oy vey it's june🌈
1 newsletter that will turn you vegan (for at least the amount of time it takes you to read said newsletter)
Hi there, thanks for opening this newsletter!
If a picture is worth a thousand words, this will be my longest intro yet. JK, enjoy your biweekly dose of Ginny up top this week because my brain is a bit too fried to write you an intro. Plus could all use an extra moment of cuteness in our lives right now.
-Kayla
what i’ve read
Delivering to desert: New data reveals the geography of digital access to food in the U.S. Very interesting report on “digital food gaps” and food access through the lens of food delivery services. I wish the research or discussion had included some mention of delivery fees and how expensive food delivery services can be (for restaurants and customers) even if you do have access to the tool.
Semi-related piece: Third-Party Delivery Apps Facing Uncertain Future
The Most Important Force in Food Has Nothing to Do With Fake Meat as I mentioned last week, the rise of animal-free food not the market does not mean the amount of food made from animals is decreasing. The proposed regulatory “blueprint” for the US touches upon: antibiotics in animals, organic = humane (that’s a hard eye roll from me), reducing maximum speed on meat processing factory lines, accountability for industrial meat greenhouse gas emissions, restructuring the Farm Bill and agricultural subsidies, and decentralizing the 4 Big Meat companies. While these proposed regulations are really interesting and definitely critical, this is a very brief article that does not dig as deeply into the nuances as needed.
New legislation seeks stricter regulation of GRAS substances The GRAS (Generally Recognized As Safe) system is an area of food regulation that I get more confused about the more I try and learn about it (if you want to try explaining it to me again, you know where to find me). You can read more about the proposal for the Ensuring Safe and Toxic-Free Foods Act here, it includes initiatives like creating an Office of Food Chemical Safety Reassessment under the FDA’s Center for Food Safety & Applied Nutrition and prohibiting manufacturer’s ability to independently designate substances as GRAS without notice to the HHS.
Small Box Retailers’ War With Local Municipalities is All About Health 25 municipalities have placed a moratorium on NEW dollar store openings, the bigger goal of this initiative is to get better food retailer options that can provide fresh “meats, fruits and vegetables”. Dollar stores typically open in low income, primarily Black & Brown neighborhoods and along with convenience stores can sometimes be the only food retail option for rural areas. You can read more about the implications of dollar stores from Eater and Consumer Reports.
I spent a couple months surveying food retailers in rural Indiana, check out the abstract of our research.3 Tips for Grocers on Beating Inflationary Heat This Summer I want to translate these industry-facing pieces without the fluff that makes people feel better about exploiting consumers. This article states that consumers are going back to, “some buying patterns of old” by looking for ways to save money including shopping with grocery lists, buying frozen/shelf-stable items over fresh and then mentions a quote from a podcast where someone said, “…it’s super important to understand what those patterns are, but also, how we can get people to shop beyond the list by delighting them in a variety of ways,”. Let’s cut the bullshit, you’re not delighting consumers by influencing them to circumvent their budgeting techniques you are exploiting them. What these internal industry discussions pivot as opportunities don’t come out of nowhere without consequences, the marketing, advertising, labeling, and even virtual/physical store environments for food retail are already basically predatory. Sure inflation is hitting everyone hard and industries/businesses have to respond but the least they could do is stop pretending these “strategies” are employed for the consumer’s sake when they are for the sake of profits and financial projections.
More on prices and inflation:Facing Inflation-Weary Shoppers, Grocers Fight Price Increases
General Mills has taken pricing five times Note the part of this article that says price moves haven’t cost General Mills market share, GM has gained market share across ⅔ of the company’s categories. Tell me again how it’s not predatory for grocery stores to get consumers to spend more than they budgeted for amidst this period of inflation?
The Field Report: Food Companies Are Not Counting All of Their Greenhouse Gas Emissions New to me: there are levels/scopes of greenhouse gas emissions where scope 1 is direct emissions from company owned and controlled resources, scope 2 are indirect emissions generated by purchased energy (utilities), and some 3 are indirect emissions both up and downstream from a company and include 15 subcategories. This article details some opportunities for accountability of specific food companies that make claims that they will reduce their emissions but don’t disclose specific action items or how they’ll address their scope 3 emissions.
Op-ed: East Buffalo Needs Community-Driven Structural Investments, Not Fly-In, Fly-Out Charity A compelling piece detailing the issues of reactionary charity and some of what is needed to make systemic and systematic change for the East Buffalo community.
Apocalypse now? The alarming effects of the global food crisis
A big bummer but nothing too surprising considering we’ve been hearing these facts for a while, this article just puts them together. The title is accurate so recommend setting it aside for when you have time for a longer read that will bum you out. What is not included are initiatives or possible solutions, it very much focuses on presenting the various global crises we’re facing.Queering Animal Liberation: Lesbian communists are coming to take your fur coats...and they should Happy Pride month let’s do some queer vegan study starting with this blog post by Christopher Sebastian
Non-GMO Project warns of potential synthetic dairy risks
Apparently it’s national dairy month and The Non-GMO project and certain groups of dairy farmers couldn’t think of a better way to celebrate than shitting on animal-free dairy alternatives that are emerging in the food tech space. This article quotes some folks who make extremely bold claims that the author thought were fine to leave unsubstantiated and without citation. One issue this campaign highlights is that synthetic dairy isn’t natural…which is a pretty bold claim considering the global majority of the human population is lactose intolerant, we’re the only species to drink the milk of another species, and humans drink milk from cartons and jugs not directly from an udder. Oh also cows aren’t even indigenous to this part of the globe and their presence has destroyed the ecosystems of native flora and fauna including the lactating mammals (buffalo) that were here way before cows. I made a TikTok breaking down this article, watch it here.
what i’m excited about
I recorded an episode of Kvetching on the Couch talking about Jewish food & mental health
Today’s Food & Climate Coffee Chat with Planetary Health Collective (12pm EST)
The holiday Shavuot begins tonight at sundown, chag sumach! Please send me your favorite vegan cheesecake recipes.
