Food News: Veganism is dying but Dunkin is being sued for plant milk equality
This newsletter is made possible by lax child labor laws and a healthy diet of macadamia nuts and beer!
hi hi,
I’ve recently received and accepted an exciting opportunity. It was (and still is) great news. The second it became official, relief washed over me and I felt…happy? Happiness for myself is something I haven’t felt in a long long time. Probably years.
After I got the news my partner, and later a friend, both asked me how I wanted to celebrate. This stumped me. I still haven’t come up with anything that feels right.
I don’t love alcohol or drinking, so going out for a l’chaim doesn’t feel right for me. A meal at one of the nicer vegan restaurants in the Bay could be cool, but I’ll feel guilty splurging when money is tight. Maybe sharing the news with people in my life, who know how hard I’ve been working to make this happen, and feeling their excitement for me is my celebration?
Honestly, I think I’m stumped because I feel guilty wanting to celebrate myself with the state of our world. But I know it’s a mitzvah, a good thing, to find ways to celebrate simchas, happy occasions, even when times are difficult.
It is a great mitzvah to always be happy, and to make every effort to determinedly keep depression and gloom at bay.
Likutei Moharan, Part II 24:1
So, I’d love to know how you celebrate yourself!
Let’s keep the depression and gloom at bay, even just for a moment, and appreciate ourselves and any accomplishments big or small. You can share it in the comments below or send me a private message or email.
Maybe I just need to embrace my inner peckish peckish hippo and get a little treat! Please know that I will always want to split a basket of fries with you!
-k
What I’ve Read
Could This Lawsuit Against Dunkin’ Finally End Vegan Milk Surcharges? Experts Weigh In - This is what my lactose-intolerant self has been saying since I started drinking coffee! I really hope this can create industry-wide change, although I suspect that change may look like coffee shops just raising the prices of all drinks to whatever their drinks made with plant milks would cost. This change would be great for those of us who cannot drink cow-dairy milk for health reasons, which is why the class action lawsuit brought against Dunkin contends that an extra charge for plant milks violates the Americans with Disabilities Act. It would also be great for those who choose plant milk for environmental and animal welfare reasons, and great for my friends and family who have heard me rant about this pretty much every time we go out coffee. I have condensed my rant into Dropping the Non-Dairy Tax: a Tall Order for Starbucks, if you care for a deeper dive into my dairy-free brain.
Mark Zuckerberg shares he's raising cattle on beer and macadamia nuts - You may have heard that Zuckerberg is building a super kind of secret bunker on a $100 million compound in Hawaii. Well, Zuckerberg has also announced in an Instagram post (of course) that he and his family are raising “wagyu and angus” cattle on the island of Kauai. They are being fed macadamia meal, from trees his daughters helped plant and given beer to drink. Beer is sometimes used to stimulate a cow’s appetite in warmer months when they naturally eat less. Not sure if their diets are exclusive to these items, but he did make sure to note that each cow eats 5,000-10,000 pounds of food each year. We know that cow beef is the most resource-intensive “food” to produce so I do find it ironic that he’s supposedly building an apocalypse bunker while also participating in raising cows to slaughter for food. This practice definitively contributes to the destruction of our natural world. I’m not at all surprised, this is typical of billionaires like Zuck, who would rather feed thousands and thousands of pounds of food to cows as a “project” than feed people. But don’t worry they, “want the whole process to be local and vertically integrated.” Environment be damned.
Where have all the vegans gone? Why the plant-based dream seems to be dying in 2024 - Psssst—a little bird told me that if you’re cool you can read the article without a paywall. As this article states, The Economist declared 2019 was the year of the vegan and it seems to have been declining since. The theories leading to the conclusion that veganism “seems to be dying” are mainly celebrity activities, personal anecdotes from both the author and their sources, individual apathy in response to global events, and statistics on UK meat and meat alternative sales data (these sales are not exclusive to vegans and you don’t have to buy meat alternatives to vegan). There is also a focus on Veganuary participation and associated PR as a determining factor of the pervasiveness of veganism. For more on my Veganuary thoughts, check out my Kvetch Sesh from January 2023.
