Welcome to Consumed!
Who We Are
Jane and Liz are both veteran food journalists with decades of experience writing about the intersection of food, policy, business, and culture for publications like the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, Businessweek, and many more.
Before launching Consumed, we co-created a podcast called Pressure Cooker that set out to answer two simple questions: How did feeding kids become so complicated? And, why do we so often feel like we’re failing at it?
The goal was to help parents cut through manipulative marketing and social media noise to figure out how to feed their kids well — without losing their minds in the process. Over two years, we explored how picky eating took over the world, the truth about children’s vitamins, and the secret history of dinosaur chicken nuggets (a fave). We interviewed guests including Emily Oster, Marion Nestle, Jamie Oliver, Christina Tosi and Jane’s favorite, advice columnist Carolyn Hax. We also won a coveted James Beard award.
Why Consumed?
This newsletter is, in some ways, a sequel to Pressure Cooker. After all: it’s not just feeding kids that’s become needlessly complicated. It is, frankly, a very chaotic time to be an eater in the United States!!
Here at Consumed we use in-depth research, data, and decades of journalistic experience to strip away the noise and help you make confident, informed decisions about what and how you eat. We also share broader insights and analysis about what’s happening in the food industry and food policy, from whether you should be drinking probiotic soda to why a green salad at your favorite date night spot suddenly costs $22.
But it’s not all myth-busting and rigorous analysis. For both of us, food is also one life’s great pleasures. So, we use this newsletter to highlight the wonderful people, stories, and products that we come across in our reporting, too.
Simply put, here you’ll see the world of food through the eyes of two veteran food journalists.
What You’ll Find Here
As a free subscriber, you’ll receive access to a selection of our super-smart weekly posts.
More often than not, these consist of news and trend analysis or new ways of thinking about the food decisions that plague you. But we also serve up amazing food finds, product reviews, and fascinating interviews.
As a paid subscriber, you’ll get every weekly post plus:
Our rigorously researched monthly buying guides for yogurt, chicken, snack bars, you name it. These are foods that are, somehow, ridiculously complicated to buy if you want to do the right thing for your health, the planet, and your wallet, and don’t have hours to spend comparing labels and conducting side-by-side taste tests. We pressure test all the claims and give you straightforward guidance.
Subscriber-only posts and access to the full archive.
Access to our subscriber hotlines. We’ll gather your questions and get you answers in a monthly subscriber-only roundup.
We know how many writers are asking for your subscription dollars. If you like what you’re reading, please know that the (real, extensive) reporting behind it takes time and money. So we really (really, really) appreciate paid subscribers, and we will need them to keep Consumed up and running.
Finally…
If you’re still reading: One of the things you will learn to love about us is that we are not really not creatures of social media. Fact is, we’d rather spend time reporting than marketing our reporting. (We know. We know!) So please help us spread the word about Consumed!! Share with friends and family, post a link…if you use social yourself, tell your people about consumed.substack.com. We so appreciate it.
Subscribe to get full access to the newsletter and publication archives.
