Oy Vey It's A Food Newsletter - Vol 2, Issue 7

The newsletter that doesn't place any blame on food retailers for the historic spike in food retail prices.

Oh hi there,

I am a radically different person than I was when it was overcast and raining non-stop. The other day I was on a Zoom where the facilitator asked us to share a recent joy we experienced. My response was broken down into daily joy, sitting undisturbed in the sun with Ginny even just for a few minutes a day, and an acute joyful experience, getting to share an amazing travel experience to Amsterdam and Prague with my partner.

I’m going to re-gift this opportunity for reflection to you: what was a recent joy you experienced? (Share with me in the comments or make a mental note for yourself)

-Kayla

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What I’ve Read

• How a People's Food Culture Disappears - Dianne Jacob is an author, teacher, and writing coach who was recently recommended a NYT Cooking recipe for sabich bowls. The recipe referred to sabich as a “Middle Eastern” dish, acknowledging that it is most often served in sandwich form (that’s the only way I’ve ever seen it or eaten it and it’s absolutely delicious). Upon reading that description Jacob emailed the food section editor to offer feedback that sabich is specifically Iraqi-Jewish cuisine and the generalized phrase “Middle Eastern” doesn’t acknowledge that distinct history, heritage, and culture. Jacob noted that they did edit out Middle Eastern, now calling it a “traditional Israeli sandwich”. This was a brief but powerful read about the importance of preserving history through food culture and traditions. I’ll leave you with the newsletter’s final paragraph, “Most people have never heard of Jewish-Iraqi food. And soon it will cease to exist as a cultural tradition, except sin the memories of those who grew up with it.”

  • If you want to learn more about Iraqi-Jewish cuisine and culture I definitely recommend following my friend Sabrina, the brilliant mind behind Haab Cookbook

• ‘I got catfished by a sandwich’: Virtual kitchens boom on delivery apps - I am not a delivery app person, I think I can count the amount of times I’ve ordered it for myself on one hand. When I worked in a restaurant, third party food delivery companies were newer and we got a fax with the order. Yes a fucking fax. Anyways, times are a changing! The food delivery industry is booming and like many other industries that experience explosive growth periods, there are growing pains in oversight and regulation. In this context, the pains are felt by restaurants and food entrepreneurs, consumers, municipal health departments, and the apps who are literally building the rules as they go along. Cloud kitchens, meaning restaurants that are delivery only and have no storefront, have been on my radar for a while but “virtual restaurants” are new to me. An NBC News analysis found that as many as 31% of restaurant listings on Uber Eats in 12 cities were virtual restaurants.

• Lab-Grown Burgers Have a Secret Ingredient: Plants - Shh I know, another burger article. We can’t avoid it. Hybrid products, or the blending of animal and plant protein, is something the industry has been discussing for years. I’ve heard it referenced as a benefit environmentally as well as a way to get omnivores and reducitarians on-board with, well, reducing their animal consumption while still consuming animals. Hybrid products were also mentioned in a few of the panels I attended at the Future Food Tech conference last month, mycelium was the main plant blend mentioned in that context. The cellular agriculture companies making headlines and regulatory headway are still figuring their shit out. Some of this figuring out means playing around with components of consumer products that are blends of animal and plant protein. This article gives more context about hybrid products and predictions for the future of cellular agriculture.

