We love brands that keep the planet in mind. Packaged food creates a lot of waste, so we’re always excited when we taste something great that also happens to be eco-friendly. While we tasted a lot of good, sustainable foods this year, we found two products that really stood out in terms of both flavor and mission. These are the best sustainable foods we tried in 2023.
Lesser Evil Oh My Ghee! is my new go-to when I buy bagged popcorn. It’s basically buttered popcorn with a twist—instead of butter, it tastes like clarified butter. It reminds me of eating lobster or crab legs. It’s amazing—and Lesser Evil makes an effort to be a planet-friendly brand, too. Their sustainability mission has a few pillars, but the really cool one is that their packaging is made with a plastic additive that creates a biogas that can be turned into clean energy once it reaches the landfill. Makes the popcorn taste even better, tbh.
Chili crisp is an essential condiment for dumplings, fried rice, and so much more, but so many are pretty one-note. You get chili and you get oil—and that’s about it. That’s why we love Barnacle Foods Kelp Chili Crisp. In addition to chiles and oil, it tastes like nori, briny and oceanic. Kelp doesn’t just add excellent flavor. Barnacle Foods sees kelp as a food of the future since it is super low impact to grow (no fertilizer needed) and can buffer the effects of ocean acidification. If you like a little extra umami in your chili crisp, buy this.
Howdy! I’m Gwynedd, Sporked’s managing editor. I live in Los Angeles and have access to the best tacos the U.S. has to offer—but I’m a sucker for a crunchy Old El Paso taco night every now and then. I’ve been at Sporked since 2022 and I’m still searching frozen mozzarella sticks that can hold a candle to restaurant sticks.
Why you should trust me: I’ve been a journalist for 20 years (yikes), a consumer of food for 40-plus years, and I’m truly hard pressed to think of foods I don’t like (or that I can’t tolerate at the very least). Oh and one time I cooked my way through Guy Fieri’s cookbook and wrote about the journey through Flavortown.
What I buy every week: Trader Joe’s Original Savory Thins. Fat free plain yogurt (usually Fage or Nancy’s). Honeycrisp apples. Sweet cream coffee creamer for my at-home Americanos. A frozen cauliflower crust pizza and some jarred mushrooms to top it with. Old El Paso Stand ‘N Stuff taco shells and Gardein Ground Be’f, even though I think “be’f” is a nightmarish contraction.
Favorite ranking: Stouffer’s frozen dinners. I don’t own a microwave (I get my cancers the old fashioned way!), so I love taste testing things that I don’t really buy to eat at home.
Least favorite ranking: Soy sauce. Don’t get me wrong, I love soy sauce—but consuming that much sodium in one sitting is probably illegal in some countries. Our frozen enchilada taste test was a close second; the smell of microwaved corn tortillas still haunts me.
Thoughts? Questions? Complete disagreement? Leave a comment!
Gwynedd Stuart
Justine Sterling
Jordan Myrick
Thoughts? Questions? Complete disagreement? Leave a comment!