Oy Vey It's - August!
Instagram DMs; the place where basic human decency is not required or encouraged.
Hi friend, here’s quick laugh and then let’s get to the news!
What I’ve Read
Cell-cultivated meat could make cruelty-free exotic animal meat a reality - in this case exotic seems to mean lions, zebras, tigers. Some companies also claim to be working toward producing wooly mammoth and dog meat among the more traditionally consumed animals. I think the author did a decent overview of why lab-cultivated meat could serve benefits for specific environmental and animal cruelty reasons while also noting that this “exotic” angle feels a bit frivolous compared to the previously mentioned benefits. If price and resources our other considerations aren’t a factor and we’re discussing ethics, I don’t think there’s much difference between lab-cultured mammoth, fish, dog, or cow. (Thanks Breta for sharing)
Unregulated Foods Could Make You Sick. Here’s What To Know Before Ordering Trendy TikTok Eats. - Random person, supposedly a Chef, went viral on TikTok for a bright pink sauce, supposedly made from dragonfruit, honey, garlic, sunflower seed oil, milk, and chili. This person, Chef Pii, started selling the sauce online and customers noted lots of issues in texture, color, flavor, and nutrition labeling errors. I like this article because it goes beyond discussing the sauce and shares some basic info about the various regulatory agencies involved in labeling, production, and food safety.
The Future of Food - A brief summary of precision fermentation that acknowledges issues with industrialized agriculture and the potential of the fermented protein industry repeating its mistakes, like allowing the space to be dominated by monopolies.
Front-of-Package Warning Labels on Prepackaged Foods in Canada - A new stage of Canada’s Healthy Eating Strategy that would require front-of-package (FOP) labels for prepackaged foods that meet certain nutrient to serving size ratios. FOP labels have been a big thing in nutrition programming and policy for about a decade and are supposed to be a recognizable symbol that nudges people away from purchasing the item. Read more about the research on FOP labels and please note the “success” of these programs are typically consumers making different choices versus changing the production.
FMI identifies what ‘plant-based’ means to consumers - Is it really appropriate to say FMI identified what plant-based means to consumers when your main takeaway is “descriptions and values tied to the term vary widely”? Most of these types of reports come to similar conclusions with different specific statistics and I don’t think any of them actually give Even with my curent FMI account access, reading the Power of Plant-Based Food and Beverages report would cost $250. A shame because I would love to get into the methodology section to see how they came to metrics like, “Nearly one-in-three shoppers expect to increase consumption [of plant-based products] ‘a little,’ and 16% expect to increase consumption ‘a lot.’”
Screenshot from August 3rd Food Business News Daily Update Officials Order to Kill the Pigs at an Italian Animal Sanctuary Due to Swine Flu Regulations - Heartbreaking. The Sfattoria Degli Ultimi is an animal sanctuary that specifically focuses on rescuing pigs and urban boars, their animals have been microchipped, are not sick, are kept separate from the public, and are designated as not for food use. Despite this and the fact that (as far as I can tell from my brief research after seeing this story) the legislation in Italy does make exemption for non-food animals the Regional Sanitary System ASL Roma 1 has ordered the sanctuary to kill all but 2 of the rescued animals. Read more directly from the organization
Horse Collapses on 9th Avenue, Igniting Further Debate on the Future of New York’s Horse Carriages - This is incredibly shameful and infuriating and a CW for the images in the article that show the injured horse that has caused the most recent outrage in NYC. You don’t have to be vegan or even vegetarian to show up for animals in meaningful ways. Support bans on carriage horses (leave a message for NYC City Council Members here) and stop endorsing activities where animals are used recreationally (zoos, Sea World, horseback riding) or for testing that’s too cruel to be done on humans (this action is harder for individuals considering many countries have requirements for cosmetics, drugs, etc, but you can start by divesting from companies that test on animals when they don’t *have* to), support protections for farmed animals (including while they’re being transported), etc. If you have other actionable opportunities that don’t have to do with food choice please add them in the comments!