• Got Milk? Not This Generation. - LOL if Gen-Z are the “Not Milk Generation” are Millennials the “Got Milk Generation”? While centuries old and healthy for some populations, cow’s milk is inherently unhealthy for many others and unsustainable for the environment in its modern industrial production model. It’s also really fucking shitty for the cows and their babies, regardless of how us humans feel about it and that is somehow never a focal point in articles like this. The U.S. milk industry has seemingly tripled-down on a woe-is-me, our livelihoods are threatened, our lifestyle is under attack from #OatMilk drinkers, plant milk companies are killing us with their audacity to use the word milk, approach, despite being supported by our government, agriculturally and through dairy checkoff programs. This self-victimization, while not surprising, is so thinly veiled. Despite some changes to the demand for standalone cow’s milk consumption, the government is still supporting your industry. Sure some consumers share feeling embarrassed to order cow’s milk in public at coffeeshops, but none of that is so far translating to them not consuming cow’s milk in other food products like cheese, ice cream, etc. None of the data actually shows credibility to the claims their industry is under attack. Regardless of this baseless panic, there is absolutely no accountability coming from the cow dairy industry for how the mass consolidation and monopolization by mega agribusinesses over the past century is actually completely responsible for the destruction of small dairy farms they appear so upset about. Their attempts to promote sustainable milk do not equate to taking accountability for their environmental outputs from mass-scale models of industrialized production. The dairy industry literally made all these messes they’re complaining about and they want to just sit and cry over a recent, minuscule shift in demand? Fuck off. If you know consumers value greater transparency and environmental sustainability, change your actions, pay your workers living wages and give them proper benefits, and treat your animals less like commodity objects and more like living beings rather than devoting millions to flashy marketing campaigns and poorly vetted influencer partnerships. Also, I’m not a runner… but the thought of chugging chocolate milk (cow dairy or otherwise) after a run makes me nauseated just sitting at my desk.

• Days after rejecting a bill to expand free school lunch for the state's neediest students, North Dakota senators voted to increase their own meal reimbursements - The title really says it all. North Dakota had the potential to pass a Bill to provide, “an appropriation to the superintendent of public instruction to provide grants to schools for meals for students.” The appropriation would have dedicated $6,000,000 to provide grants to school districts in order to give free school meals from July 2023 through June 2025 for children whose families income is 200% below the federal poverty line. This Bill did not pass, and according to North Dakota Senate Assistant Majority Leader Jerry Klein there is no correlation between the failure of that Bill and the other Bill they passed to raise senator meal reimbursement from $35 a day to $45 a day while they are traveling in-state for official business.

• Brazilian meat firm’s A- sustainability rating has campaigners up in arms - Happy earth month from global Big Meat conglomerate JBS who can assure you that they are super duper environmentally friendly, as long as you only consider their self-reported data and do absolutely zero fact checking. Well, they didn’t make that assurance to us consumers directly, they did it through CDP. If you haven’t heard of CDP before, join the club. According to the organization’s website, “CDP is a not-for-profit charity that runs the global disclosure system for investors, companies, cities, states and regions to manage their environmental impacts.” CDP has 4 core values, one of which is, “we place accountability at our heart”. Despite this core value of accountability, it appears that the data taken into account for the publicly viewable ratings comes from companies filling out CDP required paperwork and documentation, all of which is self-reported (as far as I could tell from digging through their website). If JBS gets to give themselves an A- I’m going to stop saying I “failed” chemistry my sophomore year of college and retook it for a barely passing grade. Yeah now that I think about it I’m pretty sure I got an A both times.

Also continuing my shameless plug for my partner who recently launched his own newsletter (about damn time)! While not at all related to food systems or what I discuss within this newsletter, I think you’re all capable of having a wide variety of interests. If your interests include travel and using credit cards to pay for things in your life, hit that button below!

Before you come for me (I know nobody actually gives a shit, also this is my newsletter I can do what I want!) I actually did read it, multiple times as a draft and when it hit my inbox as a subscriber so it’s relevant to this section!

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Q&Kay

Q: A friend sent me this article with a message that read “checkmate vegans” (im vegan hes not) https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00890-9 What do you think about this? Thank you!

Kay: Ah peer-reviewed research that will be used to prop up the old anti-vegan argument, “plants have feelings TOO!” I mean first of all, I hope your friend is being sarcastic and just sharing an interesting article with you not trying to delegitimize your commitment to veganism. If they are being serious, that’s a whole other thing to deal with.

