Language

‘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.

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.

‘The Origins of the Vegans: 1944–46’ ∞

December 1, 2019

John Davis for VegSource on how the term ‘vegan’ came to be:

The idea of living entirely on plants has been around for a very long time, it was just the word ‘vegan’ that was new in 1944. During the 19th century there were endless debates between those who added eggs and dairy produce to their plants, and those who did not. From 1847, the word ‘vegetarian’ was used by both, with or without various appendages.

Here’s how the word came to be:

The group would also have discussed the rather clumsy name ‘Non-Dairy Produce Group’, and begun the process of looking for something better. The initial informal name change was to replace ‘Non-Dairy Produce Group’ with just ‘Non-Dairy Vegetarians’, possibly agreed at a meeting, or maybe just unilaterally by Watson later that month. In his 2nd Vegan News (February 1945 p.2) Watson reported: Before the appearance of our first issue [November 24, 1944], Mr. and Mrs. G. A. Henderson suggested the word “Allvega”, with “Allvegan” as the magazine title. It was from this that the word Vegan was taken, and recently Mr. and Mrs. Henderson have written stating that they prefer the shorter version. There is no way of knowing how they were initially pronouncing these words. ‘Vega’ was the name of a London vegetarian restaurant at that time, which might have provided some inspiration. It is possible that the Hendersons’ suggestions were made at an Attic Club meeting, though neither they nor Watson ever mentioned that, or he might have received their ideas later by post (probably from Fay, signing as both). By “recently” in the above quote from February 1945, Watson is saying that the Hendersons gave their support during the three months after the publication of the first Vegan News.

And I love that our history of the word gets wrapped in the telling of a story at a funeral:

Another view of the origin of the word vegan emerged at Donald Watson’s funeral in 2005: Speaking at Donald’s funeral, Janet [his only child] mentioned a day that Dorothy and Donald both attended a dance. During the event the two started discussing the founding of a new society; and Dorothy came up with the word vegan as a possible name for it, on the basis that its letters are the beginning and conclusion of vegetarian.

Cookbooks: Our Five Favorites & Deconstructing What ‘Vegan’ and ‘Plant-based’ Mean ∞

November 29, 2019

Episode 6 of the Vegan-Carne Alliance podcast is live.

Vegan-food lover C.W. Moss talks with carnivorous chef Jesse Mullenix about their five favorite cookbooks, how religion has touched veganism, and which vegetarian cookbook Jesse has seen in many restaurant kitchens. Later, Alex Irit joins them both to discuss what ‘vegan’ and ‘plant-based’ mean now (1:17:58).

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Find it on:

‘Proposed Bill Wants All Plant-Based Beef Labeled ‘Imitation’’ ∞

October 31, 2019

Jenny G. Zhang for Eater:

A new bipartisan bill requiring beef that’s not derived from cows (i.e., plant-based beef like Impossible Burgers) to be labeled “imitation” was proposed in Congress on Monday, Food Dive reports. The legislation, called the Real Marketing Edible Artificials Truthfully Act (or the Real MEAT Act), was introduced by Rep. Anthony Brindisi, a Democrat whose district covers a rural part of New York, and Rep. Roger Marshall, a Republican from Kansas.

[…]

The proposed bill, as currently written, suggests that slapping a prominent “imitation” label on plant-based beef would prevent “confusion” and “ensure that consumers can make informed decisions in choosing between meat products such as beef and imitation meat products.” Brindisi, in a statement by the United States Cattlemen’s Association obtained by Food Dive, emphasized this line of thinking: “American families have a right to know what’s in their food … Accurate labeling helps consumers make informed decisions and helps ensure families have access to a safe, abundant, affordable food supply.”

However, there’s little evidence that consumers are actually confused about the difference between plant-based and animal-based meat. In the dairy world, where the use of the word “milk” has similarly been a source of contention, the majority of consumers know that plant-based milk doesn’t contain dairy, per a survey from the International Food Information Council.

I think honesty is a good practice if there is confusion, but I don’t think anyone is confused by plant-based products.

If we’re open to discussing clear labeling, meat could be better too. I’d love to see meats labeled about their: antibiotics the animal received, square-footage allotted to each animal in their lifetime, percentage of time spent outside per day, whether the animal was at any point maimed without anesthesia, and if this product contains fecal matter. It’d also be nice to see a reversal on the ag-gag laws that were passed to ban videos from being recorded in slaughterhouses. Is that not the kind of honesty they like?

‘These $50 Chicken Nuggets Were Grown in a Lab’ ∞

October 25, 2019

Deena Shanker for Bloomberg:

At a 93,000-square-foot warehouse-office in San Francisco’s Mission District, they’re growing chicken. Not chicken the animal—chicken the protein.

