike Foundation, MasterCard Foundation, and Gates Foundation, introduced her to the role of philanthropy in market development — a theme that would shape her later work.

Her next big step came with the World Economic Forum, where she landed a role on the food security and agriculture team. “That was really, like I was saying, I was off to the races in terms of having access and understanding and helping to facilitate entire regional projects with agribusinesses, the largest retailers in the world, seed companies, fertilizer companies, ministers of agriculture and development banks.”

Goulbourne describes this period (the era after the launch of the UN Sustainable Development Goals) as a pivotal moment when “purpose and profit could very much actually win.” She witnessed corporate leaders, such as Unilever’s Paul Polman, bring ‘net positive’ thinking to global food policy discussions.

But eventually, she wanted to go deeper. “I was really itching to become an expert… I couldn’t be the Jane of all trades.” That itch led her to ReFED, where she became employee number one and helped turn a landmark food waste report into a full-fledged organization. “We didn’t know if anybody was gonna read this thing,” she recalled. “And boy, we didn’t know… hoping that people would receive it well.”

The report was a hit, and Goulbourne stayed on to help raise over a million dollars in philanthropic funding to grow ReFED. But after a few years, a new motivation emerged: motherhood. “I found out I was pregnant… and immediately had this maternal instinct to do more and do something to now protect the planet, the environment, society… So that’s why Littlefoot is called Littlefoot.”

With her consulting firm, Littlefoot Ventures, Eva has guided food brands, startups, and philanthropists through everything from food loss strategies to regenerative ag and capital deployment. “I sort of call food waste a chameleon issue,” she said. “My party trick is that it doesn’t matter what part of the food supply chain you mention, I can convince you and have some access point back to food waste.”

It’s this broad view is that makes Eva such a great podcast host. Her new podcast, Everything but the Carbon Sink, focuses on the intersection of food, climate, and finance , as well as the tough and thorny challenges that prevent progress.

Eva calls these thorny issues no one wants to talk about the ‘ugly baby’ problems.

“For Everything but the Carbon Sink, I decided to have the podcast be focused on this intersection of food… to climate… and then finance, because to answer your question about the ugly baby, how do we pay for this stuff? Why is it so damn hard?”

One thing I noticed about Eva is she works with pretty much every continsituency in the food system innovation. Through her consulting work and now her podcast, Goulbourne is trying to help stakeholders across sectors, from venture capitalists to philanthropists, understand that substantial systems change requires coordinated investment. “You can’t VC your way out of this problem,” she said. “Our food system runs on harvest seasons and weather, and we’re working against and with the climate crisis.”

If you are interested in food system innovation, reducing food waste, or building a career in mission-based investing and fundraising, you are going to want to listen to this episode and subscribe to Eva’s podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can also watch our conversation below.

Blended Capital, Big Impact: Funding the Food System Change With Eva Goulbourne

Introducing The Tomorrow Today Show With Mike Lee

Back in 2017, I wrote a story exploring the idea of personalized food profiles. The piece explored whether, someday, we might walk into restaurants, shop at the grocery store, or have dinner at a friend’s house and be able to communicate our food preferences and dietary restrictions in advance, shaping our entire meal journey accordingly.

The inspiration for that article came from Mike Lee, who had just spoken at our Smart Kitchen Summit in Seattle that October. During his talk, he introduced the idea of a “food passport” that could someday help personalize food experiences wherever we go. I had gotten to know Mike through his work at The Future Market, where he developed a concept store of the future for the Fancy Food Show. It didn’t take long for me to realize that Mike has a rare ability to imagine the many possible futures of our food system and to understand how technology and social change might intersect to bring those futures to life.

However, it wasn’t until he published his book Mise: On the Future of Food that I fully appreciated the breadth of his thinking and the ways he can masterfully get his ideas across. In Mise, Mike not only describes big potential technologies and changes we will wrestle with in the future, but he gave us stories of how these changes might unfold in our lives.

In short, Mike is not only skilled at identifying early signals and trends, but he’s also a master of using storytelling to illustrate how these futures might unfold, which is why I’m super excited to welcome his new show to The Spoon Podcast Network: The Tomorrow Today Show.

In his new podcast, Mike takes listeners on a weekly deep dive into the future of food, whether it’s restaurants, farming, consumer products, nutrition, or even food hedonism. Each episode features long-form conversations that go beyond surface-level takes, offering nuanced insights from some of the most thoughtful voices in the industry.

In this first episode, The Future of Restaurants, Mike has a roundtable conversation with Kristen Hawley (Expedite), Elizabeth Tilton (Oyster Sunday), David Rodolitz (Flyfish Club), and yours truly. We explore everything from the role of empathy in hospitality to why chefs are trading molecular gastronomy for comfort food like pot pies.

