Oy Vey It's A Food Newsletter - Vol 2, Issue 19
Latkes and collective liberation! A newsletter that can do it all...except give you a recipe.
Hi hi,
Today is the last day of Hanukkah. I have always felt connected to the ritual of lighting candles, it’s probably the moment each week in which I feel most grounded. Tonight we’ll only light Shabbat candles and, while my windowsill will be a little less bright, I am grateful that 8 nights of Hanukkah gave me 8 grounding moments.
News from my kitchen: I tried a few new recipes this week, mainly donuts—sfenj and bimuelos—and had fun making a menorah-shaped Challah last Shabbat. For the past few years, I have been exploring my heritage by intentionally incorporating non-Ashkenazi Jewish foods into holiday meals. However, I did also make applesauce and a couple of batches of latkes, without using a recipe or any egg replacers because I like to live on the edge. I repeat—I did not use a recipe, please please don’t ask me for a recipe!
I also had great quality holiday time with family and friends and a very special evening of making latkes with my new food processor (I had one until I unexpectedly moved out of Boston in March 2020. I could only bring so much with me and had to choose between my stand mixer and food processor. The latter got left behind with a lot of my other belongings leaving a hole in my heart that was filled this week). It also made coming across An Illustrated Love Letter to My Bubbie’s Sunbeam Food Processor extra sweet.
I love learning more about Jewish food culture and food-centric holidays, like Hanukkah (and let’s be real, most of our other holidays), which tend to offer a simultaneous glimpse into the present and past as people share about their family’s traditions. Like My Grandmother’s Iraqi Hanukkah Party Inspired My Own an Ocean Away by Vered Guttman.
I hope the light of Hanukkah finds you all year round.
-K
What I’ve Read
Department of Labor finds poultry processor illegally endangered children in dangerous jobs, robbed workers of wages, retaliated by firing workers - More illegal employment practices in the meat and poultry processing industries have been brought to the US Department of Labor’s attention. The Exclusive Poultry Inc. and related companies had children as young as 14 working with sharp knives, power-driven lifts, and excessive hours in violation of federal child labor regulations. The employees who cooperated with the investigation into this issue lost wages in retaliation. Shameful but I’m not sure that a $3.8 million charge for back wages, damages, and penalties is enough to get the animal ag industry to stop being shady or unethical.
Denmark: The major pork producer trying to wean itself off eating meat - I share Trine Krebs’ “passion for pulses”! In October the Mette Frederiksen administration published a national roadmap for normalizing plant-based diets and incentivizing higher production of veggies and alt proteins. I did not know Denmark is the only European nation with, “more pigs than people,” and I’m encouraged that even Denmark’s right wing supports the plan. Nutrition education and policy nerds—you’ll want to look through the Danish strategies to support the implementation of the plan. Love that Daish MP Ida Auken phrased the shift as, “getting a more interesting food culture.”
The secret to getting people to eat more plant-based food - A new study on labeling confirms the existing research that people don’t like the word vegan. I’ve shared other research on this and want to reiterate a point that the literature and discussions on this often leave out—before vegan and plant-based became salient in food labeling we had already created a stigma around veganism so it makes sense that research participants and consumers prefer to avoid “vegan” labeling, especially when presented with other options like “sustainable” and “plant-based” that we have been told over and over again are more appealing than “vegan”. The literature and research study designs also do not provide context or definitions for the terms used (from what I can see publicly, this is the case in this article). The authors of this study acknowledge that University of California students and Italian adults may have different preferences around “vegan” labels, but they do not follow this point to its logical conclusion—we have no universal conceptualization of what “vegan” and “plant-based” and “sustainable” mean. If you do not level-set what these terms mean in your study design, or even in your discussion, it makes me doubt your conclusions. Also, the world will be fine if we don’t say vegan as long as we have other ways to be transparent on food labeling without replacement terms that are also essentially meaningless.
We raise 18 billion animals a year to die — and then we don’t even eat them - A recent study investigated animal welfare along with their research on food loss and waste! They even acknowledge that meat creates distance from animals, making it easier to care less about them as beings. There are many new-to-me research concepts here, like “morally adjusted results” and I’m grateful the researchers were specific in acknowledging gaps in literature and calls for additional research. More please!
The Comforting Lie of Climate-Friendly Meat - “Animal agriculture is having its clean coal moment.” Surprising to no one, COP 28 takeaways have not been for reducing the overproduction of food or shifting away from animal-meat consumption despite how significant these issues are in the climate crisis. Instead, millions in climate funding are going toward “marginal technical mitigations” and efficiency for mitigating the animal ag industry’s climate impact. This doesn’t get us closer to planetary health improvement goals, as the EAT-Lancet diet and other strategies for reducing the production and consumption of animal-meat would. Jan said it best, “the idea that we can gorge ourselves on steaks and still help the climate is bullshit.”