Just Inc., the maker of plant-based mayonnaise and vegan eggs, is using cellular agriculture to take extracted animal cells and turn them into chicken nuggets. Technicians grow the cells (the company’s catalog includes both stem cells and not) in baths of nutrient-rich liquid media, a bespoke “feed” that includes salts, sugars, amino acids, and often, notably, no animal molecules at all. Just is turning huge bioreactors into mini chicken farms, getting cells to multiply naturally, without an animal body to house them.

I feel like paragraphs like these are intended to scare people, and maybe they should scare people. After Michael Pollan said we shouldn’t eat anything that our great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food, stories like these are mental gymnastics for these new meat technologies — even the ones just made of plants. Even if we know they’ll naturally be better for the planet and animals generally.

And now they’re ready for the market:

The chicken nuggets are still being refined, but they’re ready for small-scale commercialization, Just says, and restaurant partners are already lined up. They’ll be the first cultured meat product available to consumers, even if, at $50 a pop to make, they’re limited to diners with deep pockets—and a taste for adventure.

I wonder who will get these first. I’m guessing they’ll follow Impossible’s template: a few restaurants in major cities (SF first because Just Inc. is there, and then LA and NYC), then a celeb chef or two, then expand in those cities and start hitting festivals with a truck.

In June the Good Food Institute (GFI), a nonprofit promoting cellular agriculture and plant-based foods, counted 26 companies focused solely on cellular agriculture, including Memphis Meats, backed by Tyson Foods Inc., and cell-based seafood maker BlueNalu Inc., which plans to introduce yellowtail and mahi-mahi in a Southern California test market in two to three years. These startups are selling the idea of a real, not plant-based, meat that’s better for the environment and public health and has zero animal-welfare concerns.

I love that everyone isn’t working on one singular kind of thing. I imagine a breakthrough from one company could be a sea change that pulls all up—in texture, taste, and form. Similar to what Impossible and Beyond have done for plant-based meats.

Just says it’s been market-ready since 2018, but before anyone can sell it, a government needs to give the cell-based industry the green light. And for that, all eyes are on Asia. […] Growing lots of meat in relatively tiny spaces is an attractive proposition.

I’m very interested in the language that will be used around these. As the price drops and they become more competitive with the traditional meat market, I think we’ll see a bigger corporate backlash than we did when veggie patties called themselves burgers and Big Beef went bonkers. Read this bit:

But the biggest hurdle may not be the science, or the regulators, or the funding. It’s disgust. Nobody can even agree on what to call the protein: clean meat, cell-based, cellular, cultured, cultivated? No stranger to controversy, Tetrick tested “slaughter-free” on this Bloomberg Businessweek reporter. (She voted no.)

My money is on cultivated meat because it sounds agricultural. And I think that would make people feel at ease.

‘Wildseed is vegan — but don’t call it that’ ∞

October 25, 2019

Soleil Ho has been on a tear recently for the SF Chronicle writing about their vegan community. In her latest, this part on language pulled me in:

Though zealotry is a common negative stereotype about vegans, it’s interesting to see how a dietary proselytization is reframed at Wildseed. The purpose of the restaurant, whose owners are mostly omnivorous but spent some time eating vegan to better understand the idea, is to win over agnostics of an occasional vegan diet. There’s even explicit language in Wildseed’s promotional materials that ties that choice with moral and ethical goodness: “Wildseed offers guests a chance to make a better choice — a place where you can feel good about the decisions you are making,” the website states. Still, the language is soft and almost vague in its calls to action, refraining from doomsaying or calling out bad behavior.

The menu at Wildseed avoids using the word “vegan,” which leads to slight confusion when ingredients like sour cream and Parmesan are presented plainly. Though the menu does say that everything is “plant-based,” it’s reasonable for newbies to do some mental contortion and assume that sun + grass x cow = cheese. […] (Adding to this conceptual knot is the fact that mushrooms aren’t technically plants.)

[…]

When asked about this, the servers do their best to work around the terminology: “We don’t use any animal products,” they say.
They could save some words by just saying “vegan,” but there’s a point to this.

The approach is indicative of a burgeoning countermovement to veganism that has adopted its diet, but not its politics of disruption. 

[…]

When asked about the difference between the terms, Mark Bomford, a farmer and director of Yale University’s Sustainable Food Program, said that it comes down to a value proposition: “vegan” and “meat-free” make you think that you’re abstaining or giving something up, whereas “plant-based” or “plant-strong” have more forward propulsion. “In terms of marketing communication, it’s about winning, not about losing,” he said.

Perhaps the key to Wildseed’s success is the fact that “vegan” and “vegetarian” can do double duty to describe both a product and a personal identity, whereas the comparatively more apolitical “plant-based” cannot. Its voice of persuasion is intentionally dulcet-toned, enticing like that of a siren.

As a descriptivist, this language in flux is confusing, exciting, and enticing. People, restaurants, and companies are still navigating these terms daily, and many are reaching new conclusions about how they want to phrase and approach the topic of veganism. Luckily, it all serves a greater purpose: more delicious food.

✏️ by C. W. Moss