What will happen in the worlds of food, farming, and health?
Making predictions as the new year begins can be fun, but it's important to write them down. Most of us are inclined to remember our past selves in a flattering light, which makes it easy recall the things we rightly saw coming while forgetting the things we got wrong.
That said, I encourage you to make some big predictions, not just small, safe ones over which you have control. I offer these in that spirit.
1. Lab Grown meat will have another bad year
If I had been making predictions ten years ago about the world of 2026, I would have bet that lab grown meat would be in every supermarket. That was based on hype and an endless string of articles touting breakthroughs in production methods which, along with clever P.R. stunts like have famous people sample a petri dish meatball, made it seem like fake meat was inevitable.
In the years since I've completely reversed my view. I don't think it's impossible that lab grown meat will someday reach the market, but I'll need to see it to believe it. I don't think I will by 2036, let alone in the coming year.
2. Natural dyes everywhere
Companies have been very publicly removing artificial dyes from their products. I'm all for this, as far as it goes, but I do worry that it will be just the next way fundamentally unhealthy food gets a veneer of healthfulness. Still, look for " No artificial flavors or colorings!" everywhere in 2026.
3. The home kitchen revival
Maybe people will get tired of all the endless branding and healthwashing, leading to a recentering of the home kitchen. For a couple decades Americans have been cooking less and less of their own food, but this trend can't continue forever. I admit that this prediction is more of a hope than something I expect to see. More generally, I think a collective ethos that prioritizes homemade food would be a wonderful corrective to the food system.
4. Health influencers discover the lymphatic system
Health influencers are online personalities. Some have thousands of followers, some have millions, but together they increasingly drive the conversation about what is healthy.
A problem with online thought leaders generally and health influencers in particular is that they have to constantly come up with new, revolutionary ideas to keep their audiences engaged. Health influencers rapidly cycle through various diets, exercises, habits and so on, and they usually sell supplements to help you address the fixation of the moment.
I don't quite know why, but I think the lymphatic system is going to get a lot attention from these folks in 2026.
5. Self-driving tractors arrive
2026 will be the year farming really starts going autonomous. While even the big grain farms, which will have the easiest time incorporating self-driving tractors, won't immediately go all-in, the ability to retrofit existing tractors with self-driving systems will let a significant number of autonomous tractors contribute to the fall harvest. The trend will only accelerate from there.
6. The healthy school lunch movement takes off
The government should have an obvious interest in keeping its citizens, especially children, healthy. School meal programs, as a rule, serve extremely unhealthy food. This is hardly a new contradiction, but I think 2026 will be a year of action. Just as cell phone bans have swept the country state by state, real efforts to improve school lunches will be more local than federal.
It's a more ambitious project than banning phones, but countries like Japan and France prove that it's possible to provide much better food at scale.
I will add to this list if I think of others. Thanks for reading!