How Cracker Barrel’s Impossible Sausage Drama Sheds Light on Bigger Food System Issues - Cracker Barrel Old Country Store aka the new frontier for keyboard warriors who feel threatened by anything that challenges their normative world view. The chain has added Impossible Sausage to their non-vegan breakfast menu, this option did not replace any animal meat options and people lost their shit in the comment section. In a response on Instagram Cracker Barrel shared the following picture with a caption that says, “Cracker Barrel: where pork-based and plant-based sausage lovers can breakfast all day in harmony.” Statements like these are why I constantly share that I am hesitant to say that greater availability of animal-free food options is a win for the vegan movement.
Supermarket food could soon carry eco-labels, says study - A very UK article (see chart with Yorkshire puddings) about a new method of scoring the environmental impacts of foods. Impacts specifically measured include greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity, and other “impacts of cultivation, processing and transportation of ingredients” in individual food and drink products.
Plant-Based Burgers Aren’t Denting People’s Beef Addiction - First of all, I’m deducting 10 points for the careless use of “addiction” in the title. Second of all, how many times do we have to read the same articles that cite similar, if not the same, studies and all come to the same conclusions? So much focus on individual choices, taste, flavor, cost to consumers, environmental impacts, and other important factors with no critical examination of the systemic reasons that support people choosing cow beef. Do people really have an “addiction” to cow beef or do we, in the U.S. specifically, live in a country whose agricultural and nutrition institutions leave little room to negotiate our national production and reliance on cow beef? Also, I can’t stand seeing the discussion of how unfavorably people perceive vegan or plant-based meats without any context given as to the decades of criticism hurled at vegans and vegetarians, and our food, that impacts said perception.
The Best Vegan Chicken Nuggets, a Blind Taste Test - Speaking of how puzzling it is that people have a negative perception of vegan meats…this article with the subtitle, “Most plant-based chicken nuggets are simply not worth it—but one brand outshone all others”. So 9 Bon Appétit staff members tried 7 brands of chicken nuggets and despite the title saying the word VEGAN, they included Quorn meatless chicken nuggets on the list. A very not-vegan product that contain both chicken egg and cow milk products!
A guide to the White House food conference - A really detailed breakdown on the White House conference on hunger, nutrition, and health. This is from a new newsletter called Food Fix and if you scroll past the information on the conference you’ll find additional food-focused resources and news.
What I’m Excited About
A couple freelance writing articles, although the excitement has worn off a bit and stress is setting in
Seeing friends featured in Boston Magazine - Want Help Eating Vegan in Boston?
Some weekend trips coming up where I’ll meet some internet friends IRL
Kvetch Sesh
I was a stubbornly Instagram-less person who held out for a couple years after all my friends had joined the platform. It was only after I learned that there were entire accounts dedicated to food pictures that I started to reconsider. I figured if I was already posting low-light, highly-filtered pictures of my dinners on Snapchat, I might as well try posting them on Instagram. My first handle was @kitchenshtick and I quickly adopted the #veganfoodie life. At that point, I was a baby vegan in my junior year of college who had very recently ditched my lifelong plan of going to medical school. When I wasn’t working, cooking, or in classes, I was trying pretty much every vegan dish that the restaurants in Bloomington, Indiana had to offer. There were more options than you might have expected in the semi-rural Midwest in 2015.
After I dropped pre-med I was pretty lost, career wise. I actually switched my major from Nutrition back to my original major of Human Biology in order to graduate early. With this switch I took a couple classes that happened to push me deeper down the nutrition path than the general nutrition science classes ever did. I learned that there were more options to work in food than choosing beteen becoming a nutrition scientist, dietitian, or a chef. For the first time in my academic career, I actually enjoyed what I was learning in classes. I was studying food, working in a cafe, and taking lots of shitty food pictures for fun. One day as I was scrolling through another comment section of ignorant “but bacon” types I thought about how fun it would be to de-bunk the annoying and often misinformed things people say to vegans. This idea seemed like a perfect combination of what I was studying and my food Instagram hobby, so I started writing lengthier captions with my mediocre food pics to see if people liked my very niche vegan nutrition perspective. Looking back, I realize I was this was the start of building my personal brand (you can’t cringe harder reading that than I did writing it, but it’s true).
