oy vey it's april
what came first- the chicken, the egg, or a food industry claim about their respective health benefits? 🐓🥚🔂
This is a long one today folks, and I really tried to edit myself down!
Before we jump into it let me cover the basics since we have some new readers (yay hi!): I’m Kayla and this is me info-dumping food systems news and my personal life in one lengthy but painstakingly curated reading list newsletter thing!
*Pssst there is also a very very cute picture of my dog waiting for you at the bottom, it’s like a reward*
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what i’ve read
Report: Groceries Becoming an E-Commerce Force
An Adobe report mentioned in this article predicts online grocery sales will reach $85 billion in 2022. Even though I worked in the world of online grocery for a while, I still can’t stand online grocery shopping! This article draws upon another survey that states consumers top reasons for buying groceries are to: save time, avoid impulse purchases, and for personal safety.
Do you online grocery shop? Let me know why or why not in the comments.Leftovers: PepsiCo and IHOP cook up maple syrup cola; Molson Coors taps into beer-flavored lollipops
Perhaps a new segment…why the fuuuuck do we need these food products? Effective marketing blah blah blah but cmon.US Supreme Court to hear Prop 12 challenge
CA Prop 12 sets minimum space requirements for some farmed animals and prevents the sale of pork, eggs, and veal from animals raised in environments that don’t meet those minimum standards. ⅔ of CA voters (including me!!) voted to approve Prop 12 back in 2018. The animal ag industry is making this about commerce and unsurprisingly it seems like the National Pork Producers Council (NPPC) quote in this article about how the org has poured “a lot of blood, sweat and tears into preserving the rights of America’s pork producers…” is not ironic. Like buddy, you and your blood and tears get to go home at night to a comfy bed and wake up the next morning when these animals do not, can you de-center yourself for 2 seconds? A shame that delaying the enforcement due to these legal proceedings means more animal suffering.Costco’s Rotisserie Chicken Supply Threatened By Bird Flu
Here’s your summary: last month 500,000 chickens destined to be killed had to be killed early and won’t be used for food because disease. Interesting article to read after the one above, these Costco chickens are raised in Nebraska in chicken houses that hold almost 50,000 birds per house. Obviously, disease spreads easily in these conditions so even without factoring in the gross animal cruelty, it’s almost like setting better minimum standards and space could help. But also, 500,000 chickens in the scheme of Costco’s 400 million per year probably isn’t enough to motivate change. Though CA Prop 12 might be motivating (will have to do some more digging on that).
- - in contrast here is another article about regenerative grazing and some potential benefits (though, as usual, the regenerative ag conversation has left out Indigenous leaders and native food ways)Trends in Food Allergy Research, Regulations and Patient Care
Solid overview of food allergies and current regulatory landscape along with a dive into the limits of precautionary allergen labeling (PAL).Weekend reading: agriculture and climate change
Marion Nestle sums up the IPCC report well and links to supporting documents and previous reports.TOFURKY WINS HISTORIC FREE SPEECH LAWSUIT. CAN USE “BURGER” AND “SAUSAGE” LABELS ON PLANT-BASED MEAT.
We’ve seen a bunch of legislation like this and historic wins from other animal-free food companies over the years; these cases usually arise as an issue of free speech. A common argument from companies who want to prevent animal-free foods from using language like “burger” “sausage” “butter” “milk” is that these words confuse consumers if the product doesn’t actually contain animal products. For what it’s worth I think products like almond milk cheese that still contain casein, dairy free coffee creamer that still contains milk, and lactose-free milk products are way more confusing.
PS the FDA has plant-based alternatives as a potential topic for guidance on labeling!
Covid-19 relief for undocumented workers helped put dinner on the table. It also shut out tens of thousands.
I am someone currently surviving off unemployment, a benefit I was only eligible for thanks to my most recent job. All my side-hustles in the gig economy that got me through grad school would have left me SOL. There are hundreds of thousands of people whose jobs and industries don’t qualify for unemployment or other supports, so programs like the one mentioned in this article are crucial. Along with innovative social programs like this, we need to see rent support, expanded food assistance programming including free school breakfast and lunch, affordable healthcare, etc. The traditional systems in this country barely function for the minority (read: cis, able-bodied, educated, English literate, etc) they were designed to serve.McDonald’s Investors to Vote This Spring on Civil-Rights Audit, SEC Says
Wild that I happened to be reading Franchise The Golden Arches in Black America as this news story popped into my inbox. Too bad Bloomberg didn’t reference this book that could give some well researched, detailed, valuable historical insight to this story.
what i’ve been listening to
what i’m excited about
On the day-to-day I’m excited about getting to know myself better.
Despite being unemployed for a couple months I’ve been sticking to a similar schedule as when I was working full time, even though I know it’s not necessarily working well for me. It’s wild that doing laundry mid-day on a week day or not opening my computer for a couple days in a row feels radical, but it does! So I’m excited (and anxious) to keep asking myself “what do you want to do in this moment?” and getting better and better at giving myself a genuine answer.
Upcoming virtual events:
April 8th (today!) - Tufts Food Systems Symposium: Unpacking Meat: Values, Cultures, and Futures
April 27th - The Psychology of Food: A Deeper, Actionable Understanding of the Modern Consumer
kvetch sesh
This probably could have fit up in the what i’ve read section but I felt like calling a bit more attention to it here.
The kvetch material of focus is- Kerry: Health, Wellness Primary Concerns for Modern Consumers, an article from The Food Institute.
It’s a very typical food industry article sharing takeaways from a webinar, nothing too surprising or revolutionary here. It was one sentence that really irked me and made this article stick in my brain. This sentence read, “One of the biggest keys to winning customers is appealing to their desire to be healthier”.
I strongly dislike how the food industry weaponizes health to sell products (+ discussing “health” the way the industry does gives major major ableism). This industry-wide attention on “health” changes regularly depending on what ingredient or nutrient is in fashion and supports a reductionist view of nutrition in a way that doesn’t actually promote overall wellbeing for individuals.
Nutrition science is still a fairly new field and nutrition education and literacy amongst the general public is lacking. Throwing buzzwords onto food labels isn’t helping elevate health of individuals or populations. Of course consumers care about their health, especially given the context of COVID-19, but singular food and drink items are not a solution and I think it’s shameful to see brands positioning themselves as such. It’s especially shameful since the food industry has been such a major player in creating these nutrient and food focused problems just so they can turn around and sell consumers their branded solution (hello diet industry).
One of my hypothesis/general wonderings that’s stuck with me over the last few years is on this subject, I’m going to do my best to synthesize it briefly here (briefly by my standards okay, I realize this newsletter is already long AF).
It’s a bit of a chicken-before-the egg scenario.
Food industry materials and marketing often draw upon this idea of appealing to the wants of consumers. But consumers are so highly influenced by the food industry and marketing, how can we possibly know what it is we want?
We don’t live in a vacuum, we are only equipped to know what we want in the context of how we’ve been conditioned by the world and the massive amounts of advertising, media, culture, etc that comes with existing in contemporary society. Surveys digging into consumer preferences cannot possibly weed out these influences and they likely aren’t trying to.
We’ve seen an influx of adaptogen-infused food and beverages touting claims for mood management in the last few years, so yeah it’s not very surprising that the Kerry survey notes consumers want “mood management” benefits from the food and beverages they buy.
I guess it’s the way They talk about this information that is so bothersome. Will I ever stop giving hateful energy to the lack of nuance everywhere? Probably not!!
The industry proposes these takeaways like its genuine truths, like the industry is driven by consumers and an altruistic goal to produce what is best for us when we all know the industry is driven by what sells the best. These purported benefits are only on consumer radar because of the industry and likely only came onto the industry radar in a watered down, culturally appropriative sense from practices like Ayurveda.
🐓🥚🔂🥚🐓
Part of this wondering comes from personal experience. Often when someone hears that I’ve studied nutrition they immediately ask “what’s healthy” “what should I be eating” “is ____ food/ingredient/nutrient/fad good for me” etc. People naturally want to make decisions to aid in doing what’s best for themselves and we’re inundated with so much food and nutrition information claiming to do just that so we accept it as true. It’s overwhelming and clearly not helpful. On top of everything else we have to do to survive consumers then feel compelled to make food choices based on extremely specific claims and spend time deciding who or what is a trusted source of information to tell them what to ~do~ with the latest nutrition news. They want a yes/no it’s good for me or it’s not. And society gives them just that.
Instead, I always respond to these queries by questioning their question, “how do you define healthy?”.
It’s easy to write these types of articles and produce this kind of industry material telling people x product gives x health benefit, and it will probably boost sales for a couple of brands that are quick enough to jump on this fad. But it bothers me to my core and this disillusionment is something I can’t undo. A personal problem, definitely, and it is especially tough considering I’ve set myself up for a career in this niche field.
I absolutely see a way to do food marketing and communications without this level of bullshit, and I know plenty of other folks who feel similarly (it may even be why you’re still here reading this ridiculously long newsletter) and I also know that’s not what the industry wants. It’s not even what the industry, or even the regulatory agencies set up to oversee the industry, was created for.
What would I suggest to counter this? More transparency, less concrete answers that overgeneralize information. It isn’t sexy but I practice this type of communication every fucking day and I watch the lightbulb moments happen. We can make progress by shifting word choices and challenging the automatic associations of health and wellness buzzwords we’ve spent our entire lives consuming.
I also listened to that episode of Maintenance Phase. It definitely gave me pause to reexamine the origin of some of my beliefs (always a good thing IMO)! Thanks for sharing as always :)