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.
Gwynedd Stuart, Sporked’s managing editor, is an L.A.-based writer and editor who spends way, way too much time at the grocery store. She’s never met an Old El Paso taco or mozzarella stick she didn’t like.
Thoughts? Questions? Complete disagreement? Leave a comment!
Thoughts? Questions? Complete disagreement? Leave a comment!