Regulation

‘“Breaking our back”: Food banks are drowning in milk China won’t buy’ ∞

January 21, 2020

H. Claire Brown for the New Food Economy:

Across the nation, food banks are struggling to distribute food purchased through the government’s Trade Mitigation Program, more commonly known as the farm bailout program. This is the money President Trump appropriated—without input from Congress—to blunt the impact of his trade war with China. The bulk of the $12 billion in funding has gone to farmers in the form of direct payments to reimburse them for income lost because of retaliatory tariffs. But more than $1 billion was reserved to purchase actual food that may otherwise have been sold to trading partners. At wholesale prices, $1 billion buys a heck of a lot of fruits, vegetables, dairy, and meat. Most of those purchases are funneled to local food banks like Care and Share, which aren’t accustomed to dealing with deliveries of perishable items. One official privately confessed that all the extra food is “breaking our back.”

I wonder if our government will ever spend as much money on vegetables as it does on milk.

‘NEW LOBBY GROUP LAUNCHES TO ADVANCE THE PLANT-BASED INDUSTRY IN CALIFORNIA’ ∞

January 21, 2020

Anna Starostinetskaya for VegNews:

This week, new advocacy group California Plant Based Alliance (CPBA) formed in Sacramento with the mission of advancing the interests of the plant-based industry in the state’s legislature. CPBA—the first state-level plant-based advocacy group in the country—was founded by Julie Manusco, founder of animal-advocacy organization Social Compassion in Legislation[.] […] In 2016, lobby group Plant Based Food Association (PBFA)—which currently has more than 160 company members—formed to represent the interests of the plant-based industry on a federal level.

I’m interested in seeing how this group will affect the larger Plant Based Food Association. This new group is at the state-level, while the other is at the federal. It might be interesting to see if they’re able to essentially use California as a testing ground for legal arguments before they move to the national level.

‘Netherlands backs nutritional labeling: ‘Nutri-Score is best to promote healthy choices’’ ∞

January 17, 2020

Nutri-Score is new to me, but I’ve been hoping we’d start seeing a food-rating system that could be used to determine the general nutrition of things going into our body. This is how it works…

The health secretary said this news was a ‘major step’ towards empowering citizens to make better dietary choices.

In recent months, Dutch health authorities have conducted research into three different food selection logos: Keyhole, Traffic Lights and Nutri-Score. