In our first episode, we take on food trends — specifically, the biggest food trend of the last decade: kale.

Kale isn’t an especially flashy vegetable. It’s slightly bitter, hard to digest, and lasts forever in your fridge. Rumor has it that, until 2011, the biggest kale buyer used it to garnish their salad bar. Now, it’s on 1 out of every 5 menus in the U.S.

Something — or someone — catapulted kale into a status symbol. In our quest to find the story of how kale got cool, we’ll trace its rise back nearly 20 years and even, possibly, uncover a full-blown kale conspiracy.

You might think kale is over, but you haven’t heard anything yet.

This episode features: David Sax, author of The Tastemakers: Why We're Crazy for Cupcakes but Fed Up with Fondue Eve Turow Paul, Millennial food culture consultant and author of A Taste of Generation YumMike Kostyo, Senior Publications Manager at DatassentialBo Muller-Moore, T-shirt artist and founder of EatMoreKale.com

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The Search for Big Kale