Hello it’s October and (as always) there is sooo much going on and (as always) a lot of it is super fucking shitty. Among the many things happening, it’s also apparently ADHD Awareness Month so please be aware of me! In all seriousness, I have found it really cathartic to be open with the multitude of acronyms I have been diagnosed with. I have ADHD and you can definitely ask me questions (that I will only answer based on my personal experience) about it!
- Kayla
What I’ve Read
Gen Z is leading a generational shift in plant-based food purchasing - Hate to be the bearer of bad new but vegan and vegetarian diet labels are out of fashion, flexitarian is all the rage! Another bummer of a consequence for continuing to categorize veganism as a diet that can be compared with vegetarianism or plant-based eating when veganism extends to lifestyle choices beyond food. Also this article doesn’t really seem to offer anything recent, its main source was a study from Fall 2021.
FDA Proposes to Update Definition for “Healthy” Claim on Food Labels - This is a revision to the FDA proposal to define “healthy” as a nutrient content claim released at the start of the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health. Along with criteria for products that would meet the “healthy” claim the FDA mentioned researching a front-of-package symbol to be used by manufacturers. We’ll have to wait and see what happens at the conclusion of the comment period, defining “healthy” has been prevalent for a while now. While I think the impact of a “healthy” claim has potential I also know that, historically, food producers and brands find a way to keep their same formulation while strategically evading nutrient content claims and other regulation. I’m more curious to see how that unfolds and what language gets used instead. Also the proposal is open for comments from the public for 90 days.
Read the proposed rule in full
Read a summary of the proposed rule by the Food Consulting Company
Read Marion Nestle’s thoughts on the proposal
Federal judge strikes down latest version of Iowa ‘ag-gag’ law - Ag-Gag aka agricultural gag laws are still a thing and I’m glad to see a judge striking down Iowa’s latest ag-gag attempt. According to the judge criminalizing people gathering evidence of animal abuse and documenting other issues on private property is a violation of the 1st amendment and is not trespassing.
Newsom relents, signs farmworker union bill after pressure from Biden and labor - Gov Newsom signed Assembly Bill 2183 after stating last spring that he would not sign it. Apparently his decision shifted after discussion with UFW and California Labor Federation and agreements to clarify certain language. The main focus of this bill is to improve farmworker opportunity for collective bargaining, unionizing, and advocacy in their workplaces and usher in processes that lower barriers to unionizing. Farmworkers have historically been exempted from workplace safety improvements and other worker’s rights that are legally required for other industries, they deserve to be paid fairly, earn benefits, and work in a safe environment.
Experts Predict ‘Striketober’ to Remember - Strikes are happening as more workers turn to solidarity instead of accepting that their jobs have to be shitty because a living wage and healthcare would impact their company’s profits. This article mentions strikes at SFO, Sysco, Kroger, Starbucks, Chipotle, Trader Joe’s, and general restaurant industry. Love the quote at the end that says unions succeed when frontline management and higher leadership communication don’t align. Why address the problems causing people to organize when you could union bust instead?!
Food and beverage workers at SFO organized a 3 day strike last week and have secured benefits including: about a 30% pay increase for employees, job protection if businesses changes hands, a one-time bonus of $1500, a quality affordable family healthcare plan, and more.
New ways to make more sustainable choices - Google is adding a search feature that discloses the environmental impact of certain choices. The highlighted searches are about car purchases, shopping with a focus on pre-owned items, and ingredients. According to the article Google will offer the ability to compare emissions at the ingredient-level based of data from the UN.
Meatpacker JBS to close U.S. plant-based foods business - According to the article, JBS closing their U.S. plant-based manufacturing plants is a harbinger of U.S. sales flattening. However, the article they link as a citation only discusses Kellog Co’s consideration of selling MorningStar Farms because the brand can’t break out of supermarkets and into fast food, like Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat. MorningStar has been around for a while, I think it’s pretty telling that a few years of competition, and the emergence of much better tasting options that are actually animal-free and not just vegetarian, are scaring these giants off. Also…JBS is the largest global cow beef producer. The beef industry and animal ag have been actively fighting against animal-free foods so I would hypothesize that the supposed plateau in sales and limited opportunities could be in part due to all of those efforts.
