Oy Vey It's A Food Newsletter - Vol 2, Issue 18
A newsletter that isn't going to double your impact and isn't asking you for donations.
Hi,
I’m trying to lean into some joyful (or at the very least less-anxiety-producing) activities lately.
I’ve been baking, joining virtual Jewish affinity groups and other communal processing spaces, taking longer walks with Ginny, going to the beach to enjoy the rare not-foggy SF weather, doing some crafts (moss wall art, if you’re curious), seeing movies at my local independent theater, given my houseplants some love, writing, and reading (for fun). One of the things I’ve read for fun was the recently published System Collapse, the newest book in my favorite series by Martha Wells, which I finished in a day.
This shift in my daily activities, in addition to my time off of social media, hasn’t lessened my awareness of global events or important causes that deserve attention and energy. It has created more space for me to grieve, connect with myself and the people in my life, and rest so that I can be more intentional about the energy I devote elsewhere.
What have you been up to?
-K
What I’ve Read
New York Attorney General Sues Pepsi Over Plastic Packaging - Team Pepsi or Coke? Team corporate accountability! New York’s Attorney General Letitia James filed suit against PepsiCo for harming the public and the environment with single-use plastic packaging. James’s office surveyed the pollution in the Buffalo River and found that PepsiCo products made up 17% of identifiable trash. Public and community-organized action is fiercely needed to hold corporations accountable for their impacts and this accountability needs to go further than charitable donations or greenwashing marketing. So many companies have exploited sustainability claims to sell their products and their followthrough is weak and slow, PepsiCo is a clear example. Read more about the fragility of corporate sustainability in the WSJ - Wall Street’s ESG Craze Is Fading.
For Health, More Nuts, Beans and Whole Grains - Once you get past the first sentence, this article gives a decent summary with some cautionary language of the recently published (open access!!!) research article Substitution of animal-based with plant-based foods on cardiometabolic health and all-cause mortality: a systematic review and meta-analysis of prospective studies. This research was a systematic review and meta-analysis of 37 published studies that focused on substitutions of animal-based foods for plant-based whole foods (fruits, veggies, grains, legumes, etc, not animal-free meat, dairy, eggs, etc). The studies included were conducted among the “general healthy population” and were evaluated for an association between the dietary swaps and risks of cardiovascular diseases, type 2 diabetes, and all-cause mortality. This study did use risk of bias assessment tools and methods that try and account for a variety of factors that could have impacted the results of their included research. And I’d like to offer the reminder that while nutrition research can uncover new scientific information, potential correlative or causative relationships, and offer evidence-based recommendations for certain populations, nobody has an identical physiology or environment. Health-promoting recommendations are wonderful but the corresponding foods or dietary behaviors are never universally accessible or realistic.
Yelp’s 2024 Food & Drink Trends -It’s that time of year! No not Christmas, it’s the ~2 months of trend listicles. These lists tend to be summaries of trends we’ve seen over the year or predictions for the upcoming year rather than true research and rarely include methods or data. As you’re seeing them published, keep in mind some of them are likely PR pieces (I’ve worked with brands where we pitched products for these lists or wrote our own). Obviously, there are exceptions, and the credibility of the data behind the trends depends on the source. But when I read, “Searches for ‘noshing’ are up 140% across the country,” thanks to the “girl dinner” trend, in this particular listicle, I had to share it. In my head, I’m picturing some Yiddishkeit data scientist who has been tracking the searches for “nosh” for a while despite being teased by colleagues. Then they saw this jump and finally got to have an in-your-face moment that proved this semi-obscure dataset was, in fact, worth their time to monitor.
The Turkey Pardon Is a Perfect Emblem of Our Very Dumb* Politics - The turkey pardoning is a quintessentially American tradition; it is rooted in corporate interests and our presidents have a history of using this now annual PR event to distract from other political issues. I appreciate that the article points out that this figurative Thanksgiving** presidential pardon for a bird makes light of the actual power a pardon can have to bring justice to incarcerated humans. For those who may think that discussing these realities of this event is getting too deep about an activity that’s just supposed to be in good fun, I’d like to remind you that this is the importance of being a killjoy.