Seven-ish years, one bachelor’s degree, a couple peer-reviewed research publications, one master’s degree, a few years of nutrition communication and social media management experience later and I have the same reason for using Instagram. I don’t use social media explicitly to make money; I use it to connect with people, post food pictures, share my niche perspective, and continue to build an audience of people who want to engage with my various hyperfixatons. Just because I do social media casually rather than for serious income doesn’t mean I am available to create content for other people, brands, or organizations for free. I can’t pay my rent or my master’s degree worth of student debt with #gifted snacks and exposure.
Although, that was a mistake I’ve made quite a few times over the years; thanks, in part, to my own naiveté, social anxiety, and lack of interest in capitalism, but also largely due to the fact that our society still doesn’t take content creation or social media seriously. Funny considering the billions of dollars made and spent in social media each year, but not funny ha-ha. Funny exploitative. I have gotten messages from all kinds of entrepreneurs, well-established brands, non-profits, and other organizations proposing “collaborations” and other projects where I am offered zero compensation. Sometimes the people sending these messages are also naive and respond well when I point out their collaboration proposal is just a request for free labor but the most common response is someone gaslighting me or getting defensive. They often will explain how they’re hustling and don’t have any extra cash to allocate for content or that their mission-oriented business is a worthy cause that I should feel grateful supporting. Other times people lowball to see what they can get out of you, despite clearly having the ability to pay me the cost of the time and resources it takes to create content.
This week, I got a particularly insulting collaboration request from a globally known vegan company with a huge social media presence. It took me a few days of asking for specifics before I finally go them to explicitly state they don’t pay creators for content if the creator has a following smaller than theirs. I know telling them that their idea of a collaboration was unfair likely won’t alter their strategy, I know there are plenty of creators who will say yes to the same offer, and I know that I’m going to keep wasting my time sending detailed responses to people who probably don’t read past the part where I say no, in the hopes that at some point there will be change.
It would be easier to ignore the messages and move on but I believe in using my voice, and my white privilege, to call out these exploitative practices. Various reports and anecdotes have shown the scummy social media industry disproportionately harms BIPOC creators. Like most other industries, this pay gap is the biggest when comparing white creators and Black creators. The overall “influencer pay gap” between these demographics is estimated to be 35% and adds an additional barrier to platforms whose algorithms and practices have already been shown to be discriminatory. The gender pay gap is alive and well here too. Even though the influencer industry is largely dominated by women and femmes, men still earn about 30% more than women per paid feed post. Data and statements directly from social media companies are limited because they are able to keep so much of their practices obfuscated. I personally have experienced the gaps in community guideline enforcement in regard to hate speech and I have seen countless creator friends and other users share experiences of racism, anti-fatness, and other forms of discrimination from the platforms and brands.
This exploitation mirrors the rest of society and in the same way I have found it to be effective to discuss salary and benefits details with co-workers I find it extremely helpful to discuss brand offers and monetization rates within social media platforms. The only way I know my that my experiences with bad-faith offers and extremely limited monetization opportunities within Instagram are not unique is because I post about them openly and talk to other creators. I share my experiences publicly because I believe in radical transparency and bringing accountability to the spaces I am part of. I share because I would not be at this point in my journey without other people sharing their own stories, experiences, and resources. The least I can do is take my knowledge and pay it forward. Besides, if brands are so confident in their outreach techniques and collaboration offers, there should be no problem with this greater level of transparency.
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If you are a creator who is approached to create content without compensation, consider submitting them to Kimberly Renee’s Brands Behaving Badly database.
If you have other related resources please share them in the comments!
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Recent subscriber and first time reader. Lots of interesting and informative (vegan) nuggets in here. (Sorry for the dad joke.) Thanks!
Great read as always!