Kvetch Sesh
Short menus, local produce, no tablecloth: how to choose a restaurant and help save the planet
I am in favor of increased transparency in the food system; however, I think there is a delicate balance between practicing radical transparency and putting the burden of verification onto individuals rather than systems. We as individuals are not effective at understanding the nuances of consumption, in part because of a lack of transparency, but mostly because there is a limit to the amount of information each of us can take in and apply in our daily lives. If individuals were tasked with making decisions within a system that was just, equitable, and fair, our decision fatigue and limited brain space would be less of an issue. Instead, individuals are tasked with making decisions on limited resources; time, energy, knowledge, money, choice, and access. We are forced to make decisions with these limited resources where the stakes are high - producers were paid a living wage or not, child labor was used or not, produced sustainably or not - and the truth is obfuscated, simply because the neoliberal system around us says that’s how it should be.
What does, “A good menu should be transparent and verifiable” mean? The article mentions specific third-party certifications and labels to look for and says restaurants naming suppliers is a sign of a good menu. Identifying suppliers and offering certifications contribute to transparency but to be verifiable restaurant patrons would have to know the nuances of the certifying organization’s standards or the details of the supplier’s operations beyond the “About Us” page on their website. If consumers aren’t intimately familiar with these details this suggested solution requires a lot of trust of certifications. This suggestion falls even more flat when the article literally started by mentioning that businesses that conduct ethical audits of restaurants are not doing so with full coverage at scale.
In a section about decoding menus for sustainable options there is mention of prioritizing plant-based meals and choosing less common animals to consume. Don’t skim over the quote that outlines the gross reality of consuming cows for their meat and milk, “Sadly, the vast majority of unwanted dairy bull calves are shot at birth as there isn’t currently enough of a market for all of them to be reared as veal.” Instead of urging people to skip the cows altogether in the name of environmentalism, they say you should be paying for and eating more of the babies so the industry has less “waste” along with eating more plants. While this is obviously something I take ideological issue with it also is another area that would require consumers to be educated on specific environmental impacts of the animals they are consuming. To make these decisions one would have to be well versed in sustainable agriculture or, again, put their trust into certifications, brand stories, marketing claims, or whatever the news and social feeds tell them.
Furthermore, this article acts as if it is speaking to a general (UK-based) audience, “who are keen to make better choices for the planet in where and how they eat” but are lacking in direction. The author, Tony Naylor, buddies up with the reader identifying themselves and the reader as a group of consumers, as a “we”. However all of the recommendations made to guide us, the consumer and the reader, are ones of extreme privilege. Really it should be identified that “we” is only inclusive of consumers who can afford the time, privilege, access, means, and choice to patronize restaurants: serving local food, offering seasonal menus with small dish sizes, that take reservations, are built and decorated with upcycled materials, that offer hot water bottles and blankets instead of heating in the winter months, which pay to be audited and/or certified for being environmentally friendly, etc.
How many restaurants that meet any or all of these criteria are accessible to the majority of the population? How is this “we” including those who are working class, poor, food insecure, etc? Some people have no choice but to choose restaurants with big enough portion sizes to sustain them or their family within a budget. Some people are entirely reliant upon fast food, prepared food, or donated food and literally can not make these specific sustainable choices. It’s clear to me that these folks are meant to be excluded from the “we”, they are not part of this group of consumers and they are definitely not the expected readership for this article.
There is nothing inherently wrong with this exclusion. Not everything needs to be universally applicable; however there does need to be an acknowledgment that these recommendations are not accessible to the majority of people. There is much the author could have elaborated on to encourage consumers to embrace sustainability without circling back to trusting third-parties and spending our limited resources scoping out restaurants that say they are doing sustainable things. It would have been pertinent to acknowledge how the systems around us have created and are perpetuating the unsustainable practices discussed within the article or offer further learning for the individuals who do have the time and desire to learn more. Perpetuating one-dimensional takes like this lack the nuance necessary to make the suggested solutions more broadly applicable in order to actually accomplish the intended goal. These suggestions sit at the perfect intersection of elitism and greenwashing packaged in the quintessential Neoliberal capitalist we-all-have-the-same-24-hours-in-a-day mentality. It’s great to encourage wealthy people to make better choices, but let’s not sell these “sustainable” dining tips as anything more.