Whole Foods has packaged up its 2022 product predictions into a tasting box for customers. As adventurous American eaters use new flavours as a means of experimenting, subscription and mystery boxes from trusted brands are providing a reliable and affordable way to taste test.

Mars Petcare has launched Lovebug, the first 100% insect-based cat food in the UK. Brands are increasingly creating pet foods and products that align with owners’ values, with sustainability and concern for the environment being among the top consumer concerns.

The perceived ‘grossness’ of entomophagy has long prevented insects from becoming a regular part of diets around the world. But between a desire to broaden culinary horizons and concerns about the ethics and sustainability of eating meat, is the time right for bug-based cuisine to take off?

While author Kyle Chakya may have neatly captured the past decade's Longing for Less, a post-lockdown, inter-pandemic, and digitally saturated world now has people longing for more. Whether you chalk it up to techno-optimism and/or a general sense of impending doom, people today are looking for a new maximalism of feelings, dimensions, and possibilities to reinvigorate them and make their lives feel full. Both action and material goods appeal to us strongly these days; we discriminate between them less, both morally and in terms of how we expect them to affect our lives. Where once, the narrative was that people chose fulfilling experiences when things stopped gratifying them, a more nuanced understanding has emerged, and today we see consumers relating to ‘experience-like things’ and consuming commodified ‘thing-like experiences’. Now, meaningful, adventurous travel is on a lot of people’s agendas, but so too is experiential retail, seen as an alluring alternative to the mechanical convenience of e-commerce. Meanwhile, the dawn of the metaverse is upon us, and people are gradually understanding the potential for having – and creating – vibrant experiences in the digital world. Some are beginning to perceive a future in which people live one part of their lives in a digital dream world, and the other in a challenging, ecologically precarious reality that requires them to be self-sufficient and ready for anything. The Experience Hunters are not only seeking out moments to enrich their lives, they’re preparing for a future filled with as-yet-unknown developments and upheavals. This sometimes-uneasy perception of the road ahead is all the more reason to make life full, right now.