Season one is launched, and you can watch the first episode below or listen to it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Make sure to subscribe, rate and review!

Mike is my guest on this week’s episode of The Spoon Podcast, so make sure to listen to that as well to hear a little more about Mike’s background.

The Future of Restaurants

Why Ag Has a Unique Opportunity to Be a Solution to Our Climate Problem With TNC’s Renée Vassilos

What if the food system could be a climate solution instead of a climate problem? That’s the question Eva Goulbourne explores with Renée Vassilos, Director of Agriculture Innovation at The Nature Conservancy (TNC), in the debut episode of Everything But the Carbon Sink. Together, they unpack the role of agriculture in addressing the climate crisis—and why capital and innovation are key to unlocking its potential.

“Agriculture has a tremendous negative footprint in terms of greenhouse gas emissions,” said Vassilos. “But it’s also uniquely positioned to be a carbon sink.”

Vassilos explained that by focusing on soil health, reduced inputs, and practices like cover cropping and rotational grazing, farms can become drivers of climate resilience, biodiversity, and profitability. “At the core of how we think about regenerative agriculture, it is about soil health. It’s about rebuilding soil health,” she said. “Because as we think about the role agriculture can play in climate change mitigation, halting and reversing biodiversity loss, and improving freshwater systems, it all anchors around rebuilding soil health.”

Goulbourne believes that the concept of regenerative agriculture can feel messy and hard to pin down. “There are practices, there are values. It’s not one-size-fits-all.” Vassilos agreed, noting that what works in one region or operation might not work in another. “Each operation will have to anchor itself in rebuilding soil health, and the tools they’ll use will vary.”

They also discussed the economic realities farmers face. “It all comes down to economics,” said Vassilos. “The operations that are shifting to regenerative are doing so because it makes business sense, often because they’re producing higher-margin food crops.”

However, with high labor costs, land leasing complexity, and limited short-term ROI, adoption remains slow. To address this, TNC is investing in early-stage agtech solutions aimed at removing the so-called green premium. One example cited by Vassilos is SwarmFarm, an Australian startup building autonomous, lightweight farm equipment. “Their robots enable precise nitrogen application without the heavy soil compaction of traditional machinery,” Vassilos explained.

My favorite part of the conversation is when Goulbourne asked Vasillos what the “ugly baby” in this space is – in other words, the problem in ag that no one wants to touch.

Vassilos didn’t hesitate: “Addressing labor challenges is just absolutely critical,” she said. “These regenerative systems are more complex. That often means they take different kinds of labor, sometimes more labor. We have to be honest about that.” She pointed to emerging technologies in automation as promising, but noted it’s still an underfunded area given its significance.

It was a great conversation, one that really highlights Eva Goulbourne’s unique perspective on the different pathways for capital to help address the climate challenge through the food system. I would encourage you to subscribe to the podcast to ensure you get all of the future Everything But the Carbon Sink pods and check out the video below!

Farming for the Future

How Tariffs Are Impacting Canadian Food Companies (and What They’re Doing About It)

Last week, I caught up with Dana McCauley, CEO of the Canadian Food Innovation Network (CFIN), to discuss some of the challenges facing Canadian food manufacturers amidst the abrupt and surprisingly hostile stance taken by the Trump administration towards our northern neighbors.

CFIN is a national organization dedicated to helping Canadian food and beverage businesses enhance productivity, competitiveness, and economic potential through innovation and technology adoption, and in her position as president of the organization, McCauley had a bird’s eye view on how the Canadian food companies are navigating considerable uncertainty due to shifts in trade policies, tariffs, and antagonistic rhetoric from the U.S. administration

We discussed the disruption caused by sudden policy reversals on trade agreements previously established between Canada and the U.S., and what the imposition of tariffs has meant to Canadian food companies. According to McCauley, the uncertainty forces Canadian food companies to spend extensive resources on scenario planning, detracting from productivity and innovation. McCauley pointed out that these issues are magnified in the food business compared to other industries because of the food’s unique constraints compared to other sectors, such as limited shelf life.

Another struggle for Canadian food manufacturers under the new reality is figuring out how to move forward in a business that often involves complex products that historically have integrated cross-border ingredient lists. McCauley shared the example of organic dairy products, which traditionally have included American-sourced dairy components for value-added products. McCauley said that rising tariffs and trade barriers now render these business models economically unsustainable, prompting businesses to rethink their strategies drastically.