I’m working on turning some of my kvetch sesh pieces into longer (and better edited) articles that can be more easily shared outside this newsletter. Check out Dropping the Non-Dairy Tax: a Tall Order for Starbucks on Medium.
kvetch sesh
Does eating an animal-free meal make you vegan?
People like Gordon Ramsey and writers at The Wall Street Journal who publish articles like 5 Dishes That Will Make you Vegan for at Least One Meal sure seem to think so.
I asked my Instagram community what they thought of that headline from The Wall Street Journal. I got about 30 responses from followers, vegan and non-vegan, that shared similar reactions. The TLDR is that the article title reduces veganism to a diet but isn’t too problematic.
Sample of specific responses:
“I’m vegan. To me, this perpetuates veganism as “extreme” & unattainable for more than 1 meal.”
“Ok with this. Seems like the intention is playful/light and to convince non v that it’s tasty”
“We wouldn’t say vegetarian for one meal if someone at *one* meal without meat🥲”
“That’s plant-based not vegan & they are acting like no ones ever had a PB&J before🙄”
“Vegan is a moral code not a descriptor of food”
I had no ulterior motive in asking what other people thought because I’m not comparing their responses to my standards of veganism. There is no right/wrong answer because one interpretation isn’t more or less superior than anyone else’s. The article is a brief fluff piece listicle highlighting dishes from restaurants across the country. It begins by highlighting an announcement that Crossroads Kitchen, one of my favorite restaurants, opened a location in Las Vegas bringing a supposed much needed upscale vegan restaurant to the area. Even if we don’t want to get too deep on vegan philosophy (mostly so this newsletter fits in the character limit) there is a lot of low-hanging fruit in this piece to breakdown.
First is the semantics; like most vegan-focused content this article uses the terms “vegan” and “plant-based” seemingly interchangeably without definition or distinction. I have brought this up before and will continue to do so because these terms don’t have universal definitions. Just about every person I’ve asked to define both these words has given me a different answer; some people think plant-based is the dietary aspect of veganism while others interpret it as describing a diet that mainly consists of whole foods (grains, legumes, fruits, veggies, etc) and may or may not include animal-derived products. It’s confusing.
I am one of the people who sees veganism as a lifestyle practice made up of a set of moral principles that guide my choices. Refraining from directly consuming animals in my food, clothing, personal care products, etc is a big part of my vegan practice but is in no way the entirety. This is a perspective I have cultivated over the last 8+ years and has evolved greatly since I first I identified as vegan when cutting animal byproducts from my then lacto-ovo vegetarian diet. My shift in perspective came after reading many books, essays, articles, and social media posts along with years of interacting with various vegan individuals and organizations in a multitude of settings. The more I study veganism in these ways, the deeper I’ve found myself in my vegan practice.
While I don’t expect mainstream society or every person who identifies as vegan to agree with my interpretation and practice or go this deep for themselves, I do think we need to pause before throwing labels onto things. Labels are supposed to help distinguish things and set certain expectations. Is labeling a banana as vegan, or someone who eats a banana as a vegan, helpful? In some instances, sure, but I don’t think making a blanket statement that anyone who eats a banana for breakfast is vegan is one of those instances.
Our interpretations may vary but we can still be intentional with our word choice, especially if you’re a professional journalist writing for a publication with the notoriety of The Wall Street Journal. It’s ridiculous to think one animal-free meal automatically makes the eater a vegan. As one of the Instagram responses mentioned, “they are acting like no ones ever had a PB&J before”. There are also various cultures and religions that have existed for thousands of years before the term vegan was coined that share many similar dietary practices with veganism. Eating foods that don’t come from animals is not a trait exclusive to vegans.
My theory as to why people frequently reduce veganism to a diet is because contemporary food labeling, marketing, and advertising has placed so much emphasis upon individual food items and meals. Buzzwords associated with products in this way gain notoriety and mainstream attention and some interpret this level of awareness as success. But awareness doesn’t necessitate understanding. While not directly comparable to veganism, we can see this pattern exemplified with the ketogenic diet. With the ketogenic diet we’ve started to see people assigning one food or meal as keto, probably because so many packaged foods now boast a keto label. Despite ketogenesis being a physiological process, not an instantaneous consequence once you take a bite of a high fat low calorie snack bar, most people are only familiar with it as an individualized food item descriptor.
Perhaps I’m so attuned to these nuances and distinctions because I was raised kosher and from a young age learned how dietary choices can be one facet of a larger ethical practice. Oreos are certified kosher but I can’t imagine someone writing a listicle titled “5 Oreo Flavors That will Make you Kosher (For at Least One Dessert)”. I also can’t imagine celebrities like Gordon Ramsey choosing to go kosher for a week while ignoring all other aspects of Jewish culture and being cocky enough to make it a big social media challenge as he’s done with veganism.
Is this type of awareness really an indicator of success? Maybe. It’s pretty successful at annoying me on a daily basis.
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