Grocery Stores

‘NEARLY ONE IN FOUR NEW FOOD PRODUCTS IN THE UK IS VEGAN’

Anna Starostinetskaya for Vegnews:

Nearly one in four (23 percent) of new product launches in the United Kingdom in 2019 were labelled “vegan,” according to data compiled by market research firm Mintel. Last year, the UK overtook Germany as the world’s top producer of vegan products after Mintel’s figures showed that one in six (16 percent) of new UK product launches in 2018 were vegan.

Staggering. Almost one in every four products. Go UK go!

‘Is it time to retire the term “food desert?”’

Jessica Fu for New Food Economy:

What they found was that the biggest beneficiary of new supermarkets were supermarkets themselves, which enjoyed an increased share of consumer spending.

The overall nutritional quality of a household’s grocery purchases, however, was not heavily impacted by a new store’s presence in the area. Nor was the proportion of a household’s budget spent on groceries. This was the case across the entire study and—most importantly—among “food deserts,” which the study defined as zip codes lacking a supermarket.

“Total expenditure shares across grocery stores, supercenters, and club stores [increased] by only a fraction of a percentage point in the full sample, with no statistically detectable effect in the food desert subsample,” the study reads. “Thus, the primary effect of supermarket entry is to divert sales from other supermarkets.”

[…]

“The deeper issue is really poverty,” Mitchell says. “Local grocery stores and other kinds of retail can help alleviate that, but they’re obviously only one part of the broader problem. While thinking about grocery store development, favoring the local grocer, and being very wary of a company like […] Dollar General as a solution to that problem makes a lot of sense, [it’s] not going to solve the whole thing. We need other kinds of economic development.”

In other words, there are no easy villains in a systemic issue like food access. While there is plenty of anti-dollar-store sentiment in that ongoing conversation, some researchers argue that dollar stores are often the only food option available to many communities that would otherwise have none.

Like I’ve said before on here, this issue is actually many issues coming together. Poverty, lack of knowledge about cooking, lack of time, cost of fresh produce, and the list goes on. This won’t be solved simply.

‘Kroger rolls out Simple Truth Emerge plant-based meat’

Russell Redman for Supermarket News:

Kroger said Wednesday that Simple Truth Emerge pea-based meatless burger patties and grinds are now available in its store banners nationwide. Plans call for another 50 plant-based food products to be added to the Simple Truth line during 2020.

Kroger is making 50 *new* plant-based products this year. Again, I repeat: 50 new products. This year.

And so is every major supermarket chain around the country. Everyone is imitating Beyond Meat’s pea-protein burger product. From what I’ve seen around, most people still seem to think Beyond’s tastes best. All of this competition will improve the products, and all of us win.

I guess this is what representation looks like. Let’s just hope the representation is delicious.

‘Unjust Deserts: Cities move to ban dollar stores, blaming them for residents’ poor diets’

Steven Malanga for City Journal continues the conversation about what Dollar stores are doing to America:

Recent research undermines the argument that a lack of fresh, healthy food is to blame for unhealthy diets. In a paper published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, three economists chart grocery purchases in 10,000 households located in former food deserts, where new supermarkets have since opened. They found that people didn’t buy healthier food when they started shopping at a new local supermarket. “We can statistically conclude that the effect on healthy eating from opening new supermarkets was negligible at best,” they wrote. In other words, the food-desert narrative—which suggests that better food choices motivate people to eat better—is fundamentally incorrect. “In the modern economy, stores have become amazingly good at selling us exactly the kinds of things we want to buy,” the researchers write. In other words, “lower demand for healthy food is what causes the lack of supply.”

Combatting the ill effects of a bad diet involves educating people to change their eating habits. That’s a more complicated project than banning dollar stores. Subsidizing the purchase of fresh fruits and vegetables through the federal food-stamp program and working harder to encourage kids to eat better—as Michelle Obama tried to do with her Let’s Move! campaign—are among the economists’ suggestions for improving the nation’s diet. That’s not the kind of thing that generates sensational headlines. But it makes a lot more sense than banning dollar stores.

I do believe America is looking for a scapegoat. Trying to blame the Dollar stores is an easy out to a dizzyingly complex topic.

‘The Secrets of Shopping Vegan at 99 Cents Only Stores’

Giorgina Paiella wrote a nice guide for Tenderly about how to shop vegan at 99 Cent stores. This part here is worth highlighting:

Santa Barbara County has an abundance of high-end grocery stores, but I love the 99 because it provides a deeply discounted option for those otherwise unable to afford the more expensive markets, or for those who don’t want to overpay for quality products. Corporations aren’t the answer to our deeply broken food system (no ethical consumption under capitalism!) and we need more robust social programs that eliminate these inequalities to begin with, but these discount retailers provide affordable access to fresh food for people on a budget and those living in food deserts.