And then there’s the hostile rhetoric from an administration of a country that Canadians have long-seen as their biggest ally. McCauley has said that the result of this rhetoric has been a strong push among consumers to “buy Canadian”. The shift to Canadian and drop American products has been swift and one has to wonder about the long-term damage that Trump is doing to the American brand in Canada and elsewhere.

I asked McCauley how CFIN is supporting Canadian companies given all the sudden changes, and she said that CFIN is actively supporting Canadian food businesses through this volatile period by advocating for enhanced domestic innovation and accelerated regulatory approvals for low-risk food technologies. She emphasized the urgency for Canadian food manufacturers to diversify markets, embrace domestic technological solutions, and leverage Canada’s extensive international trade agreements to navigate ongoing trade uncertainties effectively.

We talk about lots more, so you won’t want to miss our conversation. You can listen to my full conversation below or on The Spoon Podcast.

How Tariffs Are Impacting The Canadian Food Industry

Soul to Table: Chef Ryan Lacy Talks With Thom Curry About How He Built Temecula Olive Oil Company

On this debut episode of “Soul to Table,” Chef Ryan Lacy sits down with Thom Curry, co-founder of Temecula Olive Oil Company, to talk about Thom’s journey that began 22 years ago when he and his wife decided to transition from wine to olive oil production.

Ryan joins Thom on location at his picturesque 26-acre property in Awanga, California, where Thom talks about key moments in their journey—such as Nancy’s decision to open one of the nation’s first olive oil tasting rooms—a move Thom initially doubted. Despite challenging beginnings in a remote location, their dedication paid off as consumers sought out their unique, high-quality olive oils.

Thom talks about the biodiversity of the farm, which features over 32 Mediterranean olive varieties alongside herbs and fruits, and his embrace of regenerative farming practices, including using livestock for land maintenance and recycling olive by-products as compost or even fuel.

Thom also shares how he developed California’s first mobile olive oil mill and discusses his company’s educational initiatives, including collaborations with local schools to promote regenerative farming and sustainable agriculture.

Make sure to watch the video below to see some great shots of Thom and Nancy’s farm, and subscribe to the podcast!

From Desert to Oasis

The Spoon Discusses The Current State of AI Workflows With AI for Humans’ Gavin Purcell

In this latest edition of the Spoon Full of AI Podcast – the podcast where I talk to leaders who are using AI to transform their business (in food and beyond), I catch up with AI for Humans host Gavin Purcell to discuss the rapid advancements and complexities emerging in artificial intelligence. We talk about Google’s new Studio AI platform and its potential as an all-in-one solution for content creation, and we both have reservations about Google’s use of an older image generation model (Gemini 2), highlighting its limitations compared to newer versions like Gemini 3.

AI Studios? with Gavin Purcell

Gavin talked about the transformative shift from traditional file-based computing to generative AI, as noted in Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s recent keynote. He make a great point talking about how this will be difficult for mainstream adoption, where users expect simplicity akin to social media sharing, yet AI tools remain complex and imperfect.

We both talk about our frustrations with current AI workflows, where we compared the cumbersome nature of local models like Comfy UI to more streamlined platforms such as Ideogram and MiniMax. In the end, we both want a unified, user-friendly AI platform but recognize that technical and creative challenges remain significant hurdles.

We also discuss who we predict will be winners in the AI platform space (no spoilers!), so make sure you listen to see who we pick!

You can watch the full video above or click play below, or find this podcast in Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you find your podcasts.

The 5 Questions Big Green Egg’s New CEO Asked 86 Employees When He Took The Job

How does an outsider step into leading a company that has only had two previous CEOs over its half-century existence?

For Dan Gertsacov, who became CEO of Big Green Egg last summer—the barbecue company renowned for its devoted following and signature green ceramic kamado-style grills—the answer is straightforward: “Seek first to understand, then be understood.”

Gertsacov adopted this mantra from author Stephen Covey, spending his initial months speaking extensively with people across the company, asking them the same five questions to gain deep insights about the business and shape its future direction.

“I interviewed eighty-six individuals and asked every one of those people the same five questions over a four-month period,” Gertsacov explained.

He borrowed these questions from his former Harvard business professor, Michael D. Watkins, who published them in his influential book, “The First 90 Days: Proven Strategies for Getting Up to Speed Faster and Smarter.” Those questions are:

  1. “What is the company’s biggest challenge?”
  2. “Why is that the biggest challenge?”
  3. “What are the untapped opportunities for our company?”
  4. “How would you approach those opportunities?”
  5. “If we were to switch places—if you were in my shoes—what would you focus on?”

