Odd Connections

‘Beyond Meat Brings in Coca-Cola Veteran to Head Marketing’ ∞

October 29, 2019

Beyond Meat Inc will bring in Coca-Cola Co veteran Stuart Kronauge as its chief marketing officer, the vegan patty maker said on Thursday, as it looks to boost its presence in retail and restaurants.
Beyond Meat last month named former Tesla Inc executive Sanjay Shah as its chief operating officer.
Kronauge, who has been with Atlanta-based Coca-Cola for over 20 years, headed the company’s sparkling business unit in North America.
She is credited for the resurgence of soda brands such as Coca-Cola, Coke Zero, Diet Coke, Sprite and Fanta. The beverage maker has been able to grow sales with the launch of smaller-sized cans of its sodas, in tune to a change in consumer tastes.

Beyond Meat is expanding sale of its plant-based meat burgers in retail stores and partnering with more restaurants as it builds on the recent hype for vegan patties that taste, cook and look like real meat.

I honestly am never quite sure how to interpret news like this. I think it’s a good thing that someone with experience for a global brand is being brought in, but Coca-Cola is (I hope) a very different kind of company than Beyond Meat. Whereas Coca-Cola sold sugar drinks, I think Beyond wants to be thought of as doing something better for the landscape of food.

Full disclosure: I love Coke. Roy Rogers are one of my favorite small pleasures.

‘Why do People Hate Vegans?’ ∞

October 28, 2019

George Reynolds has a thorough and thoughtful piece for the Guardian about where veganism started, currently is, and it’s future. I liked this bit that shows that vegans have always been dreamers:

Early attempts to establish a vegan utopia did not go well. In the 1840s, the transcendentalist philosopher Amos Bronson Alcott (father of the author of Little Women, Louisa May) founded Fruitlands in Harvard, Massachusetts – a vegan community intended to be nothing less than a second Eden. But Alcott’s insistence that crops had to be planted and fields tilled by hand meant that not enough food could be grown for all of the members (even though the population peaked at just 13); a diet of fruit and grains, typically consumed raw, left participants severely malnourished. Just seven months after opening, Fruitlands closed – derided, in the words of one biographer, as “one of history’s most unsuccessful utopias”.

In a universal setting, veganism has to be plausible. It’s easy to dream that nothing and no one will suffer for a meal, but controlling those conditions is nearly impossible. It doesn’t mean that shouldn’t be an ambition. It means there needs to be a realistic understanding of what can be done. Being vegan can never exist under perfect conditions. Heaven has to meet earth at some point.

One thing that veganism rarely approaches is what meat means to the people who consume it and where that approach came from:

There is no justification for the amount of meat we eat in western society. The resources that go into humanely rearing and butchering an animal should make its flesh a borderline-unattainable luxury – and, indeed, in the past, it was. Meat always used to be the preserve of the wealthy, a symbol of prosperity: “A chicken in every pot” remained an aspirational but impractical promise across the best part of a millennium, from the days of Henry IV of France (when the term was invented) all the way through to Herbert Hoover’s 1928 presidential campaign.
It was only through the technological advances of modern agriculture that meat became attainable and available at supermarket prices. From the mid-1800s onwards, farmers could raise animals bigger, better and faster than in the past; kill them quicker; treat their flesh to prevent it from spoiling; transport it further and store it longer. A commonly cited psychological turning point was the second world war, which engendered what Russell Baker, writing in the New York Times, later described as a kind of “beef madness”. GIs were sent to the front with rations of tinned meat; once peace had been declared, there was no better symbol of the brave new world than a sizzling celebratory steak. In the course of just over a century, meat went from unattainable luxury to dietary cornerstone; these days, we feel entitled to eat meat every day.

And it’s been interesting to see how meat-eating has become a part of politics and in some ways performative:

But “they’re taking our meat” is as evocative a rallying cry as “they’re taking our jobs” or “they’re taking our guns” – it conveys the same sense of individual freedoms being menaced by external forces, a birthright under attack. Ted Cruz (wrongly) alleged that his Democrat rival Beto O’Rourke planned to ban Texas barbecue if elected senator in his place: like the personal firearm, animal flesh has become an emblem of resistance against the encroachments of progressivism, something to be prised from your cold, dead hand. Men’s rights advocate Jordan Peterson is famed for following a beef and salt diet; Donald Trump is renowned for his love of fast food and well-done steak with ketchup; there is even a subset of libertarian cryptocurrency enthusiasts who call themselves Bitcoin carnivores.

With the massive inroads that veganism has made in the last few years, it’s important to recognize it still has a long way to go:

Sales may be growing fast, but they are barely making a dent in the $1.7tr global market for animal-derived protein. Certainly, a change of culture will not happen without the involvement of government, industry and science; as the past few years have shown, widespread change is also unlikely to happen without a fight. This makes the current field of conflict an unfortunate one – in the real world, we can practise moderation, emotional flexitarianism.

