Inside the seafood counter at my neighborhood grocery store, there are farm-raised salmon fillets from Chile, wild-caught sockeye from Alaska, shrimp from Thailand, Indonesia, India, and the Gulf of Mexico, tilapia of indeterminate origin, and something called ‘previously frozen’ cod that raises more questions than it answers. A laminated sign invites shoppers to ‘ask our seafood expert for recommendations,’ but the surly dude in AirPods restocking the ice doesn’t look like he wants to be consulted. It’s enough to make you head straight for the meat case.

And apparently, that’s exactly what most Americans do. The average American eats only about 20 pounds of seafood per year—compared to about 120 pounds of chicken, 80 pounds of beef, and 60 pounds of pork. That’s a shame, because fish is one of the healthiest foods you can eat. It’s lean, packed with protein and nutrients like vitamin D, B vitamins, selenium, and—in the case of fatty fish like salmon, mackerel, sardines, herring, and anchovies—it’s an outstanding source of omega-3 fatty acids, particularly DHA, which is critical for brain and heart health. Despite concerns about overfishing, eating fish also tends to be more environmentally sustainable than eating meat from land animals.

So why don’t we eat more of it? A few reasons:

• It’s expensive. Quality fish, in particular, can cost significantly more than chicken or even beef.

• The supply chain is opaque. In most parts of the country (even coastal areas!) there are few “dock to dish” sources where you can buy fish directly from local fishermen. Although grocery store fish counters work hard to create the impression that the fish they sell is fresh off a fishing boat, the vast majority of seafood travels through long, circuitous supply chains involving multiple middlemen. By the time seafood reaches your grocery store counter, it may be quite old, with little traceability regarding where it came from or how it was caught.

• Many people don’t love the taste. Per the above, this is often because the fish available at typical grocery stores isn’t very fresh. Old fish is fishy-smelling, mushy, and unappetizing. (Good fish should smell like the ocean—clean and briny—not like, well, fish.)

• It’s confusing. The labels are bewildering—wild-caught, farm-raised, sustainable, organic, line-caught, previously frozen—and it’s hard to know what any of it actually means.

Here’s a somewhat controversial take: I believe the seafood industry has, in some ways, overpoliced itself. Organizations like Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch have done valuable work raising awareness about overfishing. But the result has been that consumers are overwhelmed by traffic-light rating systems and long lists of fish to avoid. The unintended consequence may be that confused consumers simply opt out of seafood entirely and eat more meat, which is generally worse for both the environment and their health.

This buying guide aims to cut through the confusion and make seafood shopping easier.

The Hunt

We dove deep (sorry, couldn’t resist) into the world of seafood sourcing, consulting NOAA data, Marine Stewardship Council guidelines, food safety reports from the FDA and EU, and our own years of interviews with fishmongers, chefs, and fishermen. Our goal: to give you a handful of simple rules that will help you make better choices without requiring a marine biology degree.

Rule #1: Prioritize U.S.-Caught Seafood

You’ll see lots of very specific guidelines about which fish species to eat, from which regions, caught by which methods. It can get dizzyingly detailed. But if you pay attention to just one thing, make it this: look for seafood caught in U.S. waters. “The U.S. in general is known for excellent fisheries management,” Laura McDearis, the U.S. program manager of the Marine Stewardship Council, told me, adding that 90% of US fisheries get MSC’s seal of approval. “It’s not perfect, but the message to consumers should be that generally, it’s really pretty good.”

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At Consumed, Liz and I work hard to reduce the overwhelm and help you eat and shop well. So we had a lively debate about whether the world needed one more gift guide.

The answer was no. But I still won the argument. 🙂 1

One of the reasons I became a food writer is because I love seeking out new ingredients — especially if that means an international trip! I yearn to serve them on gorgeous linens and tableware, surrounded by candles and vases of flowers. The joys of the table are a counterweight to the complex and often exhausting food news. To channel another holiday tune, I am always making a list. So why not share it?

Looking through my 2025 file, I was happy to discover that all my picks are under $100 — most of them way under. I did not set out to do a budget roundup but, given the rising price of everything, it seems that what caught my eye this year were little luxuries: super-handy food storage (for those of us resolving to cook more next year); colorful linen tablecloths, a fancy candle worth the price, and new, delightful ways to get your caffeine. Liz, despite herself, added one of her own picks at the very end!

Consumed doesn’t make any money off these links. It’s our first gift to you.

The second? A gorgeously illustrated mini-cookbook from the artist Anna Lena Fuenekes, whose delicious children’s book we also recommend below. To win a free copy of Anna’s book, just restack this post by clicking on the circular arrows above. We’ll pick a winner at random and, if you’re the lucky subscriber, reach out for your address within the week.

Happy shopping! And if you have amazing finds of your own, please share them in the comments!

Elegant Tea Sampler: I love the idea of loose-leaf teas but sadly I’m simply too lazy to brew a proper pot. Brooklyn tea company Dona puts direct-trade teas from small farms in elegant (and staple-free!) tea bags, allowing me to have my tea and drink it, too. For the holiday season, Dona has a beautifully packaged tea library with 18 green, white, oolong, black, and herbal teas, plus a handy map to show where they come from. As the weather turns, I’m especially digging the Still Life herbal tea, a blend of cinnamon, ginger, cardamom, fennel, and black pepper. Dona Tea Library, $60 via drinkdona.com

Premium Instant Coffee: The fact that I am recommending instant coffee is sure to induce jeers from my family, who have all decided that I am an unrepentant food snob. (In fact, I am repentant.) But I have fallen hard for Cometeer Coffee, a tech startup making frozen pucks of exquisitely brewed coffee; just add hot water. (You can read all about my conversion in this Wall Street Journal article — gift link here.) The quality comes from Cometeer’s brewing methods but also from the beans it sources. Your best introduction is to choose the James Hoffman Discovery Series, a box of 16 light, medium, and dark roast brews. For those who want to geek out, Hoffman, a world barista champion, offers a series of online video tastings for each coffee. $49 for 16 capsules or $29 if you sign up for a membership via cometeer.com. (These speciality coffees are a bit pricier than the regular selection at Cometeer, which average $2 per capsule)

Fab Freezer Storage: If your freezer looks anything like mine, there are a lot of plastic bags filled with various, unidentifiable liquids, which seemed like a good idea when I knew what they actually were and before they got lost under the bagels and fish sticks. That is, until I found Souper Cubes: silicone molds that help you freeze stocks, soups, and stews in useful quantities for quick, reheatable dinners. Prices vary (and knock-offs exist) but the two-pack of four, 1-cup molds we use for stock is $39.99 via amazon.com

Foodie Book for Kids: Anna Lena Fuenekes recently blew up on Substack with Illustrated Kitchen, which serves up charming illustrated recipes. A little research revealed that she also recently published Tasty Tales, a wonderful book for children about food history. Stories include how the croissant got its curve and the tale of a revenge plot that resulted in a famous Egyptian sweet. The book was published in the U.K., but you can buy it via Amazon’s British site. If that’s too much trouble, splurge for one of Anna’s custom recipe illustrations to memorialize a family favorite. $11 via Amazon.co.uk (Also: Remember to restack this post to win a free copy of Anna’s illustrated mini-cookbook.)

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Linen Tablecloths in Every Color: We’ve been socializing at home a lot more this year. So to make it nice, I invested in two Lithuanian linen tablecloths. Lithuania, it turns out, is the linen capital of the world thanks to a climate perfect for cultivating flax. These cloths, from LinenMade, are gorgeous, with mitered corners and a texture that only gets softer as you wash them. Even better, you can order the exact size you need and they come in a rainbow of 30 colors, from standard white and ivory to mellow rose and moss green. Tablecloths start at $88 — about half of what a similar item can cost here at home. $88+ via Etsy

Amazing Olive Oil: I am, as you may have noticed, a bit of a freak about olive oil. Most of the time, I have at least 10 bottles of it in the pantry. In the past year, I’ve written three olive oil stories for Consumed: our olive oil buying guide; my thoughts on Instagram olive oils; and how to adopt an olive tree. It’s hard to impress me. So imagine my surprise when Asheville spice brand Spicewalla — which has never imported oil — served up some green gold that blew me away. A special release from Umbria, Le Vigne oil is velvety with a pleasant peppery bite. Right now I’m drizzling it on warm bowls of soup or beans and rice. The beautifully illustrated tin is ready to go under the tree. 500 ml can, $40 via spicewalla.com

The BEST Fancy Candle: Full disclosure: I struggle with fancy candles. They feel incredibly overpriced, while, at the same time, suggesting a kind of thoughtlessness — like you couldn’t be bothered to think of what someone might actually want. But sign me up for candles from Brooklyn-based Keap, especially the wild fig scent. It’s intense but not cloying, and green rather than sweet. I discovered the brand at Borgo, a newish Italian restaurant in New York City (which I also adore, and recommend) and immediately bought myself two. Which turned out to be a good idea, since the company offers many scents seasonally. Keap has also consciously chosen to avoid social media, which is another plus for me. $55 for one or $99 for two via keapcandles.com

Killer Cookbooks: My lunch at Mokonuts, a cramped, no-frills restaurant in Paris’s 11th arrondissement, was one of the top 10 meals of my life. Its menu — which included on the day we visited a dish of tuna confit with tart green tomatoes — masterfully matches elegance and hominess, a combination that is, sadly, rare in the age of $400 bro-makases and bone-marrow flexes. Now, the husband-and-wife team behind the restaurant have a new Mokonuts Cookbook, which with a little effort lets you come close to that heavenly pairing of high and low. Recipes include the likes of veal with chanterelles and garlic puree, and spaghetti with shrimp head puttanesca. Phaidon, $43 via amazon.com.

