Oy Vey It's - November

A newsletter that is wishing you a very happy holidays!

Earlier this week I started Marion Nestle’s memoir Slow Cooked. I then found out she was doing book signing events all over the Bay Area and I could not make a single one because I have actually had non-virtual plans where I was out and about in the world. Tragic, right?

Anyways, Marion Nestle is one of the leading scholars in this weird nutrition, marketing, and food politics niche I have gotten myself into. She was one of the scholars that created and legitimized this field. Reading her stories about the social and professional environments she experienced as a Jewish woman in science over the last couple decades hit me pretty deeply. Our world still has so much to reckon with and also I want to take a moment of gratitude for the leaders and changemakers who have gotten us to this point of progress. If I have to qualify a long-term professional goal for myself in this stage of my life it would be to build upon their legacy.

*PS the link to Slow Cooked is an affiliate link, if you use it to order the book I will get a small commission.

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What I’ve Read

• Barilla Slapped With Lawsuit for Misleading Customers - Apparently Barilla’s slogan is, “Italy’s No. 1 brand of pasta”, however with the exception of 2 products, the majority of their pasta is produced in Iowa and New York. The packaging also includes “Made in the USA” notation but makes other nods to Italy, mostly through the colors of the Italian flag. This article offers a decent breakdown as to what this lawsuit means and how it could impact labeling standards in the future. Lawsuits like this are not uncommon in the food industry and is largely how change happens because that is the food system we have created in this country. Read more on the rise of Lawsuits Over ‘Misleading’ Food Labels Surge as Groups Cite Lax U.S. Oversight.

• Kroger-Albertsons mega-merger could cause more US food deserts, experts say - While “food deserts” is in the title, the article does not go in depth on this. It focuses more on how the KA merger will likely impact our already limited choice and access for groceries, something that will hit rural and under-resourced communities the hardest.

• Can a Court Compel the EPA to Protect Communities of Color From CAFO Pollution? - Concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) are absolutely evil and cause immense harm to the animals slaughtered within them, the ecosystem surrounding them, and the people who work and live in their vicinity. North Carolina has one of the largest CAFO concentrations, specifically hog CAFOs that disproportionately impact Black communities. There is a petition by environmental groups that is pushing for greater regulation of CAFOs by the EPA. The regulation is an attempt to better manage pollution but would also provide more (theoretically) easily accessible public records about CAFOs so communities can be better informed.

  • Read more in this 2020 FoodPrint article Communities Organizing Against Big Pork.

• Judaism, veganism bring peace, control amid chaos - For obvious reasons I deeply resonate with this quick but engaging article. I especially loved this quote at the end, “…when life stressors lead to a sense of dread and overwhelm, and when nearly everything feels out of control, it is not only the comforting thing to turn to a bowl of vegan mac and cheese; it is not only the compassionate thing to seek out a scoop of dairy-free ice cream; it is the Jewish thing to find comfort in compassionate choices.”

• Los Angeles City Council unanimously endorses the Plant Based Treaty in response to the climate emergency - LA is the second C40 city to adopt a resolution to support the global Plant Based Treaty, the first city was Buenos Aires. The treaty, which was unanimously adopted by the LA City Council, has 3 demands each with very specific sub-points; Relinquish, Redirect, Restore. Some of these demands include: no building of new animal farms and slaughterhouses, reshifting subsidies to fruits and vegetables, repurposing available land freed up from animal grazing for rewilding and reforestation. I really recommend taking a look into more of the demand details, it’s pretty encouraging. The treaty was modeled after the Fossil Fuel Treaty. What is not well defined is the term “plant-based” and their position papers also mention veganism and vegan diets without distinction. Will keep an eye out for this as I continue to go through the treaty materials!

  • (Sample of how the treaty was presented in food industry media)
    LA Adopts Plant-Based Treaty to Fight Climate Change - This statistic caught my eye, “About 1.6 million people in the U.S. say they follow a vegan diet, about 0.5% of the population. Expanding that to vegetarians the number is about 3 million, or 1% of the population.” but no source is given! A reminder that sweeping statistics like that do not take into account the varied interpretations of veganism and really are focused on the dietary aspect.