I would add that the main reason this is can be a necessity for many people is that vegetable crops for humans are essentially not subsidized while crops to fatten animals for slaughter are. And for many areas, 99 Cent stores are becoming the only option for groceries.

‘Farm Country Feeds America. But Just Try Buying Groceries There.’

Jack Healy writing for the NYTimes about food deserts in rural America:

The loss of grocery stores can feel like a cruel joke when you live surrounded by farmland. About 5 million people in rural areas have to travel 10 miles or more to buy groceries, according to the Department of Agriculture.

Dollar-store chains selling cheap food are entering hundreds of small towns, but their shelves are mostly stocked with frozen, refrigerated and packaged foods. Local health officials worry that the flight of fresh foods will only add to rural America’s health problems by exacerbating higher rates of heart disease and obesity.

I knew rural America had food deserts, but I was surprised recently learn they happen in Los Angeles too. I had realized it could happen in densely populated regions in the same way it could to sparsely populated places. Pop-up markets like Süprmarkt were LA’s answer in Leimert Park.

“Communities tell me: We don’t want to use the term co-op,” said Sean Park, a program manager for the Illinois Institute for Rural Affairs. He has helped guide rural towns through setting up their own markets. “It’s ironic because it was farmers who pioneered co-ops. They’re O.K. with ‘community store.’ They’re the same thing, but you’ve got to speak the language.”

Yet again, it always comes down to language. People are afraid of certain words.

But the challenges of starting a small grocery store at a time of increasing consolidation in the food business are daunting. The Great Scott! market could not persuade any wholesalers to work with them, so they bought a van and make regular trips to buy basics at a small markup from another supermarket.

“I called all the major chains, and if they didn’t laugh in my face they hung up on me,” said Shaun Tyson, a farmer in Mount Pulaski, a town about an hour from Winchester that is working to start its own co-op market by the spring.

A few states including Alabama, Nevada and Oklahoma have begun to study rural food deserts. They offer tax credits and loans to help stores finance construction projects and move to underserved places. In March, a bipartisan cluster of lawmakers in Washington proposed a new tax credit for grocery stores in food deserts.

But mostly, the people setting up crowd-funding sites to buy vegetable coolers and negotiating wholesale rates with huge grocery chains say they are stumbling around with little assistance and no map.

There is no easy fix here. And I’m sad to say that it’s likely going to get worse for rural parts of America.

‘Shalt thou eat an Impossible Burger? Religious doctrine scrambles to catch up to new food technology.’

Laura Reiley with an incredibly interesting piece for the Washington Post:

This month, Tyson announced it is investing in a company that will launch plant-based shrimp early next year, raising a curious question. Will it be kosher? The short answer is its ingredients — which mimic the verboten crustacean with a proprietary algae blend — could well be both kosher and halal. Once the product launches, the company will seek certification so that Jews who keep kosher and Muslims — certain Muslim groups avoid shellfish — can enjoy a shrimp cocktail, scampi, a po’ boy or ceviche.

And yet. In this era of plenitude and choice and disruptive technology, what is permissible, what is forbidden and what is flouting the letter of religious law? The food system is in flux, the rise of plant-based meats and the promise of cell-cultured meats bending categories such that legislation, ideology and theology are scrambling to keep up.

If God says no pork, how does He feel about a very persuasive forgery? And if only beef from the forequarter is permitted, how will observant Jews parse meat grown in a lab, no bones and no quarters at all? How do you bleed an animal with no blood or slaughter an animal humanely if there’s no slaughter? And if you give up meat for Lent, what constitutes a cheat?

This bit from Rabbi Eli Lando, the chief customer relations officer with OK Kosher, is an interesting question:

“Is it a violation of the spirit of the law? That becomes a realm that you can never end.”

[…]

The prohibitions, he said, are about the actual creatures (pigs, shellfish, rabbits and reptiles), not a plant-based facsimile, however uncanny the likeness. Strictly kosher Jews, he notes, are frequently big fans of fake crab made of finely pulverized white fish. Lando sees plant-based meat as a revolution of sorts.

“A person today knows that being kosher does not mean you have to go to the back of the store and look for something like a second-class citizen. Having those products commonly available is achieving a great milestone,” he said.

And I didn’t know this was part of the Muslim tradition of Halal:

The inspection and certification process is similar for halal foods. For plant-based products designed to imitate haram products (pork and other foods forbidden by Islamic law), Roger Othman, director of consumer relations for Islamic Food and Nutrition Council of America, said words matter.