Emotional flexitarianism is a beautiful turn of phrase and absolutely the way we all must approach each other.

‘Go ahead, California, enjoy that roadkill’ ∞

October 18, 2019

Kate Bernot for The Takeout:

California Governor Gavin Newsom must be getting writer’s cramp with all the legislation he’s signed recently. Within the last week, he’s banned school lunch debt shaming, outlawed production of new fur coats, and given Californians the thumbs up on eating roadkill. That latter piece of legislation, Senate Bill 395, makes California the most recent of more than 20 states that allow motorists to salvage and eat animals killed by vehicles—and it’s a great idea.

This feels like an odd thing to celebrate, but I’m happy this has become a law in California. If an animal is struck by a car, that accident shouldn’t be left to waste. That life should be used and used well. I was surprised to learn 20 other states already had this program. I’d heard about these laws before, but hadn’t realized how many states had already adopted them.

Legislative text explaining the pilot program—which will cover three geographic areas known to have high wildlife-vehicle collision rates—say it will “translate into hundreds of thousands of pounds of healthy meat that could be utilized to feed those in need.”
[…]
This all seems like a fine way to ensure that at least some edible meat that would have otherwise gone to waste could now be used to feed Californians. If a motorist hits a deer—or damn, an elk—that could yield enough meat to feed a family throughout much of the year. If the prospect of eating roadkill doesn’t sit right with you, of course, just leave it. Surely one man’s roadkill is another man’s filet mignon.

I hope soon that all 50 states have a program like this. We shouldn’t waste a life.

‘The Shadowy Beef Lobbyist Fighting Against Plant-Based ‘Meat’’ ∞

October 14, 2019

Here’s a small excerpt from Eater’s podcast called Eater’s Digest hosted by Martha Daniel. She speaks with Pat Brown, CEO of Impossible Foods, and Rachel Konrad, Impossible’s Chief Communications Officer — and I think they’ve found their nemesis:

Pat Brown: There’s obviously a lot of effort to limit our ability to market our products. That just has to do with regulations around what we can call them and how we can talk about them. There were efforts in a number of producing States to put those restrictions on. I would say by and large they were not very successful. I don’t think that the smart money is betting that it will withstand a constitutional challenge. They’ve hired this guy Richard Berman, the Center for Consumer Freedom, who’s like mister mouthpiece for every big evil industry you can think of.Which I feel like boy, that’s a point of pride for me. You definitely want to be the people he’s going after. Not the people who he’s defending.
Martha Daniel: Richard Berman, again, is the inspiration behind the movie Thank You for Smoking. As I said, he’s defended cigarettes. He’s lobbied against raising the minimum wage and lowering blood alcohol content limits for drivers. His PR group’s website proudly declares him quote the industry’s weapon of mass destruction. Berman has his sight set on Impossible and the person from Impossible who is really locking horns with him is Rachel Konrad, their chief communications officer.
Rachel Konrad: He is probably the sleaziest PR guy in America. He’s of course a raging climate denier. He’s actually now taken the mantle to try to defend big beef and to really quote, “Tell the story of big beef.” His nonprofit has taken out advertisements in Wall Street Journal and elsewhere. He’s done a series of stupid op-eds that tried to question the nutritional benefits of plant based meat. He loves to trash plant based meat as too processed, which is complete bullshit. I think that the biggest possible validation that we are truly about to change the world is the fact that they’ve hired Richard Berman. Like you don’t hire Richard Berman unless you are evil incumbent industry so reviled that your back is against the wall.

I love that it’s a point of pride for Brown that Richard Berman is in the fight against Impossible. I’d feel the same way. I know it’s easy to villainize people but Berman is about as evil and repugnant as a person can get.

Oat Milk ∞

October 11, 2019

When I read reviews of restaurants like Komi in Washington DC, like this one in the Washington Post from Tom Sietsema, I’m reminded of the relative newness of veganism. Especially to many chefs. And how things can shift overnight, overweek, overmonth.

It reminds me of what has happened with oat milk. The great Oat Milk. Our new liquid friend in the vegan community. A frothy and friendly beast that is splashed into coffees, espressos, and teas. Neutral and nice—and in only the last year, it’s become a staple in most coffee shops I stop by. It has a lovely body that is a great friend to many drinks. It’s common now, but only a year or two ago I had never seen it.

And things like this are happening in my life all the time. Daw Yee Myanmar Corner, one of my favorite restaurants in LA, makes a lentil tofu. Foodies is now making a tofu out of pumpkin seeds. And there is Chickpea tofu too.

