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Our desires and indeed the growing and competing co-trends for Health and Food Indulgence make for rising American eater angst. Outside of nutritious smoothies there is an underdeveloped, indeed vast market opportunity across America's foodscape for healthy indulgences. At minimum, our argument for continual, wide-spread harm reduction in America's worst-of-the-worst foods will moderate this combination.

Good point. As we figure out how to dance with existing or better yet, emerging trends it's considerably easier to create social changes. I admit that's mostly theorizing. What are the other trends most in play?

Would you be surprised if I said that there are another nine key social trends that have factored into our design work?

What are they? Wait. Let me guess. I bet that the noticeable growth of the Plant-based Foods trend makes it one of these nine.

Shunning animal products and by-products is more mainstreamed than ever, as all-vegan restaurant chains make this food more readily accessible to eaters. Plant-based burger sales are booming as are image-building vegan offerings even in restaurant chains like the decadent Cheesecake Factory, Mellow Mushroom, and TGI Fridays. The drivers behind the trend for plant-based foods are America's rising desire for healthier yet equally tasty processed food.

We do love to copy what works whether we're in business or sitting down to dinner in a restaurant with friends or family. Even this self-dialogue from your soul is a copying of another person's effort to persuade his soul to do what's best.

In this case, it's an avid animal activist's self-talk chapter in his non-fiction book, We Are The Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast. Jonathan Safran Foer got the idea for this dialogue from a four-thousand-year-old suicide note—to make an effort to persuade one's soul—that begins with "I opened my mouth to my soul, that I might answer what it said."

Jonathan's soul and self were struggling with maintaining total abstinence from eating animal products. He desperately wants to do his part to save us all from climatic climate change. Jonathan sees our planet as an animal farm and argues that we've misunderstood what our planet is and by this misunderstanding we could destroy everything we hold near and dear.

Okay soul where are we? Oh yes, we're still sorting through trends that our design wishes to dance with and sometimes dance around. It's funny how our mind works and it's not surprising that the Going Green trend is also in the top third of these remaining nine trends.

Tell your soul more.

Gloom-and-doom-filled predictions abound around global climate change. It bears repeating, this politicized and winter-is-coming scripting says that human misbehavior will wipe out everything in its path and, by extension, I believe cause food shortages to become commonplace even in developed countries. Climate catastrophe would further catapult the deep-rooted going green movement, veganism, and environment stewardship trends plus, in a worst-case scenario, make more nutritious food offerings crucial to the very survival and social stability of the human race.

That's a stark prediction and makes me feel that anything we do will never be enough.

Maybe we should read Jonathan's Dispute with the Soul chapter a third time...and ponder his message a bit more?

No.

No? Well okay then. Why don't you reread parts from one page that's haunting me and we'll let his soul stand in temporarily for you, my soul.

"Suicide notes end. We're still swimming. This is what it looks like to try. Are you tired?

Of this conversation? Yes.

Of life.

No.

"Dispute with the Soul of One Who Is Not Yet Tired of Life." But it's wrong to assume that the soul is what we appeal to with the monumental questions in the monumental moments: How should I live? Whom should I love? What is the purpose? It's the soul that asks the questions, not answers them. The soul is no more "over there" than the causes and solutions to climate change [or America's food quagmire]. Even worse, we are tragically confused about what is momentous.

Confused how?

You ask the soul, "Are you hopeful?" The soul answers, "What's for lunch?"

I hear you loud and clear, my soul. Let's get through the remaining seven trends before breaking for lunch then. Convenience and Time along with Social Justice round out the top third.

You know that all of these trends intertwine, however, for expediency let's take them one by one, and in a soulful share please.

Cute! It feels good to laugh out loud. It's also remarkable that convenience proliferates yet free time continues to decline all while our attention wanes. Package delivery, pre-cooked food, and both digital and food mobility are now all social norms. Time pressure and food choice also intertwine, often outside of our conscious awareness. Indeed, time is culturally embedded as is convenience.

Time is also the word I overhear most often in your conversations. Isn't it the most frequently used noun in the English language with year and day also making the top five?

You got it. Convenience and time is our keystone trend. Americans, nevertheless, participate in food-provisioned holidays, events, rituals, and conviviality—even when its inconvenient. Of course, time isn't laid out just in minutes and hours, but in days and years as well. Calendars mattered immensely before clocks marked out the day more precisely than a sundial and that's something built deep into our All Fools' Food Day design.

