The TikTok food trends are fun and all but let's talk about ways we can efficiently purchase, consume, and waste food this year so that we can save the budget, the planet, and our ever-evolving moral compass.

1. Fight Inflation by shopping smarter.

Nothing is more American than sticking it to the man when he demands more of your hard earned money.

We have all been there: You're sitting in a restaurant on a date and service so far has actually been pretty good! The atmosphere is nice, the food is great, and all of the sudden, the host seats a young couple and their screaming 2 year old right next to you and your server disappears for 45 minutes. The food is finished, and you have been forgotten about, while the toddler sings you the song of its people.

I have to tell ya, business school did a SHIT job of preparing young, aspiring business owners like me to use the one marketing tool we would use more than anything: socials. When I was a sophomore in college, I took a marketing class, a checkmark under my Entrepreneurship major and Business Degree. We learned about Costco's business model and studied a few charts

Marco Pierre White, once known as the best young chef in the world (who trained Gordon Ramsay) once said: "At the end of the day, it's just food, isn't it?". I have to disagree with him on that, but for reasons outside why you might think. On the surface, yes, it's just food.

When I was a kid, my mom would typically cook for us every night. Dinner time for us was more about the routine and the healthy practice of spending quality time with family than it was about the food. The dinner table was a place where we received or shared announcements, talked about our day, or simply discussed the minor changes my mom made in the spaghetti sauce this time around.

My alarm went off after a few hours of tossing and turning, it was 8:45am on a Friday. I hadn't slept long, because I got off the night before around 12:30am, rushed home, showered, and crashed in bed. I spent much of the night thinking: Okay, Tomorrow I'll get in around 10, get the doors unlocked and the lights on.