cwmoss

‘What Does ‘Plant-Based’ Actually Mean?’ ∞

January 7, 2020

Jaya Saxena with a nice write-up for Eater:

Though meat-free eating has been common in numerous cultures, labels and identities began to harden in the 20th century. The phrase “vegan” was coined in 1944 to stand for “non-dairy vegetarian,” and the Vegan Society soon declared that it opposed the use of any animal products in any capacity, not just in food. As Ethan Varian recently wrote for the New York Times, the word “vegan” has an inherently political connotation. To identify as vegan is to concern oneself with animal rights, with the conditions of slaughterhouse workers, and with the environment. It is not inherently “healthier” (as endless op-eds about Impossible Burger being no better for you than beef will point out), but health isn’t the point; harm reduction is.

The term “plant-based” was coined in 1980 by biochemist Thomas Colin Campbell, who employed it to present his research on a non-animal-product diet in a way that he felt wouldn’t be clouded by politics. He went on to advocate a diet of “whole foods,” though not everyone who eats a plant-based diet focuses on unprocessed and “nutritious” food. Instead of a collective ethical movement, the phrase has come to signal health and the individual, factors which, according to Naro, are why most people give up meat. Of course, that’s a veneer — a bowl of mashed potatoes or a bag of Takis technically qualifies as plant-based, though these items probably aren’t what people think of when they think “healthy.” But the term doesn’t come with the baggage of “vegan.” “Using ‘plant-based’ allows people to feel they’re not joining a specific group for eating a specific way,” says Varian.

‘The Meat-Lover’s Guide to Eating Less Meat’ ∞

January 7, 2020

Mellissa Clark for the NYTimes:

Becoming vegan would be the most planet-friendly way to go, followed by going vegetarian. In my case, those diets would be a professional liability, and to be perfectly honest, I don’t know that I’ve got the willpower to stick to either one. I love meat and dairy too much to give them up entirely. But eating less of them — that I can do.

On the upside, eating less meat and dairy means there is more room on my plate for other delectable things: really good sourdough bread slathered with tahini and homemade marmalade, mushroom Bourguignon over a mound of noodles, and all those speckled heirloom beans I keep meaning to order online.

She has 6 good tips for people who are starting to dip their toes into the plant-based world.

‘Impossible Foods Debuts Its First Plant-Based Pork Products’ ∞

January 7, 2020

Deena Shanker for Bloomberg:

Impossible Foods Inc., maker of the eponymous “bleeding” soy-based burger, is debuting two faux-meat products at CES in Las Vegas: Impossible Pork and Impossible Sausage, ramping up the rivalry with Beyond Meat Inc.

Impossible, based in Silicon Valley, plans to give away about 25,000 samples at the consumer electronics show this week, and its sausage will be rolled out starting in late January at 139 Burger King locations in five test markets.

Hello, Asia and the morning breakfast community!

I’m not surprised that pork was the next product. It’s similar to beef in certain ways. Nothing happens easily though and I assuming making this product wasn’t a stroll through the park, but I’d bet it was much easier to make than beef was initially.

With the Impossible burger, it debuted in very select restaurants across the America. It’s fascinating that in America for their pork product, they’re opening with a limited amount of Burger King locations.

I’m still hoping we’ll see a fish replacement in the next year or two. But that’s nothing like beef or pork.

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

January 7, 2020

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.

‘A Tiny Tweak to Sugar Is About to Make the World’s Sweets a Lot Healthier’ ∞

January 7, 2020

Chase Purdy for Quartz:

The surprising truth about cake is that it’s astonishingly inefficient.

So are lollipops, pies, sticks of gum, and cookies, each an imperfect vehicle used to deliver the sweet sensation people crave. And these foods are loaded with sugar. Lots of it. The average slice of white cake with no frosting contains about 26 grams, the recommended maximum health experts say most people should eat in one day. In reality, though, the average American eats about five timesthat amount; Germans four times; and Canadians consume a little more than three times the daily recommendation.

Part of the problem can be chocked up to willpower, sure. But a lot of it is also molecular.

In order to enjoy the sensation of sweetness, sugar molecules have to land on our sweet-tasting receptors, most of which sit on the tip of the tongue. But sugar is notoriously bad at actually hitting those receptors, so bad that only 20 percent actually makes it, the rest washing down our gullets and into the digestive system. This is one reason why many foods contain so much sugar. It’s also why a lot of food companies, in spite of their efforts, have found it difficult—even impossible—to reduce the amount of added sugar in their products while also maintaining the tastes people expect.

But a startup headquartered near Tel Aviv, Israel has developed a super-tiny method that may have cracked what has been an impossible code. In doing so, it sits on the cusp of changing the landscape of food manufacturing by making sugar so efficient that food companies can use 40 percent less while keeping tastes the same.

They’re saying this isn’t an artificial sweetener, but rather a sweeter version of sugar — and thus uses less. Hallelujah! Let’s hope we see it more and more in the coming years.

‘Despite All the Buzz Around Fake Meat, Real Stuff Still Pays Off’ ∞

January 6, 2020

Lydia Mulvany and Deena Shanker for Bloomberg:

Imitation meat may be all the rage at the moment, but producers of the real stuff are doing just fine.