I agree and to conserve time, let's continue with the Social Justice trend. I sense that activism and conflict are on the rise as is a wider sense of victimhood, perceptions of social differences, intersectionality, and health insecurities. Identity politics and an informal language-police influence around food continues to expand. The power of words grows as does outrage, particularly around social injustices. Examples range from the MeToo movement and language-driven political mass hysterias to nonviolent protests. One result is the emergence of newly invented, frequently conflicting norms of behavior and language on college campuses, inside the workplace, and within political and social circles.

You've nailed it yet again, so I feel comfortable moving on. The middle tier of trends that we've considered is even more of a hodgepodge: Corporate Governance, Carnivalesque Escape, and Socio-tech Behaviorism.

Socio-tech behaviorism. That's a mouthful.

It's also a term plucked out of thin air. Let's continue next, however, with Corporate Governance. It bears repeating that in August, the Business Roundtable redefined the purpose of a corporation: to promote "an economy that serves all Americans." There was a lot of fanfare. Food giant Danone—known for its yogurt—as a B Corp now "aspires to nourish lives and inspire a healthier world through food." Platitudes aside, a new business ethos is emerging that balances purpose with profits and shareholder value. A countering trend is that big food corporations continue to gobble up smaller food companies, increasing their influence over government as well as endurance to the demands of consumer advocacy.

You were reading about Chick-fil-A just last night. They seem a good example of this contradiction for food companies and how this trend for more benevolent corporate governance creates a tenuous opening for real change.

Let's take on the contradiction first and then we'll get to Chick-fil-A sans the LGBT community's rabid dissatisfaction with their ownership. Is it possible to make more money by acting virtuously?

Time will tell. It's a trend-on approach for sure. I think you know the answer to your question. Being virtuous is a choice. Being rewarded for being virtuous is uncertain.

Yes, and this opens big food corporations and other food purveyors to the under-defined role that their industry should play. As Mars Food's says, to help consumers lead healthier lives while nourishing wellbeing.

That's another mouthful filled with lofty expectations. I can only image the unintended waves we'd make if we were one of Chick-fil-A's store owner-operators. And their employees are good people too, I'm sure.

Yes, exemplary. Chick-fil-A and the Cathy family put on little pretense. It's a company and ownership built on biblical values and their customers are believers too. That is, true believers in the quality of Chick-fil-A's food experience and that that they're dining on healthier fare, which is definitely another contradiction when each restaurant has four chicken pressure fryers and two waffle fries fryers.

That doesn't sound healthier even if they use refined peanut oil.

In general, chicken is better for our cardiovascular health than beef, which has more cholesterol and saturated fat. Chicken versus beef is also the genius behind Chick-fil-A's marketing. You know those cows holding up the "Eat Mor Chikin" signs.

What a great way to take friendly potshots at the burger guys! I bet that their competition didn't even know what they were doing. At least initially. What fun.

Didn't I read that last night? Do you also know that the cows are Holstein milk cows so there's never any danger of them being used for beef much less burgers. However, the message is clear, save these lovely cows; eat chicken instead and the more the better for Chick-fil-A!

The mor the better!

As to the cows they're all in for self-preservation, which is what we should be doing too. Using milk cows also shows how very far we the eaters have strayed from understanding the source of our food

Other than a vegetable gardener like you.

Holsteins are just so darn cute. You know that I call them out as Chick-'fried'-A, yet above all, they're as fine a group of people as we'll ever cross paths with. Dare eaters ask them to fulfill their promise.

And you seem itching for us to cross paths or maybe even swords with them.

No. It makes me uncomfortable to think that Chick-fil-A could be in such conflict with the health needs of America; especially knowing all the good the Cathy ownership family has done for kids and their deep commitment to a higher calling. In contrast, there are also two ovens in each free-standing store just to bake breakfast biscuits and their two waffle fryers do double duty frying up those little tatter tot-like hash browns in the mornings. Fried food definitely isn't healthy. It is, however, tasty.

You mentioned their corporate purpose last night...

It is "to glorify God by being a faithful steward of all that is entrusted in us and to have a positive influence on all who come into contact with Chick-fil-A."

Nothing seems more important than our health and many of the faithful do entrust their wellbeing in God. You read that the founder, Truett Cathy did this with his health. He persevered through two surgeries early in his life, yet lived to 93 while insisting for his employee's sake and religious reasons that all two thousand-plus Chick-fil-A stores stay closed on Sundays.

Yes, this shows that fulfilling what the Business Round Table has laid out is not easy. I believe that most of their member companies consider this pledge to be more about polishing up their sustainability and environmental footprints. For food it's a much bigger nut to crack. It won't be enough for a Big Food corporation to just be a greener citizen. If food businesses are to promote an economy that serves all Americans then the food served across a quick-serve counter, in groceries, and wherever else it is sold should, by definition, not be such health harmful foodstuff.

