Hi,
I truly hope you’re doing well, thanks for taking the time to be here and learn about food with me! Also, if you liked my last kvetch sesh ‘Tis the Season for “Happy Holidays” take a look at this post and list of resources by Liz (@teachandtransform).
- Kay
What I’ve Read
Coalition calls on USDA to remove barriers to serving pulses in school meals - Over 100 school districts, non-profits, and grows associations have formed a coalition and sent a letter to the Food & Nutrition Service under the USDA asking they update K-12 meal guidance. Their requests are to allow pulses (legumes) and soy products as a meat/meat alternative, to enable beans, peas, and lentils to count as a vegetable and meat/meat alternative, and to diversify protein options by allowing more flexibility for pulses. School meals are highly regulated, highly contentious, and highly political. The USDA is, at its core, an office that prioritizes helping the agricultural industry sell more products and also advise Americans on nutrition and diets. Those are two contradicting priorities and the agency’s disfunction and deference to industry has been demonstrated many times over the years.
For more on pulse news check out Neanderthals cooked meals with pulses 70,000 years ago
Pigs Get Their Day in Court in Smithfield Gestation Crate Cruelty Case - Gestation crates are, typically, a 7’x2’ metal crates where pigs are kept during their pregnancy after forced breeding. Despite their obvious cruelty, gestation crates are still a common practice in the pig farming industry, though illegal in the UK, Canada, Switzerland, Sweden, and 10 US States (Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island). Seems important to note that the states where gestation crates are still legal include those in which the most pigs are slaughtered: Iowa, North Carolina, Illinois, Minnesota, and Missouri. Smithfield owns 530 farms and 2,100 contract farms in 15 states, it is a subsidiary of WH Group of China and is the largest “pork” producer in the world. Since at least 2007 Smithfield has been publicly committing to ending their use of gestation crates but have continued to delay that change. This article discusses a lawsuit filed in October by the Humane Society of the US against Smithfield Foods, Judge Yvonne Williams denied Smithfield’s motion to dismiss the case in October so we will keep an eye on the story for future updates.
Animal Equality Wins Groundbreaking Animal Welfare Policy - More on Gestation crate use, apparently Compass Group has publicly pledged to phase out the use of gestation crates in its supply chain (again) by 2023 after a campaign by Animal Equality.
Oldest evidence of the controlled use of fire to cook food - This is potentially a big fucking deal. Evolutionary biologists and anthropologists have long debated two mainstream theories of human evolution, either the primary factor was the addition of animal meat in our diets or it was the use of fire to cook food that made us human. The crux of the debate is usually the evidence (or lack thereof) of fire and it being used in cooking. This new discovery shifts the timeline of cooked food back by about 600,000 years than previously thought.
(Even though I am a huge evolutionary biology geek who reads food and science news daily, it was my dad who first told me about this new discovery.)Belém home to 1st 100% Vegan Burger King for Iberia - Another Burger King in Europe is having an animal-free menu, for a month, in partnership with The Vegetarian Butcher. Portugal is seeing a rise in the popularity of animal meat-free foods in the past few years, you can read more about this and other international animal-free Burger King menus here. What I wrestle with in stories like this, in a philosophical sense, is the use of the term vegan. Are a few Burger King stores that go animal-meat free for a short period of time “vegan” when Burger King continues to be, well, Burger King? Personally, it’s more about investigating my own vegan philosophy with full context rather than qualifying these menus or pop-ups vegan or not.
He’s an Outspoken Defender of Meat. Industry Funds His Research, Files Show. - According to its website the CLEAR Center at UC Davis is an academic organization that, “is using research and extension to advance sustainability in animal agriculture” that believes collaboration with animal agriculture is key. The Center is run by a Dr. Mitloehner and receives millions of dollars for research from animal agriculture industry groups, like IFeeder. A lot of great quotes in here that show how ridiculous it is to pretend like funding dollars don’t impact research outcomes, one of my favorites is, “Dr. Mitloehner said that it was wrong to suggest that food choices would drastically affect the climate and the environment. (The Lancet researchers, and the scientific consensus, maintain that food choices do affect the climate.)”.
Revealed: How the livestock industry funds the ‘greenhouse gas guru’ - The full Greenpeace UK Unearthed Report
If you want to read more about the deep influence industry has on food and nutrition science I highly recommend Unsavory Truth by Marion Nestle. (Affiliate Link)
Two Cups of Broth and Rotting Sandwiches: The Reality of Mealtime in Prisons and Jails - One of the many horrible ways our carceral system fails those who are incarcerated is through food and nutrition. This article describes 3 cases related to inadequate nutrition, food, and healthcare the ACLU has filed on behalf of incarcerated people. Ear Hustle has covered this topic of food for incarcerated people in many episodes, linked below, and the Maryland Food & Prison Abolition Project is another helpful resource if you want to learn more about the connections between the abolitionist movement and our food system.