Sure, vegan burger maker Beyond Meat Inc. stole the headlines this year with a wildly successful market debut and a dizzying 200% gain. But conventional beef companies Minerva SA and JBS SA aren’t too far behind. Even U.S. meat suppliers like Tyson Foods Inc., hamstrung by the China trade war, have posted their biggest stock gains in years.

For as big of a year as Beyond, Impossible, and every other vegan company had in 2019, we need to remember that it’s currently only a drop in the pond. We’re still David to their Goliath, and our David is a pacifist.

‘A 6,000-year-old fruit fly gave the world modern cheeses and yogurts’ ∞

January 6, 2020

John Morrissey for the Conversation:

In a paper published in Current Biology, we discovered how “milk yeast” – the handy microorganism that can decompose lactose in milk to create dairy products like cheese and yoghurt – originated from a chance encounter between a fruit fly and a pail of milk around 5,500 years ago. This happy accident allowed prehistoric people to domesticate yeast in much the same way they domesticated crop plants and livestock animals, and produce the cheeses and yogurts billions of people enjoy today.

And you know I’m a sucker for a good love story. It goes on:

Kluyveromyces lactis, or milk yeast, is found in French and Italian cheeses made from unpasteurised milk, and in natural fermented dairy drinks like kefir. But the ancestor of this microbe was originally associated with the fruit fly, so how did it end up making many of the dairy products that people eat today? We believe milk yeast owes its very existence to a fly landing in fermenting milk and starting an unusual sexual liaison. The fly in question was the common fruit fly, Drosophila, and it carried with it the ancestor of K. lactis. Although the fly died, the yeast lived, but with a problem – it could not use the lactose in milk as a food source. Instead, it found an unconventional solution – sex with its cousin.

When K. lactis arrived with the fly, its cousin K. marxianus was already happily growing in the milk. K. marxianus is able to use lactose for growth because it has two extra proteins which can help break down lactose into simple sugars that it then uses for energy. The cousins reproduced and the genes needed to use lactose transferred from K. marxianus to K. lactis. The end result was that K. lactis acquired two new genes and could then grow on lactose and survive on its own. The fermented product that K. lactis made must have been particularly delicious as it was used to start a new fermentation – a routine that has continued to the present day.

I like thinking about chance and what it has afforded us in life.

Who did Pat Brown meet that made him vegan? What monk first thought it was a gift to replace meat with plants? Who let things rot and then ate them — aka fermentation? Who found out that some nuts have to be roasted twice to not be poisonous? Have we eaten everything new under the sun?

Plant Based Food Association Labeling Standards ∞

January 6, 2020

There write-up is a solid start to a problem.

My dream involves a small ‘V’ placed in a circle at the bottom right of all foods that are vegan. I want to do the Supermarket Twist™ a little less as I pirouette every item to my face trying to read the ingredients list.

And although these aren’t explicitly vegan ideas, I’d also love to see foods state their water-usage, carbon footprint, and… something more complicated: I want something that essentially on a 1 to 10 scale scores that general detriment of a product, like if it’s high on salt or saturated fat or sugar it would be low on the scale while dehydrated vegetables with nothing added to them would be 9s or 10s.

‘COULD THE ECONOMIC DISASTER TURN MEAT-LOVING ARGENTINES VEGAN?’ ∞

January 6, 2020

From Josefina Salomon at Oxy.com:

Six out of every 10 Argentines are considering giving up beef and going vegan, according to a recent study by the country’s Institute for the Promotion of Beef. Martí, now 63 and head of the Argentine Vegetarian Union, remembers that, in 2000, he knew only one other vegan. A poll his organization commissioned found that 9 percent of Argentina’s population is either vegetarian or vegan at the moment.  

Finding a vegetarian or vegan restaurant is no longer a challenge, at least in the country’s main cities. Buenos Aires alone has at least 70 exclusively vegan restaurants. The capital’s colorful walls are plastered with messages and banners demanding the protection of animals and the yearly VeganFest is becoming increasingly popular. Many local celebrities are turning their backs on animal products (soccer megastar Lionel Messi has said he switches to a vegan diet during tournament season).

Health concerns and worries about climate change — drivers of veganism globally — are playing out in Argentina too. But there’s an additional factor pushing people away from meat and animal products: the country’s economic crisis and nearly 50 percent annual inflation. The latest report from Argentina’s Chamber of Commerce for Beef and Its Derivatives found that consumption of meat products has decreased to its lowest point in the last 50 years.

It’s interesting to see how veganism enters certain countries. I feel like there are a handful of reasons that dominate most shifts: financial cost, health, or considerations for the environment (animal welfare included), and sometimes religion.

Though most of Argentina is moving to save money, something like this means more people could be trying vegan food for the first time and will hopefully become more interested. Maybe they’ll try to adapt family recipes or try new dishes — both which open a new way of approaching food to them. Hopefully it’s enough to keep them coming back periodically for plant-based foods once they can afford beef again.

✏️ by C. W. Moss