“Plant-based bacon bits, for example. The product would qualify to be halal but may be repugnant to halal consumers if the word bacon appeared in the name,” Othman said. “Halal consumers would not know what pork chews like, maybe not even what it smells or looks like. If plant-based, it could qualify to be halal, but the naming should not contain any pork-related words.”

Which ties slightly back into to the recent legal flare-up between many states’ meat-industries and free-speech advocates that would allow plant-based foods to call themselves “meat”, “sausage”, or even a “burger”. It would be interesting to see if certain products might be repackaged or relabeled depending on what stores they end up in — so that they might be allowed into Halal shops or supermarkets in certain states that deem meat-related labeling illegal.

It’d be interesting if many vegan products, once fully mainstream and with widespread use, moved to welcome religious or more niche audiences by changing parts of their products to appeal to those needs. Maybe we’ll see the same product packaged twice: one named to reference a similar flavor or product (i.e. Tofurkey or things labeled “Chik’n”), and then another where the words give the impression of an entirely new category of product (e.g. seitan, tofu, tempeh). Or if Impossible developed another heme product that they didn’t test on rats to try to entice a certain group of strict vegans. All of these things are possible, but I don’t know what it would take to be cost-effective.

‘Kroger To Launch Plant-Based Protein Section In Meat Aisle’

Maria Chiorando for Plant Based News:

US supermarket giant Kroger is trialing a plant-based protein section in the meat aisles of selected stores.

The trial, which will run for 20 weeks, will take place in 60 locations across Indiana, Illinois, and Denver this fall.

The timing for this is impeccable and I assume intentional: Impossible foods (aka the makers of the Impossible burger) will be available in stores this month.

The placement of these products in stores is interesting too. Ethan Brown, the CEO of Beyond Meat, has always wanted his products to be placed in the meat aisle. When the Beyond products were in the vegan and vegetarian section, he called that the “penalty box” in his Wired interview from 2013.

I wonder if Kroger will continue to keep a vegan/vegetarian freezer section if this goes well. I’d assume so, but it’d be interesting to see what more integration would do generally. Making vegan products more visible will naturally make these products more popular. Like end aisle caps and special displays, this could be a big moment for vegan foods as they move into flexitarians life.

Kroger is the USA’s largest supermarket chain, and is the third-largest retail company in the world behind Wal-Mart and Costco. This could drastically change the business of lots of plant-based companies.

‘The Heir to a Tofu Dynasty Finally Learns to Make Tofu’

Aaron Reiss writing for the NYTimes about the oldest tofu shop in New York City and its sequel of sorts:

Paul Eng decided to confront a reality he had been facing most of his life: He was the heir to a tofu tradition who had no idea how to make tofu.

Mr. Eng’s grandfather learned the trade in the 1930s from fellow immigrants shortly after he arrived in Chinatown. He went on to open up a small tofu shop on Mott Street, called Fong Inn Too, and developed recipes that would become well loved in Chinatown for more than eighty years. When Mr. Eng’s parents closed the shop in 2017, the recipes, never written down, disappeared with it.

At one point, while trying to recreate those recipes, Mr. Eng asked one of his parents’ former employees how much baking soda a particular recipe called for. He said, “A cup.”

“A cup, like eight ounces? Like a U.S. standard cup measure?”

“No,” the man said, “a cup.”

“Like a coffee cup?”

“No, this one cup that we had at the shop.”

The cup, naturally, had been thrown out.

We all have been or will be there. This bit is coming for us all someday:

Fong On was known not only for its tofu but also for soy milk, rice cakes, grass jelly and a dozen other traditional products. Mr. Eng didn’t know how to make any of them, and he had almost nothing to work with. “We had dismantled all the old equipment and nothing was written down.” Not even his family members could recall enough detail to recreate their old specialties.

I once had a friend whose grandma made a shortbread crumble cake using odd cups that had been collected throughout the years for the measurements. This friend told me it was the only thing she wanted if her grandma passed away.

In Chinatown, the craft was often passed from more established immigrants to those more newly arrived.

Born in New York in 1966, Mr. Eng was part of a different generation — so he turned to YouTube.

And naturally, vegans in NYC are already stopping by Fong On. The article even mentions one of my favorite food-lovers in NYC, Crystal Pang aka @veganeatsnyc, who of course has already found this spot.

I love that articles like this help share the story and history of tofu. I know we’ve all had bad experiences with tofu, and stories like this help people appreciate the work that goes into it — and hopefully take the time to see how to prepare it, whether plain or like Yotam Ottolenghi’s perfect Black Pepper tofu recipe from Plenty.