Q&Kay
Q: Hi Kay, I’d love to learn about how you navigate non-vegan friends and family. I’m the only vegan of my friends and family and I often feel judged or ashamed or like an imposition. Any tips for this or building vegan community? Or just how to deal with non- (or even anti-) vegans?
K: I don’t have an easy, straightforward answer but I will share some thoughts. First, I’ll say that I went vegan my freshman year of college, as an adult, living on my own half a country away from my family. I’m not sure how my family or friends felt about it at first, but I don’t think it was too shocking considering I had already been vegetarian for about 5 years. None of my family is vegan now or was then, and at the time I don’t think I actually knew anyone who was vegan, it was just an idea I had heard about. Once I made the commitment to my vegan ideology I felt a lot of confidence it was the right choice for me, which helped, as did finding community. In college this was through an on-campus student group and later BloomingVeg, then I built a network of vegan friends through Instagram. Community support is powerful, if it isn’t accessible to you in person or locally, the internet can really be magical!
Second, I think it’s important to recognize that the rejection of eating animals has, throughout most societies in human history, meant being an outsider who goes against the status quo. I don’t care how many vegan burger options are out there, being an ideological vegan is still radical. You are going to encounter judgement or feel like you’re imposing in situations because we are not the norm. I happen to have experience throughout my life existing as part of a culture and ideology (Judaism) that is different from dominant societal norms so I’ve had years to refine how I deal with the reactions of people who don’t follow my same practices or actively hate me and my beliefs.
Finally, I don’t think ideological veganism will be mainstream in our lifetimes. It’s not that I’m not optimistic, I’m realistic. Taking a look back in human history we’ll find a plethora of examples of people rejecting eating animals in various societies and time periods, we are not a new phenomena and we have always been outsiders and killjoys (some of us more than others…cough cough Reverend Sylvester Graham). We have to find our stride as the outsider and navigate the world, enforcing our boundaries accordingly. Your response and reactions can change over time, for example I do a lot less arguing with anti-vegan people now than I did as a baby vegan because I know how to better judge what is worth my energy. At least these days, unlike in centuries past, declining meat doesn’t get us burnt at the stake?
(This last paragraph was largely inspired by Chapter
8 of Meathooked, “The Half-Crazed, Sour-Visaged Infidels, or Why Vegetarianism Failed in the Past”)
Kvetch Sesh
What comes to mind when you hear the phrase “processed food”?
Seriously, I’m curious. Feel free to scroll to the comments and let me know what came to mind!
When I asked my partner to tell me the first thing he thought of when I said the phrase “processed food” he immediately responded, “Pop Tarts”.
His response aligns with a recent article, The World Needs Processed Food. In the article the author states, “Say ‘processed food’ and most of us picture unhealthy, cheap junk.” I don’t remember growing up familiar with this term and I’d bet most of you haven’t become familiar with it until the past few years. I’d also take this bet a step further and say most of you learned about processed food on social media, likely Instagram, where lifestyle or food influencers, hyped on the gospel of Michael Pollan and the Medical Medium, proudly proclaimed their rejection of processed foods. This proclamation was probably in a caption underneath an aesthetic picture of a smoothie bowl, a salad, or a stack of meal prepped Tupperware full of unseasoned chicken breast with a carefully portioned side of green beans. And if you were on #VeganInstagram in the 2010s, #WholeFoodPlantBased probably triggers you as much as it does me.
Google Trends data supports that the topic of processed food is becoming more salient, search interest of the term has generally been increasing over the past decade. Topics related to the online search for processed foods include: eating, meat, sugar, processed meat, and fat and related queries are mainly “what is a processed food”.
So, what is a processed food? According to the good old USDA a processed food is one that has undergone any changes to its natural state. Changes to the natural state of a food could include adding salt or pickling foods as a means of preservation, grinding wheat to make bread, turning animal milk into butter or cheese, or coating chicken in bread crumbs and calling it a nugget. In 2009 the NOVA classification of processed foods was introduced, offering four categories of degrees of processing: unprocessed or minimally processed, processed culinary ingredients, processed foods, and ultra-processed foods. This classification is broad because food processing itself is vast and encompasses everything from fortifying cereals with folic acid to flash freezing veggies to churning out creamy peanut butter to sweetened or unsweetened yogurt to Pop Tarts. As with most aspects of nutrition, broad statements like, “processed foods are unhealthy” cause harm by making people afraid of an idea without really knowing what exactly they’re afraid of. Instead, we can be specific and differentiate between ultra-processed foods and minimally processed foods or just refer to a specific food product or category itself.