An Actually Fun Wine Book: One of my secret insecurities is that I know basically nothing about wine (I guess not so secret anymore!). My excuse is that I’ve been let down by wine books, which usually fall into one of two categories: impenetrably dense or cutesy, oversimplified, and patronizing. But Wine Simple: Perfect Pairings, from Aldo Sohm (the long, long-time sommelier at Le Bernardin) and the food writer Christine Muhlke, is the goldilocks solution. It’s filled with delightful infographics and text that’s smart but unpretentious, aimed at helping readers get a little more comfortable picking a bottle for their next dinner party, or simply understanding why they like what they like. The book is pretty enough to sit on someone’s coffee table, but fun enough that it’s unlikely to be abandoned there. Clarkson Potter; $38 via Amazon.com – Liz

Hungry for more? Check out our 2024 gift guide, which remains a treasure trove for food-lovers. And remember to leave your picks in the comments!

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Many of you have asked for guidance on how to navigate the outrageously complex universe of milks that we find ourselves confronted with today. I don’t blame you!

If you can believe it, as recently as the 1980s, the available milk choices were whole, low fat, and skim. Maybe soy, but only if you shopped at a crunchy natural foods market. One percent milk wasn’t introduced until 1994! Since then we’ve added organic, lactose-free, grass-fed, A2, almond, rice, oat, coconut, macadamia, and cashew options. For most of those plant milks, you can also choose between sweetened or unsweetened, as well as distinctions like “barista blend.” These are confusing times in the dairy case, indeed.

Pitting all the milks against one another at the same time would, we think, be too much for one buying guide. So, this guide deals specifically with choosing between the various plant milk options on the market. But fear not! Below, we also address the hot topic of how to choose between cow’s milk and plant-based milks. We published an explainer specifically on A2 milk last year.

The Hunt

We looked at over a dozen different plant milks with national supermarket distribution and evaluated them on the basis of nutrition, taste, and sustainability.

One big-picture takeaway from our research was that, as long as you stick with unsweetened milks, it’s hard to go too wrong in the milk category, at least in terms of nutrition and sustainability. If you happen to really prefer the flavor of a milk that wasn’t one of our choices, the differences in terms of health and climate impact are probably not significant enough to warrant a switch.

That said, we were surprised by the mismatch between almond milk’s popularity and what it has to offer. Almond milks are the most popular plant milk by far, accounting for more than half of all sales in the category, according to data from the market research firm Circana. But nutritionally (and IMO, flavor-wise), they’re duds.

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In the early days of my career, I found the idea of “knowing where my food comes from” thrilling. Every ingredient had a history, and the way it was cultivated — how and by whom — influenced its flavor and its impact on a warming planet. There was so much to be discovered.

I also remember the food, or rather the drink, that forced me to give up my crusade to know where all my food came from: coffee. It was a sunny morning sometime around 2013. I was standing in line at a Brooklyn “coffee lab” when, suddenly, all the variations felt more exhausting than exhilarating. Why did I need to know so much and make so many choices before someone would hand me some caffeine?

I picked a coffee that day. I liked it, and have been buying and drinking it at home ever since. It is my “forever coffee.”

A decade-plus later, climate change has arrived and coffee is on the run. There are predictions of perilous yield losses and the continued spread of coffee rust, a fungus that decimates coffee plants. Prices are hovering near a 50-year high. The market is increasingly crowded and complex.

So I called up Mark Prince to educate me. Prince is the founder and senior editor of CoffeeGeek, an online resource on coffee and espresso, as well as a World Barista Championship judge and all-around charming human. We covered the basics of origin, sourcing, roasting, and grinding (which is essential!) and their impacts on flavor and sustainability. The goal: to teach you just enough to find your forever coffee.

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Let’s Start at The Very Beginning (A Very Good Place To Start)

Though there are seemingly a zillion beans to choose from, almost all belong to one of two coffee species: Robusta and Arabica. (There is a third species, Liberica, but you won’t generally find those beans for sale in the U.S.) Robusta is cheaper and easier to grow and has bolder (read: less interesting and nuanced) flavors. Robusta is funneled into commodity coffee, like Folgers and Maxwell House.

Premium coffees, the ones we are focusing on here, are Arabica, though Prince noted that if you use a Nespresso or Keurig pod coffee maker you may be vastly overpaying for inferior Robusta beans. (For what it’s worth, there are plenty of other compelling reasons not to use coffee pods, including the environmental impact of 56 billion pods ending up in landfills each year. For the full rundown, see this excellent article on CoffeeGeek.)

Arabica beans are grown all over the world, from Kenya and Ethiopia to Colombia, Peru, and Indonesia. Though we can buy coffee all year round, coffee is seasonal and perishable. African coffees are harvested in January or February, and start arriving on U.S. shelves in early summer. Central American coffees are harvested from October till March. Ideally, you’d know all this and choose coffees that are the freshest. But that seems like a lot of work. This is one of the many reasons why choosing a trustworthy roaster is important. They will either sell out or stop selling coffee if it’s past its prime.

Speaking of freshness: Prince admonished me to never buy a bag of beans with a “best by” date. Good coffee will have a “roast date” on it. If you drink espresso, look for a bag that is five to seven days past its roast date, which allows the beans to release carbon dioxide and deliver that lovely crema. But Prince will accept beans three weeks past the roast date. For brewed coffee, including Aeropress and pour-overs, where the grind is coarser, a month past roast date will do. (Full disclosure: I buy five-pound bags of coffee and keep it in an airtight container for two-plus months. Gasp! It tastes fine to me!)

Coffee Buying Basics

Okay, let’s run through all those claims you see on a bag of coffee beans, and which ones should get your attention.

Coffee buzzwords tend to fall into two categories. Some reflect how and by whom the coffee was grown. The rest tell you how the coffee was processed. Both will influence sustainability and flavor.

Shade-Grown: The Arabica coffee tree is a delicate plant. It likes some elevation, but does not like direct sunlight. Though it’s hard to generalize, the quality of shade-grown coffees tends to be higher.

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Jane and I went back and forth about whether you guys needed (…or wanted?) a buying guide for eggs. There have been countless magazine articles and web stories attempting to simplify the unreasonably complicated act of choosing which eggs to buy at the grocery store. It’s not what either of us would call riveting content, and maybe the world doesn’t need one more installment.

And yet: eggs are among the most frequently purchased items by American shoppers — they’re in most peoples’ carts, most weeks. That means, over time, the buying choices you make really add up when it comes to your health and your household spending, not to mention animal welfare and the environment. And a lot of the advice out there is confusing or outdated. Plus, as you may have heard, eggs have been really, really expensive lately! So we decided to pull the trigger on this guide.

Here we go!!

The Hunt

When I was growing up, the only choice you needed to worry about when buying eggs was which size you wanted. Nearly all eggs available in grocery stores at the time came from hens confined in battery cages, which allot each bird as little as 67 square inches of space –– about the size of a sheet of printer paper. But in the late 1990s, that started to change: Growing public awareness of animal welfare abuses, concerns about environmental sustainability, and interest in nutrition and food quality were reshaping consumer preferences. A new market was emerging for eggs produced in new ways.  

Today, lots of industry terminology, certifications, and health promises greet us in the egg case, and eggs are sold at radically different prices depending on how they’re produced. We sorted through USDA regulations, consulted nutrition studies, spoke to experts, and compared eggs side by side to understand which options best deliver on nutrient density, environmental stewardship, and animal welfare.

Decoding Egg Cartons

Most of our buying guides recommend specific products or brands with a high degree of confidence that these represent the best options most readers are likely to come across wherever they shop for groceries. But the market for premium eggs is still highly regional. In many cases, smaller brands without national distribution can be the best option on the shelf. We couldn’t scour the country to evaluate every local and regional player out there, so we’re doing the next best thing: helping you understand what you’re reading so that you can choose for yourself.

“Cage-free” typically refers to hens housed indoors without cages, though still often in crowded barns with no access to the outdoors.  

“Free-range” conjures images of plucky, independent hens roaming wild. In fact, what it usually means is hens housed in barns that have openings leading to some sort of enclosed outdoor space. In the case of eggs labeled “free-range” that aren’t also organic, a concrete “poultry porch” counts toward the requirement. While the term isn’t exactly meaningless…it’s a low bar. 

“Pasture-raised” used to be a fuzzy term that wasn’t meaningfully distinguished, legally, from “free-range.” Recently, though, the USDA updated its legal definition of “pastured” and “pasture-raised,” requiring any company that uses it to ensure the birds spend the majority of their lives “on land with rooted vegetative cover” (a.k.a. grasses and other plants). The USDA audits paperwork, but doesn’t do in-person inspections, to confirm that companies are telling the truth. Eggs that carry labels like USDA Organic, Certified Humane, and Animal Welfare Approved have inspectors on their farms at regular intervals to confirm that pasture access claims are legit.  

“Organic” eggs come from hens raised without antibiotics, fed organic feed, and given meaningful outdoor access and cage-free living conditions that conform with a slew of other animal welfare provisions. But the chickens that produce organic eggs are not required to have access to vegetation, specifically, unless they are also labeled “pasture-raised.”

The Simplest Way to Think About Buying Eggs

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What is it about a popsicle that absolutely screams “SUMMER!”? I’ll eat ice cream any (and every) time of year … but frozen fruit pops? For me, they will forever be the stuff of cookouts, blazing afternoons on the Slip ’N Slide, and evenings on our front stoop.

