Food News: Eat Your Way to Perfect Health With More Bacon
The newsletter with norm perceptions that favour meat avoidance
hi hi,
Not much has changed with my apartment situation or my energy levels. The last couple of weeks have been full of nonstop schlepping, stressing, and wondering if my houseplants have been okay without me.
On the plus side, I have been reading a lot in our most recent Airbnb—both food news, for you, and fiction, for me to dissociate from life for a few chapters—in between episodes of Bob’s Burgers. I’m grateful for the time I’ve spent cozying up on this rented couch with Ginny as the storms outside dump rain on the Bay Area.
What’s been helping you through life lately?
-k
What I’ve Read
We’re Not Eating Enough Bacon, and That’s a Problem for the Economy - This article can be summarized in one sentence. Actually just half of a sentence, specifically the first sentence, “The American pork industry has a problem…”. The demand for pig meat (pork) in the US has dropped by 9% over the past 2 decades while production has increased by 25%. I understand how our economy is tied to industries, including the animal agricultural industry, however, it really does seem like a problem for the industry. The industry has been aware of the decline in demand for decades. Instead of adapting to changes in the market or adjusting their production and manufacturing so that fewer pigs are killed and wasted, they are spending millions to reach younger consumers and attempt to convince more people to start eating pigs. I have no sympathy for Tyson losing a couple of millions on its pig farming operations when millions of pigs are needlessly brought into this world to suffer on factory farms.
No, we all can’t eat our way to perfect health - Next time someone says, we all have the same 24 hours in a day or all being healthy takes is eating well and exercising, remember the following quote, “We cannot talk about health as if we all have equal and equitable access to it because we don’t. We also can’t discuss health with the implication that we all have the same experiences within society because we don’t”. Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) are the conditions in the environments where people are born and live that impact their health and quality-of-life outcomes and risks. Things like the zip code you’re born in, the demographics of your neighborhood, racism, genetics, and food access are SDOH.
discusses SDOH and addresses systemic health barriers and how they can impact one’s health in this edition of The Nutrition Tea Substack.
CW: Detailed descriptions of food made from animals
What Do We Gain by Eating With Our Hands? - “Westernized countries” have biases against people or cultures where meals are eaten with hands as the primary, or only, utensil. Though fairly common in many cultures, thanks to European colonization, eating with one’s hands tends to be portrayed as primitive. This portrayal isn’t universal to all foods eaten with your hands—pizza, sandwiches, finger foods served as passed apps—it varies with class, culture, and other demographics. This article mentions some chefs who are working to change these stereotypes while trying to balance whitewashing or “self-exoticizing” their cultures. It also shares how eating with your hands can enhance your connection with food and the experience of eating. As a food geek with specific silverware preferences (pro little forks, avoid spoons as much as possible, pro using my hands since I wash them a lot) I am interested in the history of food tools, utensils, and eating etiquette.
CW: Discussion of weight loss, “obesity”, weight loss drugs, WeightWatchers
New marketing push by Ozempic and others sparks body-positive backlash - I fully missed the fact that in April of 2023, WeightWatchers bought a telehealth company, oy. Enter pharma (injectable weight loss drugs) influencers to a scene where companies have already commodified body-positivity messaging for marketing and sales. I appreciate that the article gives some background on the fat acceptance movement and introduces the complexities (and hypocrisies) of promoting weight loss and the eradication of “obesity” while also engaging in activities around reducing weight bias and the stigmatization of fat people. See photo. How can anything associated with WeightWatchers—a company known for decades of promoting dieting and weight loss and now for promoting weight loss drugs—possibly claim to provide care with “zero stigma”?
WW Clinic ads in downtown Manhattan. (Calley Means) via The Washington Post Fundamentals: 5 Reasons We Need Weight-Inclusive Care - The previous article is your shot, here’s your chaser. As
states, “Most healthcare professionals (HCPs), have been trained in, and practice from a weigh-normative paradigm.” Highly suggest reading this essay in full for a thorough introduction to the weight-normative paradigm and anti-fat bias taught to HCPs (like that a person being overweight means they are inherently unhealthy, or that a fat person seeking treatment for symptoms of an injury or disease are told they just need to lose weight) despite lacking scientific evidence. Thomas concludes with meaningful calls to action (see quote).
“We need to be taking cues from fat activists and liberationists. We need to uproot and eradicate weight-stigma, (as opposed to a commitment to eradicate fat bodies per the WNP). We need to challenge anti-fat policies, programmes, and rhetoric. We need to challenge the assumptions of ob*sity research. We need to educate our colleagues (even when that makes us uncomfortable). We need to interrupt when we see medical anti-fatness in practice. We need to interrogate the ways anti-fatness intersects with anti-Blackness, ableism, poverty, and other forms of oppression.”
