oy vey it's mid march

ignorance is (cosmic) bliss

Everyone keeps asking me what it is that I want to DO because, apparently, cooking, eating, consuming cannabis, reading every book I can, and hanging out with my dog in the sun is not what most people would call a “career”.

The business I started two years ago (and still deeply believe in) has been thwarted by the pandemic and its lull, combined with my shitty mental health and lack of funds to be the bicoastal business baddie I aspire to, means I really have to step it up on figuring *it* out. Every new job I apply to or career opportunity I explore in the food industry feels very meh, so I’m trying to lean into what feels un-meh to guide my next steps.

I feel most un-meh when I write, though being able to stomach what I’ve written long enough to make it to the critical re-reading and editing stages is extremely meh. I readily admit I’ve been extremely messy as a ~content creator~ but art imitates life right (RIGHT?!) and my life is messy AF. So, clearly, I’m still figuring *it* all out and using you, my dear subscriber, to work on my personal consistency.

For the near future I’m focusing on this twice-monthly newsletter curating news and interesting resources on food systems with a side of my very vegan commentary.

It would be extremely helpful to get your feedback as I put my sappy writer dreams out into the void of the internet for anyone to stomp on or fall in love with.

Feedback options: “liking” this newsletter, sharing it with a friend, leaving a comment below for me to aggressively read too much into even though that would mean you literally did exactly what I asked!

what i’ve read

• The future looked like it could be meat-free. Then the pandemic hit. 
  CW: images of animal flesh
  This is an interesting article and my first exposure to the “Gartner Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies”, though I think there are some points missing from the discussion. Namely that if business as is continues in this sector, the plant-based protein industry will probably end up looking similar to the existing industrialized food industry. The brands and restuarants mentioned are not small, local producers they are large VC backed companies partnering with global conglomerates like Tyson, KFC, Taco Bell, etc. None of the discussion of the future of the industry mentions changing the policy and legislative landscapes to divest from animal agriculture or current commodity structures. We’re not prioritizing environmental welfare, worker safety, food access, or the resolution of human rights issues that already plague the global food system. Without addressing systemic problems, this will be the animal-free version of the current industrial food system.

  

• The first answer for food insecurity: data sovereignty
  Food security and access in rural areas is complex, on tribal lands and reservations especially. Hopeful the data and findings from the NAAF, INAI, & FRAC will contribute to greater food sovereignty for Indigenous communities.

• How Food Mascots Convince You to Spend More
  First of all I learned the Pillsbury Doughboy should really be named Pillsbury Dough-Full Grown Adult since it was first introduced in 1965, wild. There isn’t anything that I saw as being topical about this piece but it is an interesting, brief look into food brand mascots. What I wish it had mentioned was how food mascots and food advertising are weaponized to target children, especially Black and brown children. Read more on that here. You can also read more about the failure of proposed policies to address this issue here.

• This Black-founded startup wants to help you find cheaper groceries
  An interesting concept for addressing food costs and food access, probably a good tool to have for those who need to stretch every dollar so long as they have the time, technology and ability to use it to its fullest potential. It should be convenient to access affordable food!

• Does the food pantry of the future involve payment?
  A membership based food pantry or non-profit grocery store is a new-to-me concept and fairly new in the emergency food assistance space. I’m glad to see the organization mentioned here involves families and customers in a structural sense similar to a co-op.

• Pressure grows on McDonalds and Coca-Cola to suspend Russia operations
  I am absolutely not an expert in military strategy or global politics. I find the discussion around the ethics of private food conglomerates fascinating, especially the critiques for the failure of these conglomerates for not being more politically outspoken when business-as-usual for these companies is not what I would consider ethical or pro-human rights. Food has always been a tool for war, I wish more of the media would acknowledge that all people living through areas affected by crisis deserve access to food and water and urge the global conglomerates to use their resources to help citizens stay fed.
  
  Read more about food systems intersection with the Ukraine War on Food Politics.