We are, right at this very moment, entering Peak Popsicle Season. Don’t take my word for it: According to data from Instacart, spending on popsicles doubles in the run-up to the Fourth of July holiday. So, I dove deep into supermarket freezer cases to suss out which of the many fruit bar brands on the market today are worth adding to your summer grocery rotation. 

The Hunt

My ideal popsicle would have an intense, real fruit flavor and a silky texture; no additives; and just a hint of added sugar. Sadly, I could find no widely available store-bought option that met all those criteria … but two fruit pops came close.

All told, I looked at nine brands of fruit popsicles with national supermarket distribution, all of which sell products in a range of different fruit flavors. For the purposes of this buying guide, I evaluated each brand based on its strawberry fruit bar.1 

Why strawberry? It’s a summer classic, and, more practically, it was the most common flavor across all brands. Spot checks confirmed that the data I collected on this one flavor (such as sugar content, presence of additives, and use of real fruit) tended to apply similarly across brands’ other flavorways. 

I was pleased (and a bit surprised!) to see that none of the pops contain artificial dyes. Some rely on fruit alone for their color; most, however, augment it using natural pigments, like annatto and turmeric. Most of the popsicles that I turned up in my research include “natural flavors” and gums, the latter of which are used to create a smooth (rather than icy) texture. About half list fruit (or water, then fruit) as their first ingredient. The rest lead with sugars. 

I expected some variation in flavor between the pops, but was shocked by the range: the ones I sampled ran the gamut from having no discernable fruit flavor at all, to lollipop-like artificial fruit flavors, to ones that boasted all the depth of flavor of a fresh June strawberry. 

Our Picks

Best All Around

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In 1863, James Caleb Jackson invented the first breakfast cereal. It was made of rock-like pieces of baked graham dough that had to be soaked overnight in milk to be edible—the epitome of an unappetizing health food. Jackson’s “granula” was followed by John Harvey Kellogg’s “granola,” and later Puffed Rice, GrapeNuts, Wheaties, and Cheerios. For nearly a century, Americans could assume that cereal was healthy. Until, suddenly, it wasn’t.

Still, even as sugar-laden cereals took over the breakfast aisle, for a long time it was pretty clear which options were more or less healthy and which weren’t. A brightly colored box or cartoon character (and often both) signaled dessert masquerading as a morning meal. But over the last decade, the cereal aisle has gotten pretty confusing. Boxes are so cluttered with claims they call to mind Nascar race cars. And often what you see on the front of the box directly contradicts what you see on the nutrition label.

This is not just a feeling. A new study published in JAMA last month revealed that 1,200 breakfast cereals introduced or reformulated between 2010 and 2023 were filled with more sugar, sodium, and fat. And so Liz and I spent the past month gum-shoeing our way through the cereal aisle with the goal of identifying some legit nutritious options — that don’t taste like granula. We were surprised to discover that, for once, the more affordable choices are the best.

The Hunt

I am a creature of habit when it comes to cereal. There may be 100 choices on the shelf, but I always buy the same two.

So the time I spent in the cereal aisle was a revelation. There were, of course, the old-school cereals: GrapeNuts, Wheaties, Cheerios, Chex, Special K, and so on. Then, there were what I came to think of as the cool kids: Cereals with trendy claims like “high in protein,” “grain-free,” “gluten-free,” and “zero-added sugar.”

These new-school brands tended to fall into two categories. First, cereals that emphasized whole and ancient grains and used natural sugars like coconut or honey. Second, high-protein cereals made from ingredients like pea or whey protein, and alternative sugars like monk fruit or stevia. The new-schoolers tend to offer modern flavors –– think maple and sea salt or lemon cake.

It is admittedly tricky to recommend one (or even several) cereals when dietary priorities and taste preferences are so varied. Our goal was to find cereals that were legitimately nutritious, additive free, tasty –– and good value. This was not easy!

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What We Prioritized — And Why

Whole Grains

Until recently, most cereals were made from widely-grown grains, things like corn, rice, wheat, and oats. In some cases, such as Corn Flakes, the grains are refined, which means that the kernel has been stripped of its bran and germ, which contain fiber and nutrients. Others, like GrapeNuts, are made from whole grain flour, meaning those fiber and nutrients are still present. The nutritional differences are stark. Whole grain GrapeNuts has seven times as much fiber and twice the protein of the refined grains in Corn Flakes. So remember: Whole grains, good. Refined grains, bad.

When it comes to the new-school cereals, the ingredient lists tend to feature trendier (and more expensive) whole grains to pack in the nutrients: amaranth, sorghum, quinoa, brown rice, etc. This is good news if you’re gluten-free; there are lots of options. We believe that whether your tastes trend classic or modern, a healthy breakfast cereal should have lots of whole grains.

Unless … you’re following a grain-free diet or, like a growing number of people, are obsessed with protein. If there are no grains in your cereal, there are no whole grains. And to load up on protein, cereals are made with milk, pea, or sunflower protein, then bulked up with things like starchy cassava flour or corn fiber. In other words, says Linda Shiue, a culinary nutritionist at Kaiser Permanente, these are “highly manufactured foods.”

That’s an issue because the human body is designed to eat food in whole forms.

“I understand why people like to optimize in all these easy ways. But eating an isolated nutrient never gives you the full scope of nutrition,” says Shiue. Separated from the fat and fiber that usually come with protein, there’s no guarantee it will be digested in the same way, and provide the satiety that protein lovers crave. Shiue’s advice to those who want to get some protein in their morning bowl: Choose a whole-grain cereal and add some nuts or chia seeds, which are naturally high in protein.

Minimal Sugar

The classic sugar cereals — Cap’n Crunch, Coco Pops, Cinnamon Toast Crunch — each have 12 grams (1 tablespoon) of sugar per serving. Ideally, the cereals we recommend would have half that –– or less. As it turns out, 7 grams of sugar per serving is common in cereals; it must be some kind of taste tipping point. So we used 7 grams as our cutoff but gave priority to cereals with 5 grams of sugar or fewer.

The types of sugar in breakfast cereals run the gamut, from corn syrup and organic honey to coconut sugar and non-nutritive sugars such as stevia and monk fruit. The sugars in this last category are much sweeter than traditional table sugar — monk fruit can be anywhere from 100 to 250 times sweeter! They also have no calories … which sounds like the perfect combo until you taste them. Stevia, in particular, has a nasty, bitter aftertaste. Shiue, the nutritionist, said she also worries that becoming accustomed to foods with such high levels of sweetness can make natural foods, like fruit, less palatable or desirable over time.

No Additives / Dyes

Chemical additives and artificial dyes are the red-hot center of the current debate over what constitutes a healthy food. We eliminated any cereal with additives or artificial dyes. The one exception was the preservative tocopherols (see more on why below).

Price

The price per ounce of seemingly similar cereals was … vast. Magic Spoon, a cutesy, Millennial-coded high-protein brand cost $10 for an 8-ounce bag, or $1.44 an ounce. That’s more than five times as much as a serving of ye olde GrapeNuts and only slightly less than the cost of three eggs, which deliver 30 percent more protein!

Figuring the value equation while shopping is not easy. The various brands come in different sizes and weights, making apples-to-apples comparisons difficult. (And you have to account for the fact that many of us eat more cereal than the determined serving size.) As a general rule, the new-school cereals, with their attractive packaging, come in much smaller boxes or bags than the old-school General Mills, Post, and Kelloggs. This makes it look like you’re paying a smaller premium than you actually are.

And Finally … One Note on Vitamins

You’d think that a plethora of vitamins and minerals would score points for a breakfast cereal. In fact, no. Breakfast cereals were some of the first foods to be widely fortified with vitamins and minerals. (Kellogg’s added B vitamins and Vitamin D to a cereal called “Pep” in 1938.) And this is still the case today. Almost any cereal you find on the shelf will be fortified with vitamins, though which vitamins and how much vary from cereal to cereal. If you’re looking for one vitamin in particular, check the nutrition panel.

Our Picks

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Tuna is not only one of Jane’s favorite lunch staples, but it’s also among the most widely consumed seafood products in the United States — behind only salmon and shrimp. It’s also one of the more confusing product categories in the grocery store. Shoppers need to navigate not just a growing array of different brands and price points, but also terms like “chunk light,” “solid white,” “dolphin-safe,” even “FAD-free.” Not to mention the age-old oil vs. water decision!!

By reader request, a few weeks ago Jane and I psyched ourselves up for an afternoon of eating tinned fish. Today we bring you our (dare I say…) definitive guide to buying canned tuna. Our top pick turned out to be a brand I’ve never bought before, and now it’s my go-to. Let’s dive in.

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The Hunt

Canned tuna has been a grocery staple since the early 20th century, and in recent years sales have been on a tear. It’s not hard to see why: It’s a convenient, relatively affordable source of lean protein and omega-3 fatty acids (so hot right now). The best canned tunas can anchor a spectacular tuna salad sandwich or salad Niçoise. The worst, as Jane and I discovered, should be avoided altogether. 

We researched dozens of tuna products for consideration: Albacore, Skipjack, and Yellowtail varieties, packed in both oil and water, from every national (or national-ish) brand we could find. 

One thing we discovered is that the flavor gap between the best and worst products was … stark. In many of our buying guides — yogurt, chicken, even whole wheat bread — the differences in taste are pretty subtle. Not so with tuna!! Flavor and texture were huge considerations here. Our least favorite products tasted like cat food, or had a mushy, livery texture, whereas the best were briny, juicy, and sweet. 