The full study being discussed in the nature article Stressed plants ‘cry’—and some animals can probably hear them, that your friend sent, is Sounds emitted by plants under stress are airborne and informative. The study doesn’t only focus on airborne sounds (AKA cries) of plants, it introduces evidence that “stressed” plants exhibit visual, chemical, and tactile cues that other organisms respond to. Stressors noted in the study include drought or being cut (will make me think twice before propagating plant clippings…though I doubt I’ll stop doing this or caring for my plants). It reminds me a lot about the article I shared last week: It Turns Out Mushrooms Have a Language—And We’re Just Figuring Out How to Decipher It.

All of this research is definitely interesting. Rather than using it to anthropomorphize non-human organisms or as a “checkmate” against fellow humans with certain lifestyles or ethics, I think we should see it as a reminder that human dominance is constructed not inherent. We have been so conditioned by white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchal, imperialist systems to see the world through a food-chain hierarchy where our type of violent, oppressive dominance equates to success. Despite these beliefs, we are deeply connected to the natural world, much more so than most of us upholding these systems care to acknowledge. The natural processes and existence of other organisms continues in spite of us and our destructive human nature. We’re just now using modern, Western science to legitimize these processes and convey them in a way that can be understood and further studied by other scientists.

The wisdom of how to honor our coexistence with nature and the knowledge of living in a way to uphold this connection are preserved in various Indigenous cultures, throughout the historic and geographic world.

As for this “vegan comeback” about plants feeling pain too...I don’t believe for one second that veganism means living a life that causes zero pain to living beings. Rather, it is a way of being conscientious of how we move through the world and what harm we can reduce through our consumption choices and actions.

For more reading that feels related to the interconnectedness of humans and nature here are a couple of book recommendations:

• Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

• Red Earth, White Lies by Jr. Vine Deloria

• Islands of Abandonment: Nature Rebounding in the Post-Human Landscape

I’m sure there are so many other great related reads out there, if you have some please add them in the comments!

(P.S. the above list contains Bookshop affiliate links and helps support my work, monetarily)

Submit your own question here!

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Kvetch Sesh

At the end of March the Government Accountability Office (GAO) published the Food Prices: Information on Trends, Factors, and Federal Roles report. Earlier this week they posted a blog post, Sticker Shock at the Grocery Store? Inflation Wasn’t the Only Reason Food Prices Increased, which synthesized the report’s key points.

One of the main takeaways is something I think we are all acutely aware of; the increase in food retail prices. The sticker shock we have likely felt in grocery stores over the last couple years is quantified as an 11% increase from 2021-2022. This is a huge jump from 2%, the previous average annual increase of retail food prices from 2013-2021. It’s actually the biggest increase since the 1980s and experts predict that food prices will continue to rise in 2023, but probably not as high as 11%. Fingers fucking crossed.

Within the report the GAO details major factors their research found, besides inflation, that have contributed to this unusual jump. These included: shifts in consumer behavior as we responded to the COVID-19 pandemic, how workers getting COVID-19 disrupted business logistics and production, animal and plant disease outbreaks, and the war in Ukraine negatively impacting the global supply of agricultural commodities.

The GAO also noted the role federal agencies play in supporting the food supply chain and some of what they have done to address the recent retail food price increases and supply chain disruptions. Then the report offered additional recommendations of what these agencies can do to maintain a resilient food supply chain.