• How Big Ag Bankrolled Regenerative Ranching
  I absolutely love that the author traces this trend to the roots and shows us the calculated entrance of regenerative agriculture into contemporary public consciousness over the last decade. I particularly enjoyed the bits of info on which conglomerates have been funding environmentally focused private certifications, reports, and documentaries.
  Will more research, like the 1000 Farms Initiative study, help?

• Impossible Foods sues Motif FoodWorks over its plant-based heme product
  This headline feels like a real missed opportunity for some word play on the beef between some animal-free companies.

what i’m excited about

• goats & oats came back for season 3! they started this season off with a chat about hobbies and side hustles, the perfect accompaniment as I try to differentiate between my hobbies, side hustles, and cultivating a career.

• building a virtual community for curious vegans and the vegan curious.

kvetch sesh

You already know this is going to be about c̶o̶c̶o̶n̶u̶t̶ Cosmic Bliss!

A couple disclaimers, a food industry friend did tell me this grass-fed dairy angle was coming a few months ago and I have had some weird personal IRL interactions with Jason Karp that have left a bad taste in my mouth despite the fact that Hu chocolate is pretty tasty. (Hu chocolate = HumanCo who bought Coconut Bliss in 2020)

The story is that after 17 years of making animal-free ice cream with a coconut base, Cosmic Bliss is now also making ice cream from grass-fed dairy. They cannot seem to emphasize the grass-fed and sustainability bit enough (should we send Mr. Karp the How Big Ag Bankrolled Regenerative Ranching article I mentioned above?) claiming Cosmic Bliss is giving the people what they want. Sure. Kimberly Renee said it well in her recent post, “Do they really want dairy? Or do they just want good ice cream?”

itskimberlyrenee

A post shared by Kimberly Renee (@itskimberlyrenee)

Mostly my eye rolls have come from reading about their latest rebrand in industry publications, like this Food Dive piece. The article launches with a quote from Karp that “more than 97% of all ice cream sold in the U.S. is dairy-based”, which he has sloppily interpreted as 97% of people WANT cow dairy ice cream. Hey Siri, what is a false equivocation fallacy?

The PR pieces are full of buzzwords like “over-processed” “synthetic” and “clean-label”, without going into any specifics of other products or ingredients on the market that wouldn’t fit the bill. They really play up the idea of being more inclusive now that they offer both cow dairy and coconut milk options, which is a hilarious way to say they got beat out in their niche sector for having crappy ice cream so they decided to widen their consumer base.

(Side note that will be a longer tangent another time - if sustainability is a primary concern, flooding the market with double the product isn’t the hero move. Producing more products and encouraging greater consumption will not solve the issues created by decades of thousands of other companies doing exactly the same thing.)

What’s less funny is how articles and PR like this contribute to chemophobia and fear mongering of processed foods without educating consumers or fixing any of the issues within the food system. Along with obfuscating nutrition education this brand is attempting to distance themselves from bad aspects of the industry by cherrypicking made-up problems so they can turn around and sell us a product to fix the problems their industry has made up. The Cosmic Bliss website only digs its heels in deeper taking a ploy straight out of Big Ag’s playbook using pastoral marketing and talking about how happy grass-fed cows are. If 97% of people really want cow milk ice cream and the sourcing is so sustainable and ethical, why is their marketing reliant upon anthropomorphizing dairy cows and their emotional state?

Grass-fed dairy is still dairy.

You still need to harvest the milk from a cow who has recently given birth and then find something to do with the recently birthed baby. Grass-fed cows are still forcibly impregnated so we can take the milk their bodies produced to sustain that cow baby and feed it to grown humans, the majority of whom have a digestive system that cannot naturally process the milk of another species.

Better for you or the cows or the environment doesn’t mean good for you or the cows or the environment. It’s not “dairy done right”, it’s just dairy with a carefully crafted label. The old adage holds true, ignorance really is (cosmic) bliss.