The World Needs Processed Food, is pretty spot on both in its title and the article that follows. Processing food has had incredible impacts on our food system including: helping to limit nutrient deficiencies through fortification, increasing food’s shelf life, and making food safer for consumption. The negative impacts of ultra-processed foods are heavily discussed and studied with most of the research concluding people should minimize the amount of ultra-processed foods in their diet and an acknowledgment that this recommendation is not supported by the food system (at least here in the U.S.). As the author states, we should take less issue with individual consumption of ultra-processed foods and focus more on the systems that corporations, and the government bodies they influence, have created and upheld to make ultra-processed foods so cheap and easily available. By ignoring the systemic and systematic influences of food processing and focusing on the visible choices of individuals, we have added another way in which food reflects the differences between hierarchical social groups.
Social media influencers and Gwenyth Paltrows of the world use their whole food, minimally processed lifestyles to prove their willpower is stronger and their choices are better than those without the means or desire to do the same. They use the phenotype of their (usually thin, white, non-disabled, cis) bodies to prove that, through their food choices, they care more deeply for their health and wellbeing. Then there are people I’ll call the Trader Joe’s enthusiasts. These TJ enthusiasts share weekly hauls of organic frozen veggies, trail mix, sweet potato gnocchi, coconut yogurt, and ready-to-eat salads flowing out of a canvas tote bag to their Instagram stories. These people consume pre-cut, washed, and bagged veggies and other processed culinary ingredients or foods, yet these choices aren’t moralized or blamed for the nation’s health crises. Like me, these enthusiasts may encounter a food purist on social media occasionally who tells us that we’re poisoning ourselves by eating an Impossible burger. By this I mean this consequences of this social group are minimal and can be dealt with by ignoring the comment and simply scrolling away.
Then there are people surviving on mostly ultra-processed foods whose consumption is moralized in a very different way because of how their race, ability, body size, zip code and other factors intersect with their food consumption. There is no question that our food system is subject to the same social and racial inequities as the rest of our systems, meaning Black, brown, and underresourced communities encounter additional burdens other groups do not that negatively impact their health and wellbeing. Along with the systemic inequities of our food system, U.S. food companies disproportionately target Black and Hispanic consumers with advertising of ultra-processed foods, high in added sugars, calories, and fat. For many people, consuming ultra-processed foods is not a choice, it is because they lack the ability or access to minimally processed, fresh foods due to systemic factors.
In spite of this data, we continue to shame and further stigmatize the people who are reliant upon ultra-processed snacks, fast food, canned food, and other cheap but dense sources of highly processed calories. We look down upon their food choices, as if they are making them with the same privileges of the Gwenyths and TJ enthusiasts. We call them a burden on the healthcare system and blame their upbringing or environment for not teaching them to make “better” food choices. The corporations who created or contributed to these systemic food inequities rely on maintaining the status quo of agricultural subsidies and lobbying power to control our food system. They easily hide behind our willingness to blame an easier target; the individual. Quarter after quarter, year after year, global food conglomerates make record profits while the media declares that its people’s bad choices that are responsible for health outcomes of the entire nation. It’s not the thin, white influencer who orders pizza after a night out or the busy suburban parent who hits the drive through after getting their kids from soccer practice who get this blame.
So yes, the world needs processed food, as it always has to sustain the human population. What the world does not need is for the continued moralization of processed food consumption. Instead of using food choices as status symbols to further divide us we should focus on building an equitable, sustainable food system where food is a human right. While we’re at it, we could also do with fewer reductionist hot takes declaring categories of food, and the people who consume them, as good or bad. We are all stakeholders in this food system and as such, I think we deserve greater transparency, comprehensive nutrition education, and systemic supports that meet our needs and provide equitable opportunities for us to eat what and how we’d like.
UC Davis has a podcast called unfold that discusses breakthroughs/the future of science. In season 1 they had an episode called “What’s the Beef with Beef?” and I remember thinking how dumb the episode was because it was just like “we just need to feed cows seaweed and we won’t have to stop eating them because it will be so sustainable”. This was before I was vegan but it raised all the flags for me. That terrible episode makes so much more sense to me now after the Dr. Mitloehner story.
I loved the part about processed foods! Specifically how you broke down the levels of processed foods and how different people are judged differently for their consumption. Interesting how Trader Joes is held to a different standard...