Alaina Chou
Alaina Chou focuses on rigorously tested, buyable food and kitchen products, turning her hands-on trials into practical shopping guidance for Bon Appétit’s audience. She works across Bon Appétit and Epicurious on commerce stories and newsletters, concentrating on what home cooks should actually purchase and why. Her coverage sits at the intersection of cooking, consumer products, and wellness, linking the gear and groceries people buy to how they eat every day.
Hands-on testing across kitchen gear and food products
Chou’s core beat is testing food-related products and translating those tests into clear, serviceable recommendations. She reports that she has been creating commerce content and testing everything from air fryers to meal kits for Bon Appétit and Epicurious since 2022, anchoring her coverage in direct experience with the tools and services she writes about. In her professional summary, she notes that she tests products and writes articles on items ranging from the best tasting protein powders to the pepper grinder she relies on, signaling a wide range of pantry and equipment subjects within food commerce. Her work also extends to beverages, including a review of her favorite electrolyte drinks that prompted wider industry attention, showing that she engages with performance and hydration products as part of a broader food and wellness landscape. Across these pieces, she stays close to the practical questions a reader has—how something tastes, how it performs in a home kitchen, and whether it is worth buying.
Deal-focused coverage of cookbooks and other buyables
Chou brings a commerce lens to editorial packages around major sales moments, especially when books and pantry staples are at the center. In her coverage of cookbooks during a recent Prime Day event, she argues that cookbooks are the best impulse buys and highlights Bon Appétit favorites that are temporarily discounted, marrying the magazine’s editorial taste with the urgency of a limited-time sale. She uses the format of curated lists and roundups to surface titles and products that align with the brand’s recipe development and point of view, but frames them in terms of price drops and value. This emphasis on deals, discounts, and seasonal promotions distinguishes her work from general food features; she is writing with the shopper in mind, using food expertise to sort through an increasingly crowded marketplace of cookbooks and culinary products.
Commerce newsletters and feel-good food planning
Beyond individual product guides, Chou also works on newsletters, extending Bon Appétit and Epicurious commerce coverage into inbox-format service journalism. She writes commerce newsletters across both brands, keeping a steady cadence of recommendations, tested picks, and timely deals for subscribers. Her work on Bon Appétit’s “Feel Good Food Plan” shows how she connects food choices to broader routines and habits; she has described the package as being brought to readers by her, with writing about her love of exercise and the development of a plan that links movement and eating. In that context, her role shifts from pure product vetting to designing an editorial structure that helps readers cook and shop in ways that support physical and mental well-being. The through-line remains service: she packages recipes, products, and routines so that readers can follow a clear plan rather than isolated recommendations.
Beat, formats, and distinction on the food desk
Chou’s beat is food commerce rather than restaurant criticism or traditional recipe development. She works at Bon Appétit and Epicurious as a commerce writer and producer, focusing her reporting on tested products, curated shopping guides, and brand newsletters instead of broader cultural trend pieces. Her typical formats include product reviews, comparison roundups, sale-driven lists, and plan-style packages like the Feel Good Food Plan, all of which are designed to be acted on immediately by readers. What distinguishes her coverage from a generic food reporter is the combination of rigorous product testing, an explicit focus on value and deals, and a recurring link to wellness and daily routine. She consistently writes in the present tense about concrete items—air fryers, meal kits, protein powders, cookbooks, electrolyte drinks—rather than abstractions, positioning her work as a guide for what to buy, cook with, and build into a sustainable food life.
4 more food journalists.
Al Culliton
Al Culliton is a writer and historian whose work focuses on the American cocktail as a living part of food and culture, using obscure, historic drinks to show how bars, spirits and cities change. They write reported features that trace how forgotten recipes move from old bar guides back onto modern menus, reconstructing how cocktails originally tasted and explaining how new builds reshape them. Their beat is revived classics, regional specialties and low-proof aperitifs, covered one drink at a time with close attention to specs, technique, glassware and service. They write about cocktails as cultural artifacts tied to specific communities and geographies, using single recipes to explore place, identity, regional traditions and diaspora histories. Across masthead work and recipe writing, they combine primary-source research with present-day reporting from working bars, in precise, accessible prose grounded in technical detail.
Amadea Tanner
Amadea Tanner is a food journalist for Daily Meal whose distinct focus is food history, culinary nostalgia, and the way everyday dishes reveal broader cultural stories. She covers canned baked beans, boomer-era casseroles, cowboy trail food, and sailors’ rations to show how preservation, technology, labor, and survival shaped familiar staples. Her beat includes retro recipes, mid‑20th‑century home cooking, old-school ice cream flavors, and vintage cookbooks, treating them as records of household budgets and aspirations. She also reports on kitchen culture and domestic design, from breakfast alcoves and pie safes to milk doors and wall phones. Tanner investigates global dish origins and contested national claims in pieces on haggis and pavlova. Beyond Daily Meal, she has worked across food, travel, and sustainability, contributing to outlets including Atlas Obscura, Beau Monde Media, Yahoo, and Tasting Table.
Amanda Garrity
Amanda Garrity stands out for turning food, holidays, and family traditions into practical service stories that help readers plan specific celebrations. She is a lifestyle editor at TODAY.com and has more than seven years of experience as a lifestyle writer and editor, including five years on staff at Good Housekeeping, where she covered home, holidays, food, entertainment, and other lifestyle news. Her work also appears in consumer titles including Prevention, Men’s Health, Cosmopolitan, Redbook, and Best Products. Her beat centers on event-based menus, holiday explainers, and classic TV and film guides, with clear, list-driven reporting that gives readers specific dates, recipes, viewing options, and simple background for family planning.
Brad Reed
Brad Reed is a staff writer for Common Dreams who turns political and corporate decisions into clear reporting on everyday life. He focuses on how policy affects the cost of living, jobs, healthcare, food prices, campaign finance, and civil liberties, often through concrete examples like holiday cookouts and supermarket bills. He also covers Trump, conservative power, media criticism, and progressive politics. Reed uses economic data, investigative reporting, expert analysis, official figures, and direct quotes to connect structural choices by administrations, corporations, and elites to what workers and families experience. His work has also appeared at Truthout and The Real News Network.