This part of the review makes me hungry for that exploration:

The first marvel is a tiny taco whose dark filling, hidden beneath shredded lettuce, is a ringer for ground beef. Playing the meaty role, however: ground black walnuts imbued with a housemade version of Old El Paso taco seasoning. Close behind the treat is a souvlaki featuring mushrooms that have been sliced paper-thin, marinated, layered and pressed for a few days before they’re threaded on a skewer and seasoned with oregano. Along for the joyride is a dreamy mustard dip.
[…]
The grandest illusions are the gyro and the not-fish fillet.
The former is a magic trick coaxed from tofu skin, griddled at different temperatures and times to achieve a gyro’s signature crisp edges, then bundled in pillowy pita.

Walnuts. Mushrooms pressed for many days. Griddled tofu skin. These new uses are special developments. One small step for veganism, and (possibly) one giant leap for vegan eating.

These fresh explorations and their best uses hasn’t been seen, but time will be our friend. Komi sounds like it’s exploring vegetables in new impressionistic ways. It reminds me of Superiority Burger of New York City. (SB is in LA soon!) These restaurants are changing our future meals, whether we know it or not. Each experimental dish they make could be the next plant-based heartthrob and staple of our homes.

‘Going Vegan Won’t Save the Planet’ ∞

October 10, 2019

Mark Buchanan with an op-ed for Bloomberg:

At a recent food festival in Wales, I witnessed an enlightening discussion between two experts on the future of farming. Chungui Lu, a Chinese native who is now a professor in the U.K., spoke on the promise of vertical farming — high-tech indoor vegetable farming capable of producing more food per acre than traditional farming. In contrast, Patrick Holden, a traditional yet visionary Welsh farmer, argued for the human and ecological benefits of small-scale farming for the local sale of meat, cheese and vegetables produced using fully organic methods.
Their ideas seem to reflect a clash between technology and tradition. But I came away thinking that neither offered a solution by itself. Our problems are so deep and diverse, and multiplied by local variations in culture, weather and human density, that no one solution will suffice. We’re going to need many.

I’d imagine that someday soon we’ll see a new term for this distinction. There are too many facets of veganism that clash over the idea of what veganism encompasses. Right now, it seems to me that ‘veganism’ is a label for people doing it for the animals while ‘plant-based’ is often people doing it for personal health reasons. Thankfully both are aligned in the way they eat — and that means a reduction in animal use. This openness to understanding how we affect the world around us is the key takeaway.

From the ecological perspective, Holden said, the meat-versus-vegetable distinction isn’t the right one. Both can be produced in environmentally helpful ways as well as harmful ones, with the latter becoming the norm over the past half-century of industrial farming. Vegan and vegetarian diets may be good for CO2 emissions, but their blind pursuit can exacerbate other issues. He gives one example: It doesn’t help the environment to eschew a local organically grown egg in favor of tofu produced with intense pesticide application on a soy plantation carved out of the Amazon rainforest.

For me, eating vegan food means eating a meal that attempts to reduce the net suffering of animals. But understanding how to categorize and consider what happened to the earth to make that meal is a new facet. There are rarely labels that mention sustainability or some hint about the overall distance the parts of my meal had to travel to reach my plate. Every mile effects CO2. Each part an addition. And all of these things play a part in the future and I hope we can find a way to approach food menus and labeling in some way to indicate that.

‘Veganism: to hate or not to hate’ ∞

October 7, 2019

Sandhya Sivakumar writing for the Daily Illini succinctly expresses what makes veganism important to the moment we’re in now:

Veganism’s issues aren’t all that straightforward. It stands at the crossroads of elitism, racism and sexism, yet at the same time it brings together sustainability, compassion and activism.

This is exactly what makes our current conversation compelling, enlivening, and tricky—all at the same time.

‘How to Make the Oldest Recipe in the World: A Recipe for Nettle Pudding Dating Back 6,000 BC’ ∞

October 7, 2019

Look at this thought-provoking recipe from Ayun Halliday at Open Culture. They say this is the oldest recipe in the world, clocking in at 8000 years old:

NETTLE PUDDING
Ingredients
• 1 bunch of sorrel
• 1 bunch of watercress
• 1 bunch of dandelion leaves
• 2 bunches of young nettle leaves
• Some chives
• 1 cup of barley flour
• 1 teaspoon of salt
INSTRUCTIONS
• Chop the herbs finely and mix in the barley flour and salt.
• Add enough water to bind it together and place in the center of a linen or muslin cloth.
• Tie the cloth securely and add to a pot of simmering venison or wild boar (a pork joint will do just as well). Make sure the string is long enough to pull the pudding from the pot.
• Cook the pudding until the meat is done (at least two hours).
• Leave the pudding to cool slightly, remove the muslin, then cut the pudding into thick slices with a knife.
• Serve the pudding with chunks of barley bread.