There are also environmental issues to contend with. Some tuna populations are overfished, and conventional fishing practices, such as long-lining and purse-seining (a fancy word for fishing with a long vertical net), scoop up all kinds of other marine life along with the tuna they’re after — not good for our oceans. Some brands have added “Dolphin safe” or “FAD-free” claims to their labels to assuage consumers worried about fishing practices. (FAD stands for a “Fish Aggregating Device,” 10 points to any reader who knows what that is.) This is all very technical stuff for the casual seafood buyer, but the tl;dr is that both labeling claims have been found to be misleading.  

We looked for brands that use pole-and-line as their catch method — the most environmentally-friendly way to fish for tuna, but also a more labor-intensive one, which tends to mean higher prices. To expand the pool of options, we also sought out products that carry a Marine Stewardship Council certification. This is a good indication that the tuna was caught responsibly, and from waters with healthy tuna stocks.

Human rights abuses are also a big concern when it comes to tuna; forced labor is commonplace on distant water fishing vessels, the boats that travel far away from their home port and spend long periods of time at sea, operating out of Asia. Unfortunately, the “big three” tuna brands –– StarKist, Bumble Bee, and Chicken of the Sea –– have not done enough to tackle the slavery that is currently a part of their supply chains. For us, this was a disqualifying issue.  

Lastly, price was also a significant factor here. The least expensive tunas cost around $2 per 5 ounce can –– see above point about forced labor –– and the most expensive grocery store options were as much as five times that price. Though tunas at the top end of the price range were universally delicious, a $10 can of tuna is not really practical for most people’s everyday routines. We tried to find products that met all our ethical and flavor criteria, but didn’t cost a fortune.  

Read on for our top picks, plus the low-down on mercury in tuna and why you can ignore those “wild-caught” label claims …

Our Picks

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People have been cooking with olive oil for millennia. But here in the U.S., it’s a surprisingly recent phenomenon. It wasn’t until the 1980s when recipes using olive oil began to pop up in cooking magazines, and even then its proponents had to contort themselves to persuade Americans to cook with something so exotic. (Wouldn’t margarine do?)

Yet olive oil won Americans over. Today, the United States is the number-two consumer of olive oil in the world; we surpassed Spain for the first time last year. But consumer confusion has remained: Should you cook with olive oil? Or does high heat ruin the stuff? How can you tell if it’s rancid? Can you trust that extra virgin olive oil is actually extra virgin? (Don Corleone, remember, got his start in the olive oil business.) What’s a polyphenol? And why is this all so complicated?

In this month’s buying guide, we’re busting olive oil myths and breaking down what you need to know –– and, just as important, what you don’t –– to choose a fresh, high-quality, affordable oil. Even more exciting, we’ve discovered some damn good deals on the freshest oil, a boon in this era of rising prices.

The Hunt

First, why choose olive oil? It’s low in saturated fat and high in Omega-3 fatty acids, especially compared to other plant oils. Fresh, high-quality olive oils also contain high levels of Vitamin C, Vitamin K, and polyphenols, the naturally occurring compounds that have antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. (If you get a strong peppery aroma or burn from your oil, that’s the polyphenols.)

Oh, and, it tastes great.

There are more than a thousand varieties of olives growing in dozens of countries, so be wary of anyone who promises to answer the question: “What is the best olive oil?” Instead, think of olive oil like wine. Different olives and climates produce different oils; and different flavors (and price points) may be more, or less, to your taste.

“When people ask me which olive oil they should buy, I always turn the question around and ask them: What is important to you?” says Alexandra Kicenik Devarenne, an olive oil consultant and educator and director of the Extra Virgin Alliance.

For this buying guide, what was important to us was high-quality, everyday oil. It had to be easy to find — preferably at the supermarket, though we also considered some online options — and nothing that cost more than $1 per ounce. Though many people believe that you need one oil for drizzling/dressings and another for cooking, we were keen to find something good and affordable enough for both.

Based on what we know about freshness — and the importance of good storage — we added some additional prerequisites.

1. We only considered oils with a harvest date or a “best by” date. (We prefer harvest dates, but some retailers prefer or even mandate “best by” instead, so we allowed them as long as we could find a date at least 12 months in the future.)

2. As light and air are olive oil’s archenemies, we also only considered oils that were sold in dark-glass bottles or tins. This is a sign that producers take freshness seriously, and dark containers help the oil to last longer.

3. Knowing we couldn’t begin to taste every oil on supermarket shelves, we tried to select beloved and/or respected brands that we believe many Consumed readers naturally reach for.

   

Let’s Do a Little Myth-Busting, Shall We?

I’ve recently become enamored of the term “zombie fact,” which refers to myths that just won’t die. There are A LOT of zombie facts when it comes to olive oil. Old chestnuts like: Single-source oils are best. And never cook with extra virgin olive oil.

So, before we get to our awesome, affordable recommendations, we thought we’d decapitate a few of those zombies, and prepare you to shop for olive oil, no matter what you find on the shelf.

Zombie Fact #1: You can’t trust supermarket oil

In 2011, journalist Tom Mueller published the book, “Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil.” It was a gripping read that proved, as The Guardian put it, that “there is no business more slippery than oil.” I’m not sure how many people actually read the book, but its conclusion –– that most extra virgin olive oil probably isn’t –– became conventional wisdom, in the same way “don’t order sushi on Monday” did after Anthony Bourdain published “Kitchen Confidential.”

For what it’s worth, there is a technical definition of extra virgin olive oil: The oil can have no defects, such as off flavors; and must register a free acidity less than or equal to 0.8 percent.( Virgin oils, for comparison, can have acidity up to 2 percent.)

A University of California, Davis study, published around the same time as Mueller’s book, bolstered his conclusion. It revealed that a whopping 69 percent of the oils sampled from supermarket shelves in California did not meet the sensory criteria of extra virgin. Adding insult to injury, a consumer study showed that some Americans actually preferred rancid oil to the good stuff.

There is no doubt still plenty of fraud in the olive oil business. But Devarenne, the olive oil consultant, says that nearly 15 years later, what you find on supermarket shelves is superior to the old days. The reason? The technology to produce and preserve olive oil has vastly improved. This is true in the groves and at the mills, but also in the packaging. We recently discovered several oils sold in a “bag in a box” format that allows you to buy at bulk prices without worrying about spoilage. (See our top pick below!)

Of course, you still need to apply common sense. A super cheap extra virgin is probably too good to be true. But there are winners out there. Always choose oils in dark bottles or tins with a harvest or best by date. And if you don’t like it, take it back.

Zombie Fact #2: Don’t Cook With Extra Virgin Olive Oil

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Concerns over ultra-processed foods are unavoidable these days, and one oft-cited example of a UPF hiding in plain sight is whole wheat packaged sandwich bread. Though nutritious on its face, it’s a product frequently loaded with an unsavory brew of chemical dough conditioners, emulsifiers, stabilizers, and preservatives. Not exactly what you want in an everyday food. 

But sadly, most of us aren’t able to live our lives subsisting exclusively on pristine, additive-free, freshly baked artisan loaves. That’s why Jane and I have spent the past several weeks haunting supermarket bread aisles, comparing ingredient lists and nutrition panels, talking to experts, and taste-testing the competition to find the absolute best whole wheat sandwich bread available at the grocery store. The results may surprise you.

The Hunt

There’s a reason why the expression “the greatest thing since sliced bread” exists, and it’s because up until the 1930s, people either baked their own bread or hoofed it to a bakery daily to buy whole loaves. What a grind! When packaged, sliced bread first hit the market, in 1928, it was a revelation.  

Beginning in the 1960s, advancements in industrial baking allowed for supermarket breads that were faster and cheaper to make and could stay on the shelf (or your countertop) for eons without molding or drying out. Today we have bread that’s super convenient, but often full of additives to make it soft, fluffy, and basically immortal. 

Our goal was to find breads that were tasty, nutritious, widely available, and free of potentially harmful additives — a tall order. Here’s what we considered in our research:

• Whole grain content: Wheat bread is an increasingly popular choice; the consumption of white bread has been falling for decades. But clever marketing can make it hard to distinguish breads that are truly a good source of whole grains from ones that look and sound nutritious, but aren’t. Why are whole grains important? They provide fiber, minerals, vitamins, and other nutrients, and eating them is linked to a reduced risk of many diseases, from diabetes to heart disease to colorectal cancer. Thanks to all the fiber, which most Americans don’t get nearly enough of in our diets, whole grain bread also keeps you full for longer than bread made completely or primarily from white flour.

• Sugar content: Sugar is typically used to sweeten the earthy, sometimes slightly bitter flavor of whole grains. Whether it’s cane sugar or molasses or honey or fruit juice, it’s all sugar, and some breads have more of it than you might realize. Dave’s Killer Bread’s Good Seed Bread, for instance, has an entire teaspoon of sugar (5 grams) per slice.  

• Additives: To help understand the purpose of each additive and its known health impacts, we reviewed scientific literature, consulted CSPI’s food additive safety ratings, and spoke with Aaron Clanton, a bakery industry veteran and baking science instructor at Kansas State University. Ultimately, we eliminated breads for consideration that use chemical emulsifiers, preservatives, stabilizers, or dough conditioners. We were surprised that we did not turn up a single product containing azodicarbonamide (the chemical also found in yoga mats that food activist Vani Hari famously campaigned for Subway to remove from its bread) or potassium bromate — two of the most concerning additives when it comes to bakery products. 