At Climate Dinners Hosted by Chefs Sam Kass and Andrew Zimmern, The Meal Is The Message - A dinner of disruption to impart to people who can afford $285 per-person meals the impending and severe consequences that climate change will have on our food systems. This event, cleverly titled The Last Supper, is certainly creative but it’s so frustrating that this type of event is warranted to teach people about the need to change our systems to attempt to mitigate the damage of climate change. The damage that millions of people around the world are already experiencing while wealthy people and people in positions of power have the luxuries of ignoring or treating climate change like a charitable cause that makes them look progressive but doesn’t solve any issues.
For a unique, dystopian fiction read that cleverly addresses these themes I recommend Land of Milk and Honey by C. Pam Zhang.
How perceptions of meat consumption norms differ across contexts and meat consumer groups - The TLDR; People who believe that (animal) meat consumption is a normative behavior, tend to eat more meat. Not a shocking conclusion for this study, the authors say so themselves in section 4.4. In all the discussions in the media—and in both food systems and animal advocacy spaces—of how to change dietary behaviors (like getting people to eat less meat) we are missing evidence that would allow interventions to be more efficacious. Providing a diverse group of people with the same message (ie: eat less meat) and expecting that every individual within that group interprets it and applies it to their lives in the same way, is silly goose behavior. You want to get someone to change? Your strategy must be tailored to the person who will be making the changes—their background, culture, normative views of the world, the spaces they exist within, etc. A few things to note; this study had a fairly small sample size of 1,250 participants, all residents of the UK. They used a meat frequency questionnaire—a version of a food frequency questionnaire (FFQ)—and added in “meat substitutes” like veggie burgers, falafel, and tofu. FFQs are a fairly common tool in food and nutrition studies. FFQs ask people to estimate how often they’ve consumed a food, or foods, over a specific period. The efficacy of this tool is limited by the fallibility of human memory. You know how sometimes you can’t remember what you ate for breakfast yesterday? How about remembering how many times you had meat or meat replacements last week and in what portions?
Food supply chain thefts rise in 2023, as price increases and inflation continue to have significant effect - According to a new Supply Chain Risk Insights Report, food is the commodity most at risk of theft in the global supply chain. These thefts tend to happen when the food is in transportation as cargo. Notable, recent supply chain food thefts include 52 tons of olive oil and purchasing pharmaceutical shipments using fake paperwork. BSI, publishers of the report, identified 6 imperatives for organizations to address risks of theft. Quotes in the report provide general context, and possible causes, surrounding these thefts—geopolitical conflict, cybersecurity issues, climate change-related disruption, inflation, etc. I’m not naive. I don’t think people are out here stealing 52 tons of olive oil for a Robin Hood redistribution scheme, but I do wish more companies took an active role in addressing the roots of the issues that cause people the need to steal food for survival.
If you can’t access any of the article links due to paywalls, please email oyveyitskay@gmail.com and I’ll be happy to share them with you. Many of the sources I reference offer the option to create a free account to read their content.
Peep This, Policy Geeks
Sen. Rounds [R-SD] and Sen. Tester [D-MT] introduced a short king of a Bill (just 2 little sections) in the US Senate on January 25th.
S.3674 AKA School Lunch Integrity Act of 2024 seeks to amend the National School Lunch Act and the Child Nutrition Act of 1966 to prohibit cell-cultivated meat from being served in the school breakfast and lunch programs.
Considering recent updates in the US cultured meat industry—with news like Bar Crenn removing Upside Foods from its menu—this Bill is getting quite an early start on this issue. No company seems close to producing cultivated meat in large enough quantities to supply food or grocery retailers, let alone producing it at a price and quantity that would be reasonable for the National School Lunch Program (NSLP).
For reference, the average cost of a school lunch is $2.75-3 and the NSLP serves 5.12 billion meals per calendar school year. School districts already struggle to meet the standards set by the NSLP with their allotted budgets and resources. Schools aren’t the only ones struggling with the costs of school meals, based on national totals the average meal debt per student is $180.6 per year. Yep meal debt, for children who can’t afford school lunches. And politicians (shout out to Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds) are constantly trying to undermine federal supplemental nutrition programs. Lovely.
Anyway, S.3674 was referred to the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry. I’ve set some Google Alerts and now we’ll have to wait and see.
Thanks for including my piece in this awesome roundup; looking forward to digging into these links xx