In 2025, American food trends shifted with rising breakfast costs, increasing spice preferences, and the growing popularity of fried-chicken sandwiches, reflecting changes in prices and tastes.
How prices, tastes, and preferences changed in 2025 Johnny Miller / The New York Times / ReduxThis is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
How do you measure a year? In cups of coffee, yes, but also in the rushed early-morning breakfasts, the many trips to the grocery store, the slow dinners spent with friends. Each tells a story of how we filled our days.
Some of this year’s food preferences reflect how Americans’ lives have changed. As my colleague Yasmin Tayag explained in May, diners serving the classic American breakfast—eggs, potatoes, and coffee—were once a staple of affordability. Now, as supply shortages and tariffs affect these foods, stepping out for breakfast “can require a level of budgeting once reserved for fancy brunch.”
It’s not just prices that have changed; so, too, have Americans’ taste preferences. In August, Ellen Cushing wrote about how food is becoming spicier. More than half of American consumers are likely to buy an item described as spicy—up from 39 percent in 2015, she reported. Then there are the fried-chicken sandwiches. Consumption has increased 19 percent at American restaurants, threatening the burger’s long-held dominance.
Today’s newsletter explores how to understand the food that Americans ate this year.
On Food
Breakfast Is Breaking
By Yasmin Tayag
The classic American version hasn’t changed much in a century. Now it faces an identity crisis.