*While I can’t change the article title, “dumb” is one of many harmful, ableist words I have been actively working on phasing out of my personal vocabulary.
**Thanksgiving is a holiday I have chosen not to observe since I was about 18 because of the mass-scale cruelty of raising about 45 million birds for slaughter for 1 day of human consumption that is predicated on anti-Indigenous, revisionist history. This was not a focus of the article but needs acknowledgment.An L.A. student sued the district over her right to promote milk alternatives. She won a settlement - I originally shared Marielle Williamson’s story—she wanted to hand out literature about plant-based milk at her high school as part of her Animal Awareness Club activities and was told to do so she would need to also promote cow-dairy milk—in a May newsletter. PCRN and Williamson filed a lawsuit against the LAUSD, which also named the USDA, that alleged this was a violation of her 1st Amendment rights. The LAUSD recently chose to settle with Williamson and agreed that students should be able to express their personal views, including critiquing cow-dairy milk, through tables or displays so long as it doesn’t interrupt class. The LAUSD has also agreed to accept a donation by the PCRN that supports offering free soy milk for student lunches.
U.S. egg producers conspired to fix prices from 2004 to 2008, a federal jury ruled - “The jury found that the egg suppliers exported eggs to reduce the overall supply in the domestic market, as well as limiting the number of chickens through means including cage space, early slaughter and flock reduction, court documents say.” Well I am shocked! (/s) This unanimous jury verdict comes only 12 years after the lawsuit was originally filed by giant food manufacturers— Kraft Foods, The Kellogg Company, General Mills, Nestle,—against U.S. egg suppliers—Cal-Maine Foods, United Egg Producers, United States Eggs Marketers, Rose Acre Farms, and a host of other defendants.
The Government Spends Billions on Food. Who Benefits? - A couple of weeks ago Senator Ed Markey (D-Mass) and Congresswoman Alma Adams (NC-12) announced the Enabling Farmer, Food Worker, Environmental, and Climate Targets through Innovative Values-aligned, and Equitable (EFFECTIVE) Food Procurement Act. This legislation is part of the trend of Democrats pushing for the USDA to make institutional shifts on who it purchases from, greater consideration of environmental sustainability, and increased transparency across the supply chain and in how its funds are allocated.
Big Meat Unveils Battle Plans for COP28 - The United Nations Climate Change Conference AKA Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC aka COP28 started on November 30th in Dubai and wraps up December 12th. The animal agriculture industry has a history of greenwashing itself in sustainability spaces—I’ve shared many instances of this but wrote about a particularly ridiculous virtual event, sponsored by Beef Farmers and Ranchers, that was part of the 2022 Climate Week NYC. This article demonstrates in incredible detail the concerted PR strategy by Big Meat companies and lobby groups (JBS, Tyson, North American Meat Institute, etc) for COP28. These actors are planning to have a major presence and we should be concerned and mindful of their influence.
Action Item
We were supposed to have a new farm bill this year but for many reasons, our government didn’t make it happen. This put the 41 million people who receive SNAP benefits, along with many other USDA programs, at risk of not being funded.
Thankfully the House, the Senate, and Biden managed to pass a stopgap spending bill, which provides for a one-year extension of the 2018 Farm Bill. So SNAP benefits are funded through September 30th, 2024, and we now have more time to make our voices heard for other important issues that will be decided once they get around to a new farm bill.
One of these important issues is the Ending Agricultural Trade Suppression (EATS) Act (H.R. 4417/ S. 2019). The EATS Act puts current and future local and state laws affecting agricultural practice in a very risky position and threatens farmed animal protection laws. I am strongly opposed to the EATS Act and I encourage you to learn more about it, raise awareness among your peers and communities, and contact legislators asking them to oppose it as well.
ALDF via FastAction makes it easy to send a message to your lawmakers (I’ve received responses from all of my reps using this) and you can sign the DefeatEATS petition to Congress, which has almost reached its goal of 10,000 supporters.
P.S. I skipped the Q&Kay section this week but you can always anonymously submit a question for future newsletters through this form.
love reading your newsletters -> thank you for all of the research you do and share!!
Glad you are finding a bit of joy & hopefully some peace too. ❤️
... so happy to receive your newsletter, love the work you do, thank you