• Turkeys will cost more because 6 million of them died during bird flu outbreak - It is absolutely mind-blowing to see the differences in language in media discussing animals that have died due to disease versus being killed for slaughter. This year a bird flu outbreak has caused 6 million turkeys in the U.S. to lose their lives, either to disease or farmers employing “euthanasia” to prevent the outbreak from spreading further…to the animals they were already planning to kill. This WP article goes into detail about the impact on the farmers, the price and availability of turkey, but doesn’t come close to reckoning with the cognitive dissonance of consuming animals. Can’t wait to see how vegans somehow get blamed for the lack of turkey!

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Q&Kay

Q: “A local brand uses the phrase, “Guilt free!” With their branding. They are cheesecakes made with cashews, dates, and what people may consider more wholesome/plantbased products. What are your thoughts on catch phrases like this? As a baker it makes me feel like they are implying there is guilt to be felt for other desserts.”

Kay: The TLDR of my thoughts - fuck that shit.
(TW: weight, anti-fatness, food morality)

The longer version, which I am trying hard to keep brief! Guilt is a moral signifier and an incredibly effective marketing strategy not a valid concept of nutrition science or health. Assigning morality to food is incredibly common, we toss around casual phrases in social settings about how “bad” we are for eating a cookie, justifying our second portion with an explanation of how we will punish ourselves with physical activity, or how weak we are for craving dessert, even though those actions aren’t inherently good or bad.

I’m sure this idea of “good” and “bad” foods have roots in many places, but two specific aspects come to mind at the moment. One is that a negative association with sweets and other stereotypically “bad” foods are likely remnants of the influence of white Christian men who despised any enjoyment of life and were bummers of food influencers in their time. I’m talking about anti-masturbation motivated men like like Sylvester Graham (of the Graham cracker fame) and John Harvey Kellogg (of the Kellogg sanitarium, corn flakes, and eugenics). These men from these schools of thought literally associated “good” foods with moral and religious purity, which they imposed on others.

Which leads us to the more modern assumptions we hold towards “bad” foods in our society. Food or consumption critiquing is largely rooted in anti-fatness, classism, and ableism because the foods we typically assign as “bad” are things like desserts, soda, ultra-processed foods, packaged foods, “fast foods”, etc that are convenient sources of calories, subsidized to be cheap-ish, disproportionately marketed toward Black and brown communities, and usually discussed in context with weight gain and fatness. I also think it is imperative to mention how nutrition science has been shaped by dominant white American culture and for the past century has demonized various ethnic and cultural foods as “bad” until someone is savvy enough to market them as “superfoods”.

As a way to distinguish itself from “bad” foods, the clean food movement has latched onto nutrient or ingredient swaps that they claim makes their food less “bad”. We are talking about what you mentioned in your question, my dear baker, the use of cashews, dates, coconut sugar, etc. rather than white sugar, cream, butter, and other traditional ingredients. These are the desserts of thinness, whiteness, and wealth, despite the fact that, internally, most of the ingredients are indistinguishable internally. White sugar and coconut sugar may have slight, insignificant variations in nutrients but the body, that functions typically, will break them both down into glucose without giving a shit what bogus claims were put onto the food label.

Click here to submit your own Q&Kay!

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Kvetch Sesh

I do not like Christmas. I mean, it’s a bit more complicated than liking or not liking it, I wish I didn’t have to care about it at all. However, it is the time of year when I am reminded how dominant the dominant culture really is because regardless of my own feelings or choices, I am immersed in Christmas for a solid 2 months of every year.

I’ve written and talked about this before and lucky for you, I also recently updated my essay ‘Tis the season for “Happy Holidays”. In this piece I discuss why swapping “merry Christmas” for “happy holidays” irks me more and more each “holiday season”.

Read the full essay on Medium!

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Ginny sitting in front of a giant peace sign wrapped in colorful lights