As I’ve said before, we don’t have great data on national or global percentages of people who identify as vegan (with a consistent definition that signals that this identity is consistent with a fully animal-free lifestyle as far is practicable and possible). So it makes some sense to turn to Veganuary participation numbers for some quantitative data and what you see on social media and in your network for qualitative data; however, I don’t find that evidence strong enough to declare “the vegan movement has hit a permanent road block.” I also don’t have evidence to tell you if veganism is truly declining, but I wish we’d recognize that the success of a movement goes beyond what we see on social media, in celebrity culture, from food product sales data, or short-term initiatives like Veganuary.
House bill seeks to loosen rules about when and how much teens can work - House Bill 1093 aims to update Indiana’s regulations to match federal restrictions for teenage workers. Currently, Indiana’s regulations do not allow 14-16-year-olds to work past 7 p.m. on school nights. It has passed an Indiana House committee and moved to the House floor for a vote. If it passes in the House, an “exempted minor”—a teenager who has completed 8th grade and has parental approval—will be able to work later hours on farms, work a full 40-hour workweek, and also the current prohibition for minors to work in “a hazardous occupation” would no longer apply to teenagers between 16 and 18. Supporters of the bill claim this will give these children more tangible work skills and note that local communities, like Amish and Mennonites, will benefit from this since most children in these communities only attend school up until 8th grade. For transparency (and lols) I want to let you know I am, coincidentally, wearing an Indiana University sweatshirt as I write this.
In other recent child labor news—A 16-year-old employee at a poultry processor was killed after being pulled into a chicken deboning machine. The proposed fine for the Mississippi plant: $212,000. The government found the plant, “failed to employ a device that would keep the machine from turning on during cleaning.” This comes only 2 years after another worker at this same poultry plant died when his shirt was caught in a machine. Horrific. Much more horrific than $212,000 in fines (that can be contested) can capture.
Juicy Marbles Blocked Me On Instagram - As someone with my fair share of vegan beef with food companies on social media, and a few years on the other side managing the social media for food brands, this blog post really spoke to me. I appreciate Natalie’s story and documentation of how a brand responds when people call the brand in to their problematic and racist materials—and how these responses differ for people with more followers. This is something I’ve seen time and again and I’d like us to pressure companies for greater transparency, even in their social media activity. Articles like Natalie’s also mainstream the wild notion that DM apologies are not indicative of actionable changes and that people with and without hundreds of thousands of followers are both deserving of serious responses.
Prison food is a national crisis. Sustainable sourcing could be a solution. - This article gives a first-person perspective on food served in prison along with information on how prison food is part of a broken system, along with a few examples of positive changes that are happening and could happen. According to the Eating Behind Bars report, people in the U.S. are, on average, serving 3 years and eat about 3,000 meals during their incarceration. Prison food is made as cheaply as possible, usually from ultra-processed foods, and isn’t nutritionally adequate, tailored to people’s health conditions, fresh or even not spoiled, or culturally sensitive, etc. The issues of this prison food system further contribute to the dehumanization of people incarcerated and the environment. Data from my great home state of California has found that state prisons generate 0.5-1.2 pounds of food waste each day per incarcerated person. Some of the prison food reforms include sourcing from local farms and providing fresh produce and other nutrient-dense foods. Improving the quality of food and sourcing food locally can reduce institutional food waste and the negative environmental impacts that come with it.
P.S.
I’m excited to share that Plant Futures Fest is coming up next month! I was at the Plant Futures Symposium last year and met so many wonderful people and am looking forward to the new fest format.
If you’re a food enthusiast local to the Bay Area and want to join, you can get 20% off your ticket with code “OYVEYITSKAY”.
(Not sponsored, just happy to amplify the Plant Futures team and their work)
P.P.S.
As I mentioned in my previous newsletter, I’ll be donating all proceeds from paid subscribers this month to World Central Kitchen. I connect deeply with their mission and admire their work on the frontlines of natural disasters and humanitarian crises.
Thank you to everyone who has upgraded to a paid subscription and thank you to those who shared this newsletter with others who have since subscribed to my wonderfully supportive corner of the internet.
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Hi Kay! Mazel on your new venture, and I’m happy you’re trying to find a meaningful way to celebrate. Simchas are so important, I think ESPECIALLY when times are hard.
For small, genuine celebrations I love to get my favorite snacks or meal and then watch Twilight (my comfort movie) with the folks I love.