  Clanton said that companies have phased out these two chemicals due to negative consumer sentiment. He also shed light on an opaque item listed on the ingredient panels of many breads, including ones made by Alvarado Street Bakery and Dave’s Killer Bread: “enzymes.” Large bakery companies are increasingly turning to enzymes — a class of proteins that act as catalysts for chemical reactions — to fill the roles once played by chemical emulsifiers and dough conditioners in industrial baking. The FDA does not require companies to identify which specific enzymes they use, making it hard to comment on potential health impacts. 

• Certifications: For ecological reasons, and some health ones, too, we believe that organic bread is worth paying for, if you can afford it.

• Taste: We looked for breads with a sturdy bite and nutty, malty whole wheat taste — and no funky chemical aftertaste. We tried them blind, straight from the package, as well as toasted with butter.  

• Price: Bread is no longer the bargain it once was. Over the past two years, the price of wheat bread has risen almost 50 percent. The most expensive loaf of bread in our taste test (which happened to also be our least favorite!) was $101; the least expensive was $5.29. These were New York prices, and exact prices will vary by market.

• Availability: There are a lot of breads out there; one brand we looked at, for instance, markets nine types of whole wheat sandwich bread. We considered only breads that with broad national supermarket distribution. 

Our Picks

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When I was growing up, supermarket poultry cases were all filled with the same yellow Styrofoam trays, shrink-wrapped and labeled with the part of the chicken you were buying, the price, and a “sell by” date.

Now, there are dozens of poultry brands competing for space in the case. The good news is this gives you, the shopper, more choice. New, premium brands have emerged in response to concerns about intensive poultry farming and a growing willingness to pay more for chicken raised in a way that’s better for the chicken, the planet, and you.

The bad news? This gives you, the shopper, more choice. And all that choice can be overwhelming, especially given the volume of misleading marketing claims in this category. Today’s poultry packaging uses every opportunity to hook you, from those evocative illustrations of storybook barns to call-outs like antibiotic-free, vegetarian-fed, and pasture-raised. Some of these claims are legit. Others … not so much.

We dug deep (very deep!) into the major players, talked to experts, and conducted multiple taste tests to find the absolute best chicken for you.

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The Hunt

The average American gobbled up over 100 pounds of chicken in 2024, more than any other type of meat by a wide margin. I know it’s in my grocery cart every week, and probably yours, too. Because we eat so much chicken and because there are particularly significant animal-welfare concerns with the cheapest chicken, we see this as one of the more important items to buy thoughtfully.

We set out to find not just the best-tasting chicken, but — crucially — those that scored highest in terms of animal welfare, environmental impact, and nutrition. There’s a lot to unpack here, so let’s go category by category:

Animal Welfare: The single biggest thing you’re buying when you pay more for chicken is a better life and death for the birds. It’s important to know that the minimum standards for poultry welfare are extremely permissive; federal animal-welfare laws do not apply to poultry, and most of the 9 billion broilers produced each year in the United States are raised in ways that would likely be troubling to the average consumer. If it fits your budget, we strongly recommend that you seek out high-welfare chicken to help eliminate animal cruelty.

How do you know if it’s humanely raised? Your best bet is to look for independent certifications like USDA Organic, Certified Humane, Animal Welfare Approved, and Global Animal Partnership (GAP), which not only review producers’ paperwork, but send inspectors onto farms to see for themselves.

Taste: We conducted taste tests of breasts and thighs for all the brands that met our animal-welfare criteria, plus one “control” brand: conventionally raised Tyson products. For breast meat, we noticed a significant difference between the Tyson sample and the challengers: the Tyson breast was dry, woody, and lacking in flavor by comparison. Among the brands in the premium category, the differences in flavor and texture were minimal. We were surprised to find that for chicken thighs, there was little difference among the brands — regardless of price.

Environment: As meat goes, chicken isn’t very carbon intensive; pound for pound, poultry produces around 10 percent of the greenhouse-gas emissions of beef, and actually less than cheese or farmed shrimp. And there isn’t a great deal of difference between chickens raised in various ways when it comes to greenhouse-gas emissions. When we talk about environmental impact with chickens, what we’re mostly talking about is the impact on the local air and water of waste products from intensive poultry farming. It’s ideal to buy from producers that raise smaller flocks, and do so in areas not densely populated with chicken farms, something we took into account in our evaluation of various brands.

Public Health: An important claim to look for when buying poultry is “no antibiotics, ever.” This tells you, just like it sounds, that the birds have never been administered antibiotics of any kind. While there is little risk of chicken being contaminated by antibiotics when you eat it — incidences of antibiotic residue in chicken are very low in the United States — the widespread use of antibiotics in agriculture is the major factor driving the rise in antibiotic resistance, which is very bad for public health. Many poultry brands are currently backsliding on commitments to eliminate antibiotics use; we looked for ones that are still committed to no antibiotics, ever.

Nutrition: Believe it or not, there’s not much information out there about the relative nutritional merits of chickens raised in different ways or by different brands; the nutrition facts on the back of the package are typically just standard USDA data. But there is some evidence that birds raised on pasture are higher in omega-3 fatty acids and certain vitamins and micro-nutrients, and lower in saturated fat, than ones raised indoors. That’s one reason we recommend buying pasture-raised birds when possible.

There’s also one area where organic chicken has an edge: glyphosate residue. Chickens are fed corn, soy, and wheat-based feed, and if that feed is not organic, it likely was grown using the herbicide glyphosate. (Even pasture-raised chickens get most of their nutrition from grain-based feed, with a small proportion of their calories coming from what they forage.) Studies have shown that glyphosate residue can be found in the organs and muscles of chickens that consume corn treated with herbicide; while the levels seem to be quite low, if this is an area of concern for you, buying organic will guarantee the chicken was fed a glyphosate-free diet.

Price & Convenience: In a perfect world, we’d recommend buying chicken that lived 100% of its life on pasture, ate organic feed, and carried one or more stringent animal-welfare certifications. But there are no widely available grocery brands that meet all these criteria. Brands that do can easily cost upwards of $10 per pound, and might require online ordering, with all the attendant inconvenience and packaging waste. (Reader, I ordered chicken online from one particularly sterling poultry farm. Porch pirates stole my first delivery; when I finally received the second one, it was packaged in enough styrofoam to fill a 13-gallon trash bag.) Given how much chicken we all eat — my family can easily go through 10 pounds a week — we’re conscious this isn’t practical for the vast majority of people.

Our Picks

BEST OVERALL:

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I first became interested in spices in 2015 — an era you might call peak Marie Kondo. Back then it was a given, even among talented bakers, that it was just fine to use that jar of McCormick’s ground cinnamon that your mom gave you when you moved into your first apartment for your holiday baking.

But times changed. A whole new generation of spice purveyors was coming on the scene: Intrepid spice merchants wanted to restore spices to their glory days, when they were exotic and valuable. And that meant a focus on freshness and provenance. And so the conventional wisdom, which I actively dispensed, was that it was time to Marie Kondo your spice drawer, and to replace stale spices every one to two years.

This is still pretty good advice. But it also can feel a bit overwhelming — especially at this time of year. And so in this buying guide to holiday baking spices, we stress-tested ground cinnamon, ginger, and cardamom to get straight about which spices to buy and why, and how to store and refresh them to minimize cost.

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OUR PICK:

Burlap & Barrel

Price: $4.99 to $5.55 per ounce

Why we like them: Burlap & Barrel is the epitome of the new-gen spice merchant. The company goes straight to the source for its spices, many of them heirloom varieties. The quality is tops: Burlap & Barrel’s Vietnamese cinnamon smells like none other you’ve tried — spicy like a Red Hot — while its ginger has a sharp, fruity depth. Equally important, the company is transparent about where (and from whom) they buy their spices and their direct relationships cut out the middlemen so farmers get a fair shake — and so do consumers.

BUDGET PICK:

Whole Foods 365 Organic

Price: $2.82 to $3.20 per ounce

Why we like them: Confession: Prior to testing we had been brainwashed to believe that supermarket spices were nothing more than flavorless dust. Not necessarily. Whole Foods 365 Organic line of spices does not offer traceability, but their ground ginger and cardamom were as pungent as most of our other entrants. (The Vietnamese cinnamon was a bit flat, but perfectly serviceable.) Even better, the price, not including Prime discounts, is between 30% to 40% less than premium direct-to-consumer brands.

The Hunt

Mystery has always been at the heart of the spice trade. In medieval times, in an effort to boost prices (and scare off competitors), traders whispered that nutmeg came from a dragon’s egg on top of a mountain. Which, along with other fanciful rumors, somehow succeeded. In the age of exploration, nutmeg was valued more highly than gold. In 1667, the Dutch traded Manhattan to the Brits in exchange for a speck of an island in Indonesia that was the exclusive home to the nutmeg tree.

Today, the opacity of the spice supply chain is what keeps prices low. If you don’t know where your cinnamon is from, it’s easy for a spice company to replace revered Vietnamese or Sri Lankan cinnamon with stuff from China. And if you don’t know when the spice was harvested or ground, you certainly don’t know how long it’s been sitting in a warehouse. According to Ethan Frisch, the co-founder of Burlap & Barrel, a spice in the commodity supply chain will change hands five or six times from the farm to your kitchen. This can take anywhere from 18 months to three years.

For this reason, our hunt was for the freshest spices. Spices, in other words, that you can keep around for years because they aren’t already faded when you bought them.