After conducting his extensive interviews, Gertsacov distilled his findings into a concise one-pager, summarizing key insights and charting the strategic direction under his leadership. His primary message emphasized growth, cultivating a mission-driven team, and continual innovation.

This innovation intrigued me, especially since Gertsacov previously built his career at tech giants like Google and assisted global brands like McDonald’s with digital transformation. Now, he leads a company distinctly known for its traditional, low-tech ceramic grills—products that, apart from their iconic green color, would fit comfortably into culinary history a century or more ago.

Yet, according to Gertsacov, innovation at Big Green Egg must respect and leverage its greatest strength: the passionate and loyal community of users that has driven the company’s success for decades.

“Big Green Egg has grown through word of mouth and the community,” said Gertsacov. “Preserve the core and stimulate progress.”

So, what does meaningful innovation look like for a company whose products have remained relatively unchanged since founder Ed Fisher began selling them in the early ’70s to supplement his pachinko import business? Gertsacov believes innovation lies in solving practical consumer problems—specifically, making food preparation easier—without unnecessary complications like digital connectivity.

“Rather than adding digital connectivity for its own sake, [we’re] focused on customer experience enhancements—such as enabling the grills to reach cooking temperatures more quickly—without compromising the integrity of the grilling experience,” he explained.

Improving how quickly the grills heat up directly benefits users by fitting the Big Green Egg seamlessly into more everyday cooking occasions. Gertsacov believes that simplifying the user experience will sustain and amplify the powerful word-of-mouth marketing that has always propelled Big Green Egg’s growth.

“We need to make it less intimidating and lower the barriers so it feels more accessible,” Gertsacov said. “We need to make the tent of Big Green Egg bigger to fit more folks, all while preserving the core beliefs of the community already inside.”

You can listen to our full conversation below or find it on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Trump, RFK Jr., and the FDA Overhaul: A Food Truths Deep Dive with Helena Bottemiller Evich

In a recent episode of the Food Truths podcast, host Eric Schulze sat down with Helena Bottemiller Evich, longtime food policy and food system journalist, to discuss the changes taking place at the FDA under the new administration and the just-appointed head of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Evich, the founder and editor-in-chief of Food Fix, has spent over 15 years tracking the intricacies of food regulation, giving her unique insight to decipher the early signals that come from the agency responsible for overseeing 80% of the U.S. food supply.

According to Evich, the FDA (which is under the department of HHS) is undergoing one of the most significant shakeups in its history, marked by mass layoffs, regulatory uncertainty, and a leadership philosophy that prioritizes aggressive restructuring over continuity. Evich says the administration has adopted an approach akin to “creative destruction,” implementing indiscriminate firings and buyouts that have disproportionately affected the agency’s food regulatory functions.

“If there is a strategy to how they are firing people at FDA, and what the like long-term plan is, I have not seen it,” said Evich.

Mixed Signals for MAHA

One of the casualties of these cuts that concerns Evich the most is within the FDA’s Post-Market Assessment Office, which was responsible for reviewing food chemicals already on the market. Many of the employees in this department were newer hires, making them particularly vulnerable to mass layoffs. This move, she argued, could significantly slow down efforts to strengthen oversight of food additives—a key issue that has been gaining bipartisan attention.

While the indiscriminate firings, such as those in the office that review food chemicals additives, may align with the shock and awe approach being deployed across government agencies by the Trump administration, it also runs at cross purposes with one of the key Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) policy goals of RFK Jr., which has oversight of the FDA, CDC, and NIH in his new role.

While contradictory and self-defeating political maneuvers are nothing new to Trump’s chaotic style of governance, Evich thinks Trump is likely to back RFK Jr. to enforce some of these efforts despite the cutbacks. Kennedy’s push to reduce chemical additives and support for other traditionally more progressive concerns led to Trump adopting some of these issues, which Evich believes helped him at the ballot box.

“I think even President Trump’s most ardent critics would acknowledge that one thing he’s really good at is detecting where there’s energy,” said Evich. “And MAHA has shown itself to be like an animating force. And there are some people who think that the RFK endorsement of Trump and the adoption of MAHA as part of the Trump platform helped get Trump over the finish line in November.”

Impact on the Future of Food Landscape

Schulze and Evich also discussed how the administration’s priorities might affect food innovation, particularly in areas like cultivated meat and precision fermentation. Given the administration’s apparent preference for a “back-to-nature” approach to food, Evich expressed skepticism about whether emerging food technologies would receive strong support.

“There seems to be a real strain of naturalism in this administration,” she said. “If you’re championing raw milk and calling for the removal of synthetic food additives, it’s hard to see how that aligns with embracing new food technologies.”

