Over the past year, we have talked about the trends impacting changes to three of the top areas of consumer spending: housing, transportation and health care.

Kempczinski wonders what will happen if quick service restaurants are disrupted by delivery the way Amazon has changed other industries. If consumers embrace quick service restaurant delivery as they have for books and furniture, that could redefine how convenience fits into our food culture.

More than half of home cooks think their dinner routines could improve. Yet consumers are reluctant to add these options to their dinner planning. Today, just one in 10 of these consumers is planning to use a meal kit in the next three months. So how can emerging alternatives play a bigger role with dinner?

Luke Saunders and his company, Farmer’s Fridge, are bringing consumers meals they’re used to—fresh salads, wraps and more—by using a device they’re not expecting.

These are big questions with broad implications. Ipsos asked people to predict the short-term future to see how things might change for themselves.

Packaging plays a critical role in selling, transporting, storing and protecting our food. But too much packaging (including recyclables) is still ending up in landfills where it can take hundreds of years to break down.

Around the globe, people are becoming more aware of their sugar intake. When Robert Long, senior vice president and chief innovation officer of The Coca-Cola Company asks What the Future, he is thinking about how to create new drinks to meet changing consumer tastes.

Slightly more than half of Americans say they consume more sugar than the recommended limit, according to the Ipsos Global Trends report. The Canadian Food Service Monitor study by Ipsos showed that reducing sugar is a top concern for diners who are generally trying to reduce processed and unhealthy ingredients and replace them with more natural choices. But people do still like their sweets. So how can brands lower sugar content without alienating consumers or forcing them to change their behaviors to benefit from less sugar? Should companies go stealth when tweaking their formulas or be up front about it?

In Douglas Adams’ sci-fi classic, “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” diners are invited to meet the meat. The main course introduces itself before the meal: “I am the main Dish of the Day. May I interest you in the parts of my body? Something off the shoulder perhaps? Braised in a white wine sauce...”

Your competition just released a new product. It was starting to get buzz on social media and then a celebrity plugged it unprompted on Instagram and the mentions lit up. Is this the Next Big Thing, or is it the next Not a Thing Anymore? Will this have sustained scale? To put it another way, will this product “tip” from niche to mainstream and should you be developing an equivalent?

As populations expand and the effects of climate change grow in severity, nothing short of our ability to feed the world’s people is at stake. Ronald’s book, “Tomorrow’s Table: Organic Farming, Genetics, and the Future of Food,” co-authored with Raoul W. Adamchak, her husband and an organic farmer, seeks to bridge a divide between her community of scientists and his of organic farmers. Each group must work together to create a more sustainable landscape for farming. When Ronald thinks What the Future, she’s wondering if people realize what’s at stake and understand the benefitss of genome-editing technologies such as CRISPR.

Multiple James Beard Award-winning chef Rick Bayless will feed you in his Chicago restaurants, including the Michelin-starred Topolobampo. He’ll teach you how to cook with help from his cookbooks and TV shows, such as “Mexico–One Plate at a Time.” He’ll help you out in the kitchen with his line of craft Mexican foods produced by ConAgra. But wherever and however you eat, he doesn’t want you to eat alone. When he thinks What the Future, chef Bayless is concerned about the future of the family dinner. But he’s excited by what he sees in our survey results.

The future of food is coming to a dinner table near you — perhaps even to your own kitchen. GenPop asked best-selling futurist Amy Webb to give us some ideas of things to watch.