We gathered three baking spices: ground cinnamon, ginger, and cardamom, though we think our testing would likely apply to other holiday favorites including nutmeg, cloves, and allspice. Samples came from two direct-trade spice firms, Burlap & Barrel and Diaspora Co. B&B brings in spices from all over the world, and blends spices too, often in high-profile collabs with celebrity chefs. Diaspora sources only from India and Sri Lanka, and is unique in the spice game for its radical transparency: the company’s website doesn’t just tell you who grew each spice and when it was harvested, but what each farmer was paid, and how samples stacked up on lab tests for purity.

We also sampled spices from Spicewalla, a new-gen spice company based in Asheville, N.C., and Penzey’s, a beloved brick-and-mortar and online retailer. Both businesses buy from trusted importers, so there’s a bit less transparency, but they are laser focused on freshness. They also move a lot of product, so it’s unlikely that a jar has been sitting in their warehouse for years before it gets to your kitchen.

Our control, if you will, was Whole Foods Market 365 Organic. Are supermarket spices as subpar as the hip spice guys claim? We wanted to find out.

One final note: Spice aficionados universally maintain that you should never, ever buy ground spices. And while they have a point, we beg to differ. It’s true that ground spices go stale much faster than whole ones; this is because, when ground, more surface area is exposed to light and heat and moisture — all enemies of freshness.

But!! We pay more for all kinds of convenience. And if having ready-ground spices is important for you, that’s okay by us. (See our tips below for extended storage and replace when required.) Sourcing ground spices also seemed a suitably tough test for our competitors.

The Smart Choice

Our top pick is Burlap & Barrel, which excelled on flavor and aroma but also on its efforts to pull back the curtain on the convoluted spice supply chain. Its Royal cinnamon comes from mountains around Hué in Vietnam, and producers let the bark dry on the tree before harvesting to concentrate the essential oils. (In light of recent fears about lead in cinnamon, B&B also regularly tests its cinnamon in an independently accredited lab, as it should.)

Its Buffalo ginger, another heirloom variety, hails from northern Vietnam and plays beautifully in sweet and savory dishes. Like many spice nerds, Burlap & Barrel prefers you buy whole spices and, if I were buying cardamom again, I’d buy the whole pods and grind them myself. Their version of ground cardamom, from a regenerative farm in Guatemala, has that intense warm and peppery sweetness, but it is made from ground pods, not just the seeds, and therefore needs to be further pulverized for baked goods.

Or actually … when it comes to cardamom, which happens to be the most expensive baking spice, you might just choose Whole Foods 365 Organic, our budget pick. We could smell the sweet, camphor-y scent before we even removed the protective seal from the jar, and it did wonders to some morning oatmeal. The ginger was a lighter, more buttery color, but was somehow both piquant and round in aroma. The Whole Foods cinnamon was a tad flat, but fine. If you’re an occasional cook or baker, and spices tend to sit around for a while, I’d choose these and replace as necessary.

What about the rest? We loved Spicewalla but its spices were per-ounce more expensive than Burlap & Barrel’s, as were Diaspora’s. (Both gingers, for example, were more than 60% more expensive!) Penzey’s quality was tops, and I liked that you can experiment with spices from different countries — Vietnamese versus Ceylon versus Indonesian versus Chinese cinnamon. But again, with the exception of their lovely buttery ginger powder, all were more expensive than Burlap & Barrel.

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Important Tips … for whatever you choose

Here’s the part where we get to say: Relax! You don’t have to replace your spices every year. Choose high-quality spices, then follow these rules:

• Buy small: Avoid the pain of throwing out stale spices by simply using them up. You’re more likely to do this if you buy smaller quantities. (In other words, Costco is not the ideal place to buy spices.)

• Go dark: Heat and light will sap the aroma and flavor of your spices. So put them in a drawer or cabinet — and away from the stove.

• Avoid moisture: Humidity also can sap aroma and flavor. So keep spices out of the fridge and use the freezer only if you are going away for … six months or more.

Seal well: Glass or metal tins are preferable to plastic, which can absorb aromas and make them less ideal for reuse. Storing your spices in the jars they come in is fine. If, like me, you get a thrill from an alphabetized spice drawer, these glass jars from IKEA are a bargain. Or choose 4-oz metal tins.

The Fine Print

Our buying guides are much more than taste tests. We try to balance nutrition, environmental pros and cons, price, and taste. Click here to learn more about our philosophy and selection process.

What we included in this buying guide:

Ground cinnamon, ginger, and cardamom from five companies:

• Burlap & Barrel

• Spicewalla

• Diaspora Co.

• Penzey’s

• Whole Foods 365 Organic

What we didn’t include:

Additional supermarket spice brands, which lack transparency about where the spices are from or when they were picked/processed. We wanted one as a foil against the claims of high-end spice firms. We chose 365 Organic because it was organic and the most affordable when compared to Frontier, Simply Organic, and McCormick. The rationale: If you aren’t seeking out something special, price is likely the overriding factor in a buying decision.

What we looked for:

• Aroma: Fresh, deep, powerful scents.

• Taste: Bright, pungent flavor; a little spice should go a relatively long way.

• Feel: Yep, spices feel different to the touch. If it feels dry, it may be stale.

• Organic: This is more about protecting growers than your health, but we think that organic products are always worth choosing, if you can afford the added cost.

It feels a bit weird to post any non-election news this week. But our Buying Guides — which give you simple answers to absurdly complicated food decisions — are this newsletter’s bread and butter. We’ll be back next week with political analysis about what a second Trump presidency means for your food.

I eat yogurt every day and, much to my meat-loving husband’s dismay, have named a Greek yogurt parfait (with a view of the Aegean, please!) as my perfect last meal. So I naively assumed I was a bit of an expert on buying yogurt. 

Not so! Today’s grocery store has so, so many options  that I bet, like me, you long ago picked a brand and stuck with it – just to preserve your sanity.  

Smart move. We almost lost it trawling through dozens (and dozens) of brands and flavors, from vanilla to key lime pie. Our conclusion: plain, unsweetened yogurt with add-ins of your choice, is the way to go. Here are our top picks.

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BEST GREEKS: Fage Total 5% Greek and Wallaby Organic Greek Yogurt

Price: $7.29/32 oz and $7.99/32 oz 

Why we like it: Fage, the original Greek yogurt, won our taste test with its rich, creamy and not-too-tangy flavor; it’s also available everywhere – supermarkets, convenience stores, airports, you name it – and uses non-GMO Project Verified milk. Wallaby was our taste-test runner-up with a slightly more tangy flavor,  and our top organic pick. We always encourage buying certified organic for its broad environmental benefits.   

BEST TRADITIONAL: Maple Hill Organic 100% Grass-Fed Cream on Top Yogurt 

Price: 7$.49/32 oz 

Why we like it: Raising dairy cows exclusively on grass is pretty unusual today, but it not only produces healthier and tastier milk, it’s better for the environment, too.  We love this yogurt’s silky texture and balanced, creamy flavor. Like Maple Hill’s milk, it has fresh, subtle floral notes. 

UPGRADE PICK: Painterland Sisters Organic Skyr Yogurt 

Price: $10.99/24 oz

Why we like it: This new brand ticks all the boxes: organic, pasture-raised, lactose-free milk from family farms using regenerative farming practices. Plus a round, creamy flavor with none of the chalky aftertaste found in many plain yogurts. This would have been our best all-around pick. But while it is available in all 50 states, it is not ubiquitous like our other picks. And it is significantly more expensive than more mainstream brands.

BEST ON-THE-GO OPTION: Fage Total 2% Splits 

Price: $1.79/5.3 oz cup

Why we like it:  We’re pragmatists. So we don’t expect you to mix your own yogurt and carry around containers that need to be washed out. Which is why we also recommend Fage Total Split Cups – one side fruit or honey; one side 2% Greek yogurt (it doesn’t come in whole milk). Every fruit flavor has 11 grams of sugar – in line with low-sugar options we thought tasted far worse. Be warned, though: The honey version has 29 grams of sugar, nearly three times more than the fruit flavors! 

The Hunt

Most people think of yogurt as health food. And in its purest form, it is: full of protein, calcium, and lots of good bacteria for your gut. 

Sadly, many of the yogurts in American grocery stores are more dessert than health food, and many mainstream brands are what nutritionists would describe as “ultra-processed,” thanks to artificial sweeteners, emulsifiers, and stabilizers.  

Case(s) in point:  

Noosa’s Lemon Yogurt, which comes in an 8-ounce tub and is TRULY delicious, has 37 grams of sugar (25 are added sugars). That’s more than 9 teaspoons of sugar;  nearly as much as a can of Coke. True, 8 ounces is bigger than most individual serving sizes, which range between 5.3 ounces and 6 ounces, but it’s really, really hard not to finish this yogurt once you start.

Danone Low-fat Vanilla Yogurt sounds good for you but just 5.3 ounces has 22 grams of sugar (17 added). Do the math and per-ounce it’s got more sugar than electric-colored Go-Gurt (!!) and only slightly less than the (delicious but over the top) Lemon Noosa. 

I could go on, outlining all the ways that  yogurt is annoyingly complex. (I’m particularly irritated by the way sugar content varies among flavors within brands: Chobani’s honey vanilla has 20 grams of sugar per serving, 30 percent more than its pineapple flavor; while Noosa’s honey yogurt has 25 percent less sugar than its lemon. Huh?) 

The bottom line is that unless you want to spend hours reading labels and comparing serving sizes, the smartest thing to do is to choose plain yogurt and add your own sweeteners. 