Recommendations for federal agencies fell within in 4 categories:
1. Investing in the food supply chain, such as by providing grants and loans to food industries
2. Providing technical assistance and guidance and guidance to entities in the food supply chain, such as farmers and food processors
3. Conducting research and sharing information with stakeholders involved in the food supply chain, such as farmers and agricultural businesses
4. Setting policy and issuing and enforcing regulations

As I read both the GAO’s blog post and the original report, I was a bit shocked that their research hadn’t found that the wealth-hoarding activities of global food conglomerates and agribusinesses played a significant role in the retail food price spike. While consumers are shouldering double digit price increases, global food conglomerates, retailers, and other food corporations are making record profits. As I mentioned in the Kvetch Sesh of Volume 2, Issue 6, Kroger reported $34.8 billion in total sales for Q4 with gross margins of 21.8% and an overall expectation for growth in 2023. According to a recent article in Time, Conagra Brands posted an almost 60% year-over-year profit increase from December 2022 and February 2023. In a recent Conagra shareholder earnings call, CEO Sean Connolly even said that, “the company’s sales growth was, ‘primarily driven by inflation justified price increases’ and a willingness by consumers to pay the higher prices.” Conagra isn’t alone, Kraft-Heinz’s net income increased 448% over the past year. According to Food Processing’s annual Top 100 Food and Beverage Companies for 2022, 56 out of 100 companies on their list increased sales in 2021 compared to 2020.

These activities and the mass consolidation of agribusinesses and major retailers has absolutely been on the Biden-Harris Administration’s radar (and subsequently the USDA’s) in addition to politicians like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Economists, policy experts, and consumer advocacy groups certainly haven’t been quiet about it either, Robert Reich is one of the experts providing some of my personal favorite critiques.

Despite this obvious public and government awareness, the closest thing to an acknowledgment that I found in the report was in Table 1: Examples of Selected Federal Agencies’ Roles in Supporting the Food Supply Chain. In the section covering the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission roles it’s noted that the, “DOJ and FTC share responsibility for enforcing antitrust laws, which prohibit certain practices in the food industry that can contribute to higher retail food prices.” Corporate actions are definitely not referenced in the GAO blog post, which even goes so far as to state, “the federal government does not have a direct role in controlling price increases, according to the agency officials we interviewed.” One key phrase in there is “direct role” because there are absolutely direct actions the federal government could take to mitigate these corporate activities. Especially considering how complicit it has been over the last century in letting these monopolies and conglomerates gain disproportionate amounts of power and influencer over the food system and other public spheres.

Not to mention the fact that the disruptions stated in the research, like animal disease outbreaks and the fact that humans getting sick during a global pandemic so significantly impacted business operations, are absolutely influenced by the actions of the public and private sectors. In their acute, emergent response corporations could have slowed down production lines, given workers proper PPE, required social distancing within workplaces, and provided adequate sick time and benefits to minimize the chance of the virus being spread among employees. Instead of mandating those efforts, the government enabled the wishes of the C-suites over the protection of the individuals making up the workforce. Remember when the USDA implemented a presidential order from Trump literally required meat processing plants to remain open? The USDA literally stated they planned to keep employees safe by partnering with other federal agencies, and they failed. Interesting that none of the USDA employees interviewed took accountability for this or that the Government Office of Accountability’s research into this exact area failed to find it relevant to include.

In the long term, the government responsibility, or irresponsibility, contributing to the root causes of these issues is also well documented. Off the top of my head I would point out the USDA has permitted agribusinesses to keep animals in CAFOs and other crowded conditions that allow for diseases to spread amongst animals raised for food so rampantly. Oh and what also comes to mind are the OSHA exemptions for the safety and protection of farm and agricultural production workers along with the federal and state governments blatant disregard for the rights of migrant farm laborers. These workers do not have access to healthcare, paid sick time, and other protections, despite decades of their protests begging the government for these exact basic rights that would improve their qualities of life and strengthen the sector of workers who grow and harvest our food.

All, or at least some of these actions would appear to fit under category 4 of the GAO report’s recommendations for how federal agencies can support a resilient supply chain; setting policy and issuing and enforcing regulations. I spent a couple of hours looking into these reports and putting this essay together compared to GAO researches who conducted performance audits from February 2022 to March 2023. Am I just that much more observant than a team of federal researchers spending a year investigating this as part of their work in an office whose entire role is dedicated to holding the government accountable? Spoiler alert: I am absolutely not.

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