Hello!
Thanks for your kind messages while I was sick with Influenza A; it’s the sickest I’ve been with a virus as an adult!
I’m catching up on all things food blogging, and what stood out to me is just how consistent, easy, chicken, gluten-free, and dinner have been for the recipes published by top food bloggers; these stand out by far from the rest. While only 30% posted this week, 6 sites added 10 or more recipes. Over on Instagram, some accounts like @avirtualvegan grew their following by 11% in the past week!
WordPress 7.1 is out: Lots of new features to explore.
Food packaging is starting to show “GLP-1 friendly” labels: Will you do this with your recipes?
YouTube changes how it counts views on all videos: No minimum watch time anymore.
Pinterest advice for food bloggers: Nadalie Bardo shares what’s working in 2026.
Build an EEAT checker using Claude Code: Thorough tutorial if you’re interested in doing this for your website (note that it does scrape some websites for their EEAT advice).
Moz asks: should we stop writing with AI? The answer is yes and no, and it says POV and lived experience are essential.
How Urban Farmie uses AI: Automating mundane tasks and creating a virtual board of advisors.
How much of the internet is written with AI? Pew Internet Research estimates 10%.
If we haven’t yet met, I’m Rachel Cunliffe, food blog designer + statistician at cre8d design. Every Sunday, Best Served Hot provides exclusive trend analysis, clear-cut insights, and industry news you need to know.
Please share this Substack with your food blogging friends.
Rachel
Methodology: Top food blogs are defined as those running Raptive ads with 100K+ followers, DA 40+, and that have posted in the past six months. Lifestyle, cocktail-only, and aggregator sites are excluded. This week we’re tracking 512 sites.