She also noted that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s recent ban on cultivated meat could indicate how other conservative-led states might approach food innovation under this administration.

The Road Ahead for the FDA

Looking forward, Evich emphasized that much remains uncertain. The confirmation of Dr. Marty Makary as FDA Commissioner will be a key development to watch, as he has expressed concerns about antibiotic resistance, the microbiome, and ultra-processed foods. Meanwhile, the newly formed MAHA Commission, tasked with examining the drivers of chronic disease, could shape the administration’s long-term food policy.

“I’m going to be watching really closely for what Marty Makary says in his confirmation hearing,” said Evich. “He’s the FDA commissioner pick, and he has said a lot about food—easily, he has more of a food record than any modern FDA commissioner. He has lots of food mentions in his book. He’s really concerned about antibiotic resistance, the microbiome, ultra-processed foods, and food allergies. Watching Marty Makary, what he says, and watching this MAHA commission—who’s on it, what they’re looking at—is key. This is supposed to be in the first 100 days, and I believe they have to issue recommendations within 180 days.”​

“The big question,” Evich said, “is whether this administration will actually implement stronger food regulations or whether this will just be rhetoric that ultimately leads to little action.”

It was a really good conversation with lots of insights about potential directions for the future of the FDA and other key departments overseeing food and health, so take a listen! You can subscribe to the Food Truths podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Jack Bobo: Don’t Let Your Ideology Muddle The Message About Your Food Product

In the second episode of Food Truths on our newly announced Spoon Podcast Network, Eric Schulze sits down with Jack Bobo, Executive Director of the Rothman Family Institute for Food Studies at UCLA, to dive into the complexities of food production, consumer psychology, and the evolving alternative protein market. But my biggest takeaway? The food industry needs to do a much better job of communicating with consumers—and that means factoring in consumer psychology from the very beginning, not as an afterthought.

As Bobo said on LinkedIn about the episode: “How we communicate innovation can mean the difference between acceptance or rejection, progress or pushback.”

A Career Rooted in Food and Policy

The conversation starts with a look back at Jack’s career trajectory, which started on a self-sustaining farm in Indiana. He initially pursued environmental science and law in school, but his career trajectory eventually landed him at the U.S. State Department, where he discovered that agriculture was at the root of significant environmental challenges like deforestation and water consumption. This realization that sustainable food production could be a solution rather than a problem set him on a path to influence global food policy.

After a decade at the State Department working on agricultural biotechnology, sustainability, and food security, Bobo moved into the private sector, focusing on innovative food technologies. Now, as the head of UCLA’s Rothman Family Institute for Food Studies, he’s not just analyzing market forces—he’s navigating the competing narratives in food and ag tech, working to bridge divides through science and psychology to reshape how food, innovation, and sustainability are discussed.

Consumer Psychology and Food Communication

One of Bobo’s biggest takeaways from his time at the State Department was how psychology shapes public perceptions of food. He found that leading conversations with science and technology would often alienate consumers instead of persuading them. Instead, he turned to behavioral science, cognitive psychology, and marketing strategies to better understand how people make food choices.

“Science at the beginning of the conversation just polarizes the audience,” Bobo said. “Those who agree with you, agree more. But those who don’t actually push further against you. The key is to frame messages in ways that connect emotionally and align with people’s existing values.”

Bobo argues that many alternative protein companies fail because they focus too much on their mission and not enough on the sensory experience of their products. Consumers buy food for taste, convenience, and price—not for environmental impact or technological novelty. The key to winning them over is to offer indulgent, satisfying products and market them in a way that aligns with existing consumer food preferences rather than trying to convert them through ideology.

While the alternative protein industry has made strides, Bobo believes many companies have miscalculated their approach.

“Most people won’t buy your product because they believe what you believe,” he said. “They will buy it in spite of it. You need to get your personal beliefs out of the way and let them enjoy your product without feeling like they have to adopt a new ideology.”

He also discussed unnecessary conflicts with the traditional meat and dairy industries. The biggest competitor to dairy, Bobo argues, isn’t plant-based milk—it’s bottled water. Similarly, alternative proteins should focus less on replacing meat and more on coexisting within a diverse food system.

At UCLA, Bobo aims to tackle the growing tensions in food debates by applying behavioral science to communication strategies. He hopes to foster collaboration across the food industry and reduce the polarization that often slows progress. By better understanding consumer psychology, he believes companies can introduce sustainable and nutritious food innovations more effectively—without alienating the very consumers they’re trying to reach.

You can listen to the full conversation on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also watch the full conversation below. If you like this, make sure to subscribe to Eric’s new podcast and leave a review!

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