For this buying guide, we looked at 14 plain yogurts. We considered only nationally available brands and eliminated any that had ingredients beyond milk and cultures: in this case,  only one – a premium (and often more expensive) brand, Brown Cow, which adds pectin for texture. (See more in our “fine print” section below.)

The basics

In the beginning, there was yogurt: milk that is cultured to transform lactose (milk sugars) into lactic acid, preserving it and giving it a tangy flavor. Thanks to the hippies, and then yuppies, yogurt went mainstream in the ‘70s and ‘80s. Soon there was low-fat, non-fat, flavored, and no-sugar flavored yogurt. 

Greek yogurt arrived in the late 1990s with the Fage (pronounced Fa-Ye) Total brand. But it really took off in the mid-aughts when Chobani burst on to the scene. In Greece, yogurt is often made with sheep or goat’s milk; here it’s your regular cow’s milk but strained, as it is in Greece, to make it thicker, creamier, and more tangy. It also means it has far less sugar and carbs and more protein than traditional, looser yogurts, which still contain whey. In our analysis of Greek yogurts, they had about three times as much protein as the traditional yogurts and as much as 40% less sugar. You can understand why Greek yogurt was a hit.

Next came skyr, hitting shelves around 2010. Skyr is a lot like Greek yogurt. But the cultures, which hail from Iceland, make for a creamier, less tangy product. Skyr also generally has little or no lactose, so it’s a good choice for the lactose-intolerant. 

The smart choice(s)

If nutrition is your thing, there’s really no reason not to choose Greek or skyr. But if, like Liz, you prefer the looser texture of yogurt, we recommend Maple Hill Cream on Top for its glossy mouthfeel and creamy flavor. 

In many of our buying guides, there’s a clear winner based on nutrition, environmental, or taste concerns. With Greek or Skyr, they are all pretty similar. The variations between the levels of protein, sugar, fat don’t justify steering clear of any one brand. For protein, most are in the 2 to 3 gram per ounce range; fat runs from 1 to 1.5 grams per ounce. We made our choices based on the quality of the milk – giving preference to organic and non-GMO – and taste. 

This resulted in two of our winners: the OG, Fage Total, a creamy, round 5% milk fat Greek, and Wallaby Aussie Greek, which is made with organic milk and has a tangy, but not-too sharp, flavor like some of the others. (Nancy’s, we’re talking to you!) Chobani, the 800-pound gorilla of Greek yogurts, was our least favorite with a chalky and bitter aftertaste.  

There was one outlier on fat, and that was Painterland Sisters Skyr, an up-and-coming brand run by two Pennsylvania sisters. It is a revelation. With 6% milk fat, it is lusciously creamy and much more balanced in flavor than the Greeks. It costs more and does have more fat – 3.4 g of fat per ounce. We think it’s worth it, which is why we made this our upgrade pick. 

Put jam on it – but not too much!

OK, let’s get real. Unless you are doing a taste test, no one eats plain yogurt plain. Our rationale for recommending plain yogurt is that you can add what you like and control how much you add so you don’t inadvertently end up with dessert for breakfast. 

But we were surprised to learn how quickly you can end up with a high-sugar breakfast, even if you add your own.

• 1 tablespoon of Bon Maman jam (a stand-in for good jam) has 12 grams of sugar.

• 1 tablespoon of honey has 17 grams of sugar.

In other words: If you add a tablespoon of jam or honey to the standard 5.3 ounce serving of plain yogurt, you now have total sugars of 17 to 22 grams of sugar. That’s four to five teaspoons! Which is more or less what you find in most flavored yogurts.

So why don’t we recommend flavored yogurts, especially low-sugar varieties?  

Here’s why:  

• Every flavored yogurt we have found includes some kind of stabilizer or emulsifier (It won’t kill you but it’s always good to avoid ultra-processed ingredients if you can!)

• Many low-sugar yogurts, like Siggi’s, use artificial or alternative sweeteners such as Stevia or monkfruit, which can have off-flavors.

• The remaining low-sugar options like Chobani…just don’t taste that good.

For the healthiest yogurt, mix in your own sweetener, but be conscious of what you add. Sticking to 2 teaspoons of sweetener per standard serving allows you to (hopefully) stay within a healthy range. The American Heart Association recommends adult men consume just 36 grams of sugar per day; women only 25.

Our on-the-go pick, the Fage Splits with fruit keep you in this range. But remember, the honey flavor has nearly three times as much sugar as any of the fruit options. (29 grams vs 11 grams.)

The Fine Print 

Our buying guides are much more than taste tests. We try to balance nutrition, environmental pros and cons, price, and taste. Click here to learn more about our philosophy and selection process.

What we included in this buying guide:   

• 14 whole milk plain yogurts with national distribution including:

  • Traditional yogurts: Alexandre Family Farm Full Fat, Maple Hill Cream on Top, Stonyfield Organic Probiotic

  • Greek: Chobani, Fage Total, Maple Hill Greek, Nancy’s Probiotic, Nounos, Stonyfield Plain Greek, Wallaby Organic Aussie Style Yogurt 

  • Skyr: Icelandic Provisions, Norr Organic, Painterland Sisters, Siggi’s  

  • Flavored yogurts were evaluated but eliminated before taste testing due to high-sugar content and additives

  • Plain yogurts that used pectins and other emulsifiers were also eliminated from the taste test. (Only one included them, Brown Cow, Stonyfield’s non-organic brand.)

What we didn’t include:

• Regional brands: Many regional brands like Strauss Family Creamery (California) and Seven Stars (Pennsylvania) produce wonderful products. But we limited ourselves to national brands.

• Store (a.k.a. private label)brands: There’s little transparency in the private label world, so it’s hard to say who’s supplying the yogurt or if/when that changes.

What we prioritized:

• Organic or non-GMO milk: Organic yogurts are better for the environment; if you can afford it, it’s a good choice.

• Low sugar: Plain yogurts do not have added sugar. But there was still some variation in grams of sugar per serving. Skyr tends to have less lactose (milk sugar) so it’s also usually a bit lower in total sugar. Greek, which is strained, on the whole has less too. 

• High protein: If you’re eating yogurt for breakfast or lunch, protein will help fill you up. Greek yogurt and skyr has about three times more protein than traditional, unstrained yogurt. 

Prices: 

Comparing prices is surprisingly difficult. We reached out to companies to find out each yogurt’s MSRP (Manufacturer Suggested Retail Price), but were told that retailers set their own prices, which can vary widely. We checked prices at a Washington, D.C. Whole Foods Market, where most of the yogurts were within 50 cents or $1 of one another when sold at full price. But due to retail promotions at the time of our research, Wallaby Organic was on sale with a Prime Discount for $1.50 less than regular price; Siggi’s was $1 cheaper and Stonyfield Organic was cheapest of all. 

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Since many of our founding subscribers here at Consumed started off as Pressure Cooker listeners, Jane and I decided to devote our very first buying guide to an item that holds a special place in the hearts – and cabinets – of parents everywhere: snack bars. 

There are a zillion snack bars on the market, and it’s no mystery why. For parents, they’re something handheld and shelf-stable that can be packed in a lunchbox or tucked into a pocket in case of hanger emergencies (I, for one, have had a granola bar floating around in my handbag continuously since 2018). For kids, the dessert-inspired flavors and colorful packaging make them more exciting than the plain old string cheese or cut veggies that parents might otherwise offer. And for food brands, at as much as $2 a pop, bars are typically a solid moneymaker.  

What we found in evaluating over four dozen options is that, when it comes to quality and taste, snack bars are all over the map. Some are actually pretty great! Some are terrible! And where various brands fell along that spectrum surprised us. Here are are top picks.

BEST OVERALL: 

KIND Bars

Comes in: Almost two dozen flavors

Price: $17 for 12 from Amazon

Why we like them: Though they’re marketed towards adults, not kids, we think these fruit-and-nut-based bars beat kid-oriented options in both flavor and nutrition. They’re less processed than nearly all the competition, with more fiber and more protein. KIND bars are available in a wide enough array of flavors to satisfy different tastes (and keep kids from getting bored of them), and because they come in multiple sizes – the original full size bar, plus KIND Minis and KIND Thins – they cater to different ages and hunger levels.

RUNNERS UP:

MadeGood Organic Granola Bars 

Comes in: Chocolate Chip, Mixed Berry, Cookies & Cream, and Banana

Price: $4.49 for 6 from Target

Why we like them: If it’s a classic granola bar you’re after, this one has slightly less sugar and fewer additives than options from Nature’s Valley, Quaker, Cascadian Farm, or Annie’s. It’s the unique addition of vegetable extracts that really sets MadeGood apart, making these bars a solid source of several vitamins, too. 

Clif Kid ZBar Protein

Comes in: Chocolate Chip, Chocolate Mint, Cookies n’ Cream, Cinnamon Crunch

Price: $15 for 15 from Amazon

Why we like it: Our kid and adult tasters loved this bar’s pleasing chewy texture and sweet-but-not-cloying flavor. These bars do have a long ingredient list, and it’s a fair criticism that they’re as much ‘dessert’ as ‘snack,’ but we think they’re a good choice for a kid who needs a nut-free option that’s still substantial enough to get them through an active afternoon; this bar has as much protein as a full-sized KIND bar. 