And this little bit from Ruth Fairchild made it even more interesting to consider:

You have to think how much more is wasted now than then.
Food waste today is huge. A third of the food in our fridges is thrown away every week without being eaten.
But they wouldn’t have wasted anything, even hooves would have been used for something.
They had to eat what was grown within a few miles, because it would have taken so long to collect everything, and even collecting water would have been a bit of a trial.
Yet today, so many people don’t want to cook because they think of it as a chore.

‘How I Got My Toddler Interested in Food and Cooking’ ∞

October 4, 2019

This J. Kenji Lopez-Alt peice for Serious Eats is excellent. It’s meant as a guide for raising a child around food, but I use a lot of these techniques all the time. Mostly in introducing my friends and family to new vegan items or ways that plant-based things can be substituted in dishes people are already making.

Don’t Use Negative Words About Food

Bingo. Simple. I try to only show meat-eaters delicious things. It’s okay if they don’t like it, but I’m always trying to use language that makes the food approachable and appealing to them.

Let Them Taste Everything

This is probably the most important tip. If I go to a restaurant and I know they have an incredible vegan thing on the menu, I offer folks around me a bite — and if there are lots of people at the table, I might even order another of that dish. I want to share. Sharing takes the risk off of them and let’s them live out the dim-sum-tapas lifestyle we all dream of.

Encourage Thoughtful Eating
[…]
It engages all the senses—kids can feel texture, taste flavor, smell aroma, look at color, and listen to the sounds of cooking and eating—and it comes with built-in stories, whether those stories are just about how it got from the supermarket to the table, or the actual history of the dish.

When I’m showing off new vegan foods, how I prepare it and pair it is a massive part of it.

Don’t Worry Too Much
If there’s one guaranteed way to get my daughter to stop eating, it’s to upset her.

And this is the biggest one. I try to not upset my table. I think most vegans I know are afraid of the p-word, aka being called preachy. And I don’t want to preach to the dinner table. Often one person will ask, “Why are you vegan?” and I’m happy to answer that question — but it’s difficult in a group setting. In my experience, people don’t love talking about how animals get to their plates, and — being honest — I don’t either. Although most might be comfortable with my answer, I don’t want to make anyone feel bad about the food they just ordered that hasn’t arrived at the table yet. And I also don’t want to engage anyone whose hangry-ness might be flaring up.

My go-to answer is a joke because I want people to feel at ease. When people ask why I’m vegan, I usually say because I like being the most difficult person in the room.

Start Them Young!

I liken this to expecting some folks might be a bit more thorny when you first approach them. I’ve had many friends who immediately became defensive when they found out I was vegan. For some, just hearing that someone doesn’t eat meat seemed to make them uncomfortable. It became an immediate one-way interrogation, but that was okay. It’s a little weird when people come at you like that, but it’s something we can all handle. And, I think if we handle it well, it often changes their tune. One of my friends, who early on had been defensive, now asks me to cook my vegan mac n’ cheese for them every time they see me.

Essentially, I use this advice to mean the earlier you introduce vegan food to their life the sooner they’ll be receptive. This has been the case with almost all of my friends and family. Initially, it’s fear then apprehensive then they try something delicious and it’s “oh, this is vegan?!“. It just happens slowly. Give everyone time to learn new ideas and change their mind.

‘We Asked 10 Experts What the Phrase ‘Plant-Based Diet’ Means and No One Could Agree’ ∞

October 1, 2019

Paul Kita for Men’s Health rounds up some interesting info from the latest International Food Information Council Foundations’s Food and Health Survey:

Seventy-three people said they’ve heard of a “plant-based diet,” according to a survey by the International Food Information Council Foundation. Fifty-one percent of those polled said that they would be interested in learning more about a plant-based diet.
But here’s the thing: Even though consumers are familiar and interested in plant-based diets, they aren’t quite sure exactly what that means.
From the same survey…
• People who defined a “plant-based diet” as a vegan diet that avoids all animal products, including dairy and eggs: 32 percent.
• People who defined a “plant-based diet” as a diet that emphasizes minimally processed foods derived from plants and limits the consumption of animal products: 30 percent.
• People who defined a “plant-based diet” as a vegetarian diet: 20 percent.
• People who defined a “plant-based diet” as a diet that limits animal products and encourages eating as many fruits and vegetables as possible: 8 percent.
Neither the USDA nor the FDA currently have a definition for the term “plant-based.” Same goes for the medical and research community.

I’ve always felt that the term “plant-based” was a tabula rasa for historically hurricaned “vegan” term.

Veganism has zealots, while plant-based does not. Vegans are strict, while plant-based is ostensibly flexible. Vegans have a cultural history, PETA memories, and fairly set public perception. Plant-based appears new, different, and filled with opportunity.

This small switch let a lot of new people who hate vegans to try vegan food and not feel like they’re breaking their own moral code. “Plant-based” as a term is the best thing to happen to vegans since vegetables.

Odd Connections

✏️ by C. W. Moss