This story is part of Junk Food, Redefined, our new collection of snack recommendations, recipes, and perspectives that celebrate an undervalued food group. Read all the stories here.
What’s an adaptogen? Who makes the best gummy candies? Will this can of soda actually change my life? These are the big questions in the world of snacks, a space rife with buzzwords and hype. In particular, “functional” snacks—foods that claim to provide more than plain nourishment—have presented a seductive logic. I want better health, better sleep, and a better life, and if a bag of chips promises those things, I want to believe it could be true. But more often than not, I don’t know enough to tell the goods from the grifts. We’re all shopping in the dark.
Andrea Hernández, the writer of Snaxshot, cuts through the chaos. A banner on her website welcomes visitors to “the cult,” inviting you to subscribe “if you fucking dare.” The branding may seem aggressive, even sinister at first glance, but Snaxshot is a benevolent project in more ways than one. Her newsletter features the latest snack trends while serving a healthy dose of skepticism, wit, and undeniable expertise on the snack industry to 20,000 readers, who she affectionately calls her snaxbois. If anyone has earned her self-proclaimed title of “product oracle” and the prophetic aura that accompanies it, it is she.
To catch a glimpse of the future of snacks, we spoke about the scams, the stars, and the trends that are defining the meals we all eat between meals.
This interview has been edited for clarity.
How do you perceive today’s landscape of snacks and how did we get here?
I was witnessing this trend around the mid-2010s, when I started to see a lot of the so-called better-for-you and functional messaging really popping off—this idea of snacks that were going beyond nutrition and trying to be something more. In my mind it really took off with Goop, but these days I’m seeing more and more of it. In a world where you can buy adaptogenic cookie dough—what does that mean and why do we need that?—or a beverage that offers you, say, “a meditation in a can,” you have to be a lot smarter as a consumer, more aware of what all of these buzzwords mean, and more aware of what snacks can actually do for you.
What’s behind all of this functional messaging? Are we demanding our snacks do too much for us or should we be asking for more?
First of all, all food is inherently functional. I feel like we’re giving food imposter syndrome, trying to force it to be things it’s not, like when we try to make cauliflower act like meat or whatever.
Cauliflower doesn’t want to be a steak.
I like to joke that, unless a snack comes from the Function region of France, it’s not actually functional.
It’s just sparkling food.
Yeah, exactly. But one thing I find really interesting is consumers trying to coexist between different states, like how they’re changing how they drink caffeine. Previously, it was just about getting caffeinated, and you were getting jacked up on energy drinks. Or you were only trying to relax by doing THC shots to unwind. Now it feels like we’re trying to be in both states simultaneously, which is why I came up with the term “functional unwinding.” The rise of adaptogenic coffee is really a good example. I want to have the energy, but I also don’t want to have a spike and then a crash. I want to be relaxed at the end of the day, but I also don’t want to fall asleep.
I think it’s also a generational thing for millennials where we want to have our cake and eat it too. Not that that’s a bad thing. I feel like now people are doing things in good measure, instead of just hanging out at the extremes. The rise of sober curiosity also has a lot to do with that impulse. We want to drink, but we also don’t want to be overly indulgent and be hungover the next day.
How do you think your millennial and Gen Z audiences might be snacking differently? Are younger folks looking for something new from snacks?
My parents used to be like, “Don’t snack or you’re going to ruin the meal.” But the stats say my generation and Gen Z are not eating full meals in the same way as my parents’ generation. We’re snacking a lot more in lieu of meals. So, joke’s on you, boomers, because the snack actually became the meal.
We have also been in a perpetual discovery mode for most of our lives. I think being on social media has sort of primed our brains to crave the dopamine hit that comes from experiencing something new, and that shows in the data—collectively, millennial and Gen Z brand loyalty is the lowest in comparison to older generations.
I do think a difference between Gen Z and millennials is that millennials did the whole DTC, Instagrammable health look, defined by perfectly curated social grids, and I feel like Gen Z is sort of rejecting that. Gen Z snack aesthetics are more about permissible indulgence. That is, indulging in something that tastes good and feels good without an overwhelming sense of guilt. At the same time rejecting the pretty pastel look in favor of a more punkish vibe. Like Immorel, this newly launched sparkling mushroom tea based in Brooklyn, has this very devilish, heavy metal ’80s rock band energy. Or this other very Gen Z company called Rotten that’s making gummy worms. Their branding is literally eyeballs popping out and worms crawling and other horrible, grotesque visuals. I see that and I think, Hell yeah.
What snacking trends should our generations be especially suspicious of?
I see a big movement of skepticism in young people today, especially toward health trends. They make their own decisions. I wrote this newsletter piece called “Food Brands Beware,” where I made the case that brands who are over-promising and under-delivering—Trojan horse-ing their products with health claims and buzzy messaging—are only setting themselves up for failure.
I’ve also noticed a lot of health trends that seem to take [long-held] human knowledge, repackage it, and sell it back to us at a premium. Think marketing campaigns about the hidden powers of mushrooms—like normal, non-magic mushrooms. People have known mushrooms are good for us for hundreds of generations. This isn’t news. But the fact is that we’re so disconnected and severed from our roots as human beings that we buy into this commodification of regular things.
I’ve noticed a similar trend in the way, as Latinos, our culture is marketed back to us. Your newsletter post on store-bought agua fresca mentions this explosive growth in Hispanic purchasing power, but when I think of Doritos-flavored tacos and chile-limón-dusted everything, I get curious about how we maintain autonomy and authenticity in the snack aisle.
I think people can feel when something is inauthentic. One of the first questions I get asked when I share a Hispanic-sounding product is always, “Is the founder Latino?” When I shouted-out this pisco seltzer—everything is a seltzer these days—my readers were excited to know that one of the founders is Peruvian. And it’s not even specific to Latinos. Like, Fly By Jing’s Asian American founder is taking her identity and putting out products that mix both her Americanness and her heritage in a way that cannot be replicated by these big food brands, and it’s clearly working for her.
As our power grows, I think that we as Latinos are going to drive something that might be good for the U.S., which is the Hispanic palate. Our palates tend to be less sugary, much more focused on bitterness and acidity. Agua fresca is a great example because there is that health benefit. It’s not like 20 grams of added sugar—all of the sweetness is coming from things like fresh fruit and natural produce. Our flavors across Latin America are as rich as our culture, as our history, and as beautiful and as colorful as our actual beaches and nature and landscapes.
Of course, the Latino population is so big. You have this huge, untapped market. It’s been really cool to see people saying “let’s take ownership of our identity” and “let’s show people that we’re more than just the stereotypes of sombreros and handlebar mustaches and whatever.”
What are you excited about in the world of snacks right now?
I feel like we’re finally getting away from that better-for-you messaging that was everywhere when I first started Snaxshot in 2020. There are brands coming out like Gooey, this hazelnut spread, and the messaging is pretty much, “We don’t have any function, we just want to taste good.” Another brand, The Good Crisp Company, is doing a similar thing. I think they’re just a better-tasting version of the O.G. Pringles, so the fact that the ingredients seem healthier is just an added plus.
I am excited about the intersection of technology-meets-snacking and products being able to actually put science behind the claims of function, whether that’s through a wearable device or through more research. More than that, though, I’d love to be done with the functional shit in general. Just give people the stuff that they want.