House passes bill allowing schools to serve whole milk - The Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act of 2023 passed the House and was received in the Senate. If it passes the National School Lunch Program will allow students to choose from: flavored and unflavored organic of non-organic whole, reduced-fat, low-fat and fat-free fluid milk and lactose-free fluid milk. Schools will also have to provide a substitute for fluid milk for students whose disability restricts their diet, as long as they bring in a doctor’s note. Sorry for Michelle Obama and all kids everywhere who can’t have the convenient option of an animal-free alternative.
Thank you
for this edition of Snacky Bits, my favorite suggestion is tied between 6 and 9. My addition for ways to combat diet culture-y food and body shame-y talk: subscribe the commentator to your favorite anti-diet-y newsletters! 😉
Q&Kay
Q: Recently, I've become aware of how little I know about various liberation movements and the political issues that intersect with veganism. I've always appreciated and admired how well read and informed you are and was wondering if you could recommend any resources (books, websites etc) that could help someone like me develop my veganism beyond "I don't want to exploit animals and people". I realise this is super vague so apologies in advanced from a confused vegan haha
Kay: No apologies necessary, it is always a great time to deepen your understanding of veganism as a collective liberation movement! I appreciate your phrasing of the movements and issues that intersect with veganism instead of “intersectional veganism”. I have occasionally used that phrase and acknowledge this term is complex and—by my personal interpretation—veganism must not ignore politics and social justice causes that do not solely focus on animals. I also offer what Christopher Sebastian writes, “Although my animal justice education includes and endorses intersectional feminism, intersectionality should rightfully focus on the needs of black and brown women an femmes.”
Many resources I find valuable are in these newsletters and on my Instagram but am glad to centralize a (non-exhaustive) list of recommendations that come to mind this week. Resources that have added to my understanding of various liberation movements aren’t always vegan but they do add to my vegan practice and tend to focus on food systems, regulation and policy, science, food sovereignty, food culture, and body politics because of my particular interests and experiences.
Resources to expand your understanding or practice of veganism and other liberation movements that intersect with veganism*:
Eating Animals - Jonathan Safran Foer
Braiding Sweetgrass - Robin Wall Kimmerer
Bite Back - People Taking on Corporate Food and Winning - Saru Jayaraman & Kathryn De Master
Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia - Sabrina Strings
What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat - Aubrey Gordon and the Maintenance Phase podcast she co-hosts, especially the episodes “Soy Boys”, “Forks Over Knives”: Is a Vegetarian Diet Better For You?, Michael Pollan’s “The Omnivore’s Dilemma”, The Obesity Epidemic, Anti-Fat Bias (their show notes always have a ton of citations for additional learning)
The Jungle - Upton Sinclair
Antiracism in Animal Advocacy: Igniting Cultural Transformation - Jasmin Singer, Aryenish Birdie, & Michelle Rojas-Soto
Aphro-Ism: Essays on Pop Culture, Feminism, and Black Veganism from Two Sisters- Aph Ko & Syl Ko
Meathooked: The History and Science of Our 2.5-Million-Year Obsession with Meat - Marta Zaraska
Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement - Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarsinha & Ejeris Dixon
Civil Eats - An independent nonprofit digital news and commentary site about the American Food System
Sentient Media - An independent journalism publication creating awareness of agriculture’s impact on the world
Faunaltyics - A nonprofit providing animal advocates with access to the research and analysis of various animal issues
Lectures and Academic Resources by Christopher Sebastian
So many wonderful Substacks and writers:
So many aspects of Judaism and teachings from the Torah on how to treat animals, farming and land stewardship, etc I’d rather talk specifically about how my culture and religion (and the antisemitism I have both seen and experienced from vegans) informed my vegan practice. Please reach out if this interests you and I will do my best to point you to resources. Feasting and Fasting: The History and Ethics of Jewish Food may be a good jumping-off point.
Also! I created my first Substack Chat Thread because I think this will be a much more comprehensive, diverse list with reader contributions.
All subscribers are welcome to respond to the chat! Paid subscribers are now able to start their own Thread in the OVIAFN Chat with questions, comments, or resources relevant to this community.
As always, you can submit a question for a future Q&Kay here!
*Notes:
-This list contains Bookshop affiliate links, if you choose to purchase a book from my link I will receive a small percentage of the sale.
-This is not a blanket endorsement of any of these sources, authors, and scholars. I may have different interpretations, intellectual disagreements, or personal feelings from them but still feel that they are valuable.
-I specifically left social media accounts off of the list because there are too many, change frequently, and I’d love for our learning to go deeper than Instagram posts. However, social media has been very influential on me and you can look at my profile to see who I engage with.
Thanks for including me - I LOVE your suggestion. 100% using that!
Nice job on the menorah !!!