The die is cast. This trend for more benevolent corporate governance raises the bar for corporate citizenship plus the going green movement has demonstrated that success is possible.

This is a fragile story and for some, a fairy tale, but it does chip away at the premise that food is all about personal eater responsibility.

When business pledges to do better, indeed, to do good then they can and should be expected to do exactly that.

Let's stay on track. America's food system is best understood as a runaway locomotive. What's next? Oh, I know, an equally new yet ancient trend: Carnivalesque Escape. As experiential activities grow in popularity Americans are seeking unique experiences and food ranks high in this Pantheon.

Food fight!

Fun and frivolity will never go out of style. Modern day electronic gaming, festivals like Madre Gras, Day of the Dead, and Dragon Con, mythic gatherings like Burning Man, and performing arts ranging from national DCI band competitions to theater are on the upswing. Some call this the experience economy while others view these activities as part of America's pop culture.

Being trickster-like as well as costuming up are becoming ever more commonplace, yet the history of tricksters is ancient. It appears that what goes around comes around even when it takes many generations to unfold. Let's keep on keeping on since dancing with existing and emerging societal trends is one of the best ways to catch on and stay caught on with large-scale change.

Learning to "dance with the system" of society, power, politics and the economy naturally raises the odds for a successful rollout. Latching onto trends belongs at the top of our dance card. Author and activist, Duncan Green goes on to say that a lot of social change happens by chance.

His message is to pay attention to which tech, demographic, political, economic processes drive change. That is to be systematic. He couples this with staying alert to any crises, scandals, and new political actors that also shape our views and behaviors. It's a broader theory of change. It's square in the center of society, the economy, and chance. "Thus, putting the onus for food choice solely on individuals isn't fair.

If you were a child your obsession with fairness would be admirable.

Forget about fairness. Making this solely about individuals is naïve in terms of what needs to be done, while letting businesses off the hook.

But [food] companies produce what we buy; farmers grow what we eat. They commit crimes of omission on our behalf. On top of which, while [occasionally] people talk about how [America's food system] is a problem of corporations no one has a plan for affecting policy change among [these] corporations."

There are several things that we can do. Choosing to latch on to this trending-up desire for better corporate governance is one. Coupling this more closely with carnivalesque escape in the festivities around All Fools' Food Day each April 1^st is another. Both are part of our pathway to change design that will allow others to be frivolously scheming, and in fun and jest.

And that mouthful of words, Socio-tech Behaviorism, is the next trend up. I've been waiting on this one.

Thanks for keeping us on track.

My pleasure.

Quantified self, artificial intelligence, and surveillance capitalism increasingly guide individual, group, and population behaviors. Digital mechanisms and algorithms often know me better than I know myself. They range from fitbit-like wearables to digital therapeutic diabetic implants to dystopian Chinese social credit monitoring and management of its citizenship. The simplest example is driver behavioral changes underway due to real-time monitoring and just over the horizon, self-driving vehicles. Surveillance also takes many forms—voluntary, involuntary, and acquiescent—and has become a booming business-to-business product for social media companies and streaming services as well as an analytic to prod preferential consumer purchases.

You seem to have memorized this description of socio-tech behaviorism. It's a broad and innovative component affecting change that often powers ahead on its own. The idea of an emerging surveillance society makes me feel ill-equipped to help you distinguish between what's right and wrong.

What's right and wrong to eat?

Yes, and much, much more.

There are numerous people telling us what's best to eat. There's a dietary skill set readily—although too often contradictorily—available from nutritionists and dietary experts that's begging for our attention. This includes the consensus forged by a cadre of lifestyle experts in the True Health Initiative. Oh yes, most dieters are women while the majority of diet experts are men.

Anecdotally, women are more health conscious than men yet there are more men than women in the ranks of experts.

That brings one expert to my mind who appears several times in the couple of hundred books that I've read around food and change. Harry Balzer, who for years was the force behind the Annual Report on Eating Patterns in America is often quoted. He said, "Food is fashion. We wear our food like we wear our clothes...a quest for health is the constant—what changes is the definition."

Changing social definitions and norms rides on trails laid down by many.

What we'll eat on All Fools' Day will be a statement of hopefully who we aren't, however, in a whimsical, carnivalesque way. I think we've taken a side track off the main trail of the trends that matter most in our scheme.

Personal technology is fashion as well.

Yes, it is. But let's get back on the trail. The remaining two major trends are Sensory Sensationalism and Government Intervention.