Wipala Kids Organic Fruity Bars 

Comes in: Goldenberry & Broccoli, Mango & Kale, Strawberry & Spinach

Price: $20 for 12 from Amazon

Why we like it: Basically beefed up fruit leather, these bars are tangy, bright, and made from organic fruits, organic veggies and organic quinoa: that’s it. With fewer calories than our other picks, they might not be enough to fill up older or more active kids – and, at more than $1.50 each, they are on the pricier side. But the flavor is great, and you’d be hard-pressed to find a more nutrient-dense packaged snack, or a more pristine ingredient list.

The Hunt

To compile this buying guide, I scoured my local grocery and convenience stores, talked to friends about what they buy, and searched online.  I cast a wide net, including not just snack bars marketed specifically to kids, but ones aimed at a general audience, too. I wound up with a list of 49 snack bars – that’s not counting the multiple flavors that most of these products are sold in.

When it comes to snack bars overall, the bad news is that they are, with few exceptions, highly processed; agglomerations of syrups and pastes and vegetable oils, molded into a tidy rectangle. The jury is still out on whether highly processed foods are ipso facto bad for you, or whether it comes down to the merits of each individual ingredient. But a growing  number of nutrition experts believe that you’re better off avoiding ultra-processed foods when you can.   

That said, we are pragmatists, and the need for shelf-stable, on-the-go items for kids is real. The good news about the snack bars on the market today is that while most have lengthy ingredient lists, very few contain additives that are viewed as specifically concerning, such as preservatives or synthetic food dyes. 

Processing aside, the main issue with snack bars is that most have too much sugar and not enough fiber or protein. That means they won’t do a good job of keeping a kid full until their next meal. That is certainly the case with the Quaker Chewy Granola Bars that I was raised on: with just 1 gram of protein and 1 gram of fiber per bar, they are essentially just a block of refined carbs. 

Maybe not so surprising for a product that boasts “real chocolate chips!” on the label? 

But some options that seem quite wholesome on the surface are also sugar monsters. For instance: I’ve been buying Nature’s Bakery Raspberry Fig Bars every week for years, my rationale being that…fruit!! But in doing this research I discovered that one serving contains 19 grams of sugar – the most of any bar I came across, and roughly the same as a Snickers – with a host of chemical texturizers. These bars are now dead to me!

Anyway: Once we eliminated options on the basis of nutritional or additive concerns, we ended up with 17 bars that were blind tested by kids and adults. We were surprised by how many had flavors that were off or unappealing, and/or textures that were disappointingly crumbly, waxy, or dry.

The Smart Choice

There’s a lot that we love about our top pick, KIND Bars. The chocolate drizzle made them look decadent to our kid testers, when in fact they contain less sugar, and more fiber and protein, than almost any other option (exact quantities vary by flavor; the dark chocolate nuts & sea salt is a great choice, with 5 g sugar, 6 g protein, and 7 g fiber). KIND bars are also made primarily from whole foods – nuts and fruit – and thus less processed than other options. Finally, we love that these bars require real chewing; in a world of soft foods, that not only forces kids to slow down as they eat, but it’s great for their jaw development.

Of course, many kids need a nut-free bar to bring to school or sports, or they don’t like nuts, or they are too young to safely eat them. So we recommended three other bars that we think taste great, pass nutritional muster, and offer a range of different flavor profiles.  

We chose MadeGood Organic Granola Bars as our favorite classic granola bar; Clif Kid ZBar Protein for a high-protein snack bar that is also nut-free; and Wipala Kids Organic Fruity Bars as a delicious and highly nutritious fruit-based bar, especially great for a light snack.  

A Word About Toddler Bars

Most of the major baby food brands now produce soft whole-grain snack bars. They differ from mainstream kids’ snack bars in that they’re usually smaller – under an ounce, and under 100 calories – and instead of flavors like chocolate cookie dough and cinnamon bun, they come in pumpkin & banana or apples & spinach (a sure sign these brands are marketing to the parents, not yet the kids!).

We included several in our taste test, but found them to be dry and cardboardy to the point of being inedible; plus, they are highly processed, often with a number of additives. Plum Organics’ Mighty Snack Bars, for instance, contain emulsifiers and texturizing agents, and the Soft Baked Bars made by fancy baby food darling Once Upon a Farm contain 12 grams of sugar. Save your money! 

The Fine Print 

Our buying guides are much more than taste tests. We try to balance nutrition, environmental pros and cons, price, and taste. Click here to learn more about our philosophy and selection process.

What we included in this buying guide:   

• 49 widely available snack bars, including:

  • Toddler bars: Cerebelly, Earth’s Best, Happy Family, Little Spoon, Once Upon a Farm, Plum Organics, Sprout Organic, Yumi 

  • Kids’ bars: Annie’s, Clif (ZBar), GoMacro Kids, Junkless, KIND Kids, MadeGood, Power Crunch, Skout, Wipala Kids, Dino Bars

  • Adult/general audience bars: Bobo’s, Cascadian Farm, Clif, Clif Luna Bar, Dave’s Killer, JonesBar, Kellogg’s Nutri-Grain, KIND, Kodiak, LaraBar, Nature’s Bakery, Nature’s Valley, Quaker, Rx, Simple Mills, That’s It

What we didn’t include:

• Boutique offerings: We came across a few bars produced by startup brands in the course of internet research that we were unable to locate IRL. If we couldn’t find it in visits to multiple local retailers – or order it easily online for fast and free delivery – we did not include it. 

• Store (a.k.a. private label) brands: There are a few private label snack bars sold by retailers like Trader Joe’s and Target (Good & Gather). Since these products are only available by visiting a single retailer, we did not include them.

• Adult protein bars: High-calorie bars aimed at athletes, or claiming to be a meal replacement, were not included. 

What we prioritized:

• Low(er) sugar: snack bars, as a category, are relatively high in sugar. We looked for bars that had less than 10 grams of sugar.

• Higher protein: Most kids’ bars have very little protein; we liked to see at least 3 grams per serving.

• Higher fiber: As with protein, snack bars in general lack fiber. We looked for products with 2 or more grams per serving.  

• Minimal additives, and no additives of concern: We eliminated any bars with ingredients classified as additives of concern by the Environmental Working Group, and prioritized bars without additives.  

• Organic: Arguably less important for your snack bar than your fruits and vegetables, but we think that organic products are always worth choosing, if you can afford the added cost. 

The Internet is awash with taste tests – for boxed mac-and-cheese, spaghetti sauce, potato chips,  you name it.  It makes sense. As any food marketer knows, though people may say that all sorts of other things matter to them when choosing a product, the reality is that taste always comes first. 

But even if taste is number one, there are plenty of other factors that play into our buying decisions. Price (obviously). Convenience. Nutrition.  Environmental impact. Animal welfare. This is especially important with staple foods, the ones we buy every week, and in categories where, frankly, the flavor of various products may not be all that distinctive. (Just try to discern a flavor difference between, say, an organic and a pasture-raised egg!)

So Consumed Buying Guides take into account all the factors that play into your decisions at the grocery store. We consider a product’s taste, plus its impact on the planet, your wallet, and your personal health. 

Which products we review:

Initially, Consumed Buying Guides will focus on grocery staples; the things like chicken or eggs or milk or yogurt or tomato sauce that you buy on a regular basis. (Though we’ll sometimes go off-piste to highlight seasonal or holiday products.) 

We only review products with national (or nearly national) distribution. This was a hard choice because there are many terrific startup food brands and regional producers. We hope you support those companies, if you like their food. But we’ve limited our contenders to ones that our readers are likely to find in the course of their regular weekly grocery shop, wherever they live. 

Typically, we don’t include private label brands in our testing. The main reason for this is that you can only find those products if you visit a specific grocery chain, and that’s not realistic for many readers. The lack of transparency in private label products can also make it difficult for us to get all the information we like to have in terms of how that item was made, where, and by whom.   

How we rate our products: 

Nutrition: We love food. So we are not looking for foods with the least fat or no sugar, especially at the expense of taste. But we are reviewing staples! If something is in your regular rotation and there’s a health(ier) option, we’re going to seek it out. 

We also try to avoid, where possible, any ultra-processed ingredients or chemical additives.  This is not because we believe any processing or emulsifier or stabilizer is inherently bad for you, but you may as well avoid them when you can.

Finally, when we think about personal health, it’s all about context. So yes, grass-fed beef has more Omega-3s than corn-fed beef but that isn’t a reason to go out and eat tons of grass-fed beef. The fact is there aren’t that many Omega-3s in any kind of beef, and plenty of drawbacks. (If you are seeking out Omegas, eat salmon!). So, yes, we look at the numbers. But we are also making a judgment call on whether the so-called benefits are truly helping you in the context of your overall diet. 

Sustainability: We know more than we care to about the food industry’s drag on the planet, from greenhouse gas emissions to erosion to biodiversity loss. This is why, where possible, we recommend certified organic products. Is the standard perfect? No. But it remains the strongest and most rigorously audited standard for food in the United States: a floor, not a ceiling. 

That said, organic is more important for some foods than others (especially ones made primarily from highly processed ingredients) and we will always look for a conventional and more affordable option. In general, though, if you can afford an organic option and it’s available, we recommend that you buy it. 

Price/value: This job would be easy if we just recommended extremely expensive food that has the luxury of being perfect in every way. But that’s neither convenient nor (usually) affordable. Our Buying Guides look to highlight foods that offer legit bang for your buck.  So we might pick a $6 tomato sauce that has almost everything over a $10 jar that ticks all our boxes. 

Value, of course, is subjective. It all depends on your price range. But on the whole, we’re looking for places you can save money or for tradeoffs that we think are worth making. 

Questions? Let us know. 

If you have any product you’d like to see a buying guide for, email us: consumednewsletter@gmail.com