Sensory Sensationalism sounds like the clanging of a bell; a dinner bell. It could be any bell or a call for attention, but let's stay on the trail.

It is about taste, which is but one of the five senses involved in eating. By design, food has become ever more irresistible with artificial flavorings and designer additives as well as through industrial processing wizardry. Little about food is what it once seemed as flavorists, also known as food scientists, compete with drive-thru convenience to make pleasure-seeking eating a modern-day marvel. Food marketing and packaging are equal additives to this important trend. Sensory sensationalism makes good sense and nonsense about food taste hard to separate out just as sight, smell, touch, and even hearing influence eater satisfaction and satiety.

Most of us will eat anything to satisfy our taste buds, fulfill our desires, comfort our angst, or encourage our acceptance by others.

When the food we choose is sensationalistic, it trips emotions and that's what food advertising emphasizes—our emotions, not nutrition.

A long time ago taste protected us in the days that we foraged for our sustenance.

Now we're eating designer foods that at times resembles adult baby food with fewer chews necessary per calorie. In The End of Overeating, David Kessler, who also once led the FDA, says while our taste buds are derailed by the inexpensive ingredients of sugar, fat, and salt America's food industry sophistication goes far beyond these traditional good-taste-inducing ingredients. They transform technology into tastes that excite, stimulate, comfort, and linger. Food is designed to increase desire and craveability in ways that manipulate our eating behaviors. It's the result of industrial foods delivering calories, flavor hits, ease of eating, meltdown, bliss point, early hit, and much more. He believes that these hyperpalatable foods alter our brains and not for the better.

Makes it harder to protect the children...much less us adults.

Agree. They're doing this to all of us.

Sounds sense-sational.

It is.

There ought to be a law.

That's not the answer. They're also doing this for all of us.

I'm not sure what country you're living in, but...

No buts, companies in America's food system are as capable of becoming "taste trustees" as they now are taste tricksters. A handful are even inching that way. Plus, without industrial food, we'd be in a real pickle.

I think you mean as a nation. Not person by person nor belly after bellyful.

Good point. Another important point: "The greatest power rests in our power to change the definition of reasonable behavior...A change in perspective cannot be imposed with mandates, but must evolve as a social consensus." Redefining norms is our trail guide for this large-scale change.

Yes, Americans will also need to look differently at the people and places that produce and serve those huge portions of layered and loaded food containing little nutritional value.

That also means that the people who work for Big Food corporations and across the breath of the food system will eventually also be coaxed into looking to their souls as well. As the power to manipulate our food behavior becomes fully transparent, cues will lose their capacity to entice. And as usually is the case, government can be expected to follow along with legislation and regulation, which brings us to our final and tenth key trend.

Okay, it's time to delve into the last key trend: Governmental Intervention. Don't forget that about five minutes ago Jonathan Safran Foer's competing soul had grown tired of dialogue. But not around these trends with which we're determined to dance both merrily and thoughtfully.

I hardly noticed.

I can believe that.

Okay, okay. I know that this is a difficult conversation because of the complexity of America's food system. It is, however, foundational. What's important is that there are some fallen trees blocking the trail ahead.

That's what can happen when you're changing the map while the trail is still being laid down.

There's no reason to argue with you or my conscience about that. The government intervention most recently signaling us to take notice is product labeling. Changes in product labeling regulations went into effect January, 2020. It used to be that all sugar was considered bad—even sugars naturally occurring in fruits and vegetables. Big-name manufacturers must now, by FDA direction, label how much sugar has been added to each of their products. Nestle is aiming to decrease added sugar in its products, as are PepsiCo and General Mills. Governmental oversight remains uneven for the foreseeable future. Zero restaurant food waste ordinances are in their infancy in cities like Austin, Texas, while agricultural crop support and SNAP food assistance are established law.

That sounds a bit like another hodgepodge of efforts, this time by the Federal Government.

It is. Other notable trends include digital economies, social media and networking, demographic change and, above all, healthcare and our declining longevity. We dipped deeper into the prior ten trends because they bear most directly on the creation of our desire to create a more tastily nutritious American food supply. What's not covered or, at least, not in depth within this dialogue includes, but is not limited to: cooking, home economics, food deserts and swamps, restaurants, groceries, farmer's markets, online specialty foods, food and population safety, monoculture crops, food insecurity, income disparity, and associated consumer purchasing trends.

You've also skipped over trends relating to America's ever evolving dietary desires and diet disarray.

That's another conversation. As to moving forward, the aim is to use language and supporting events to trigger behavioral change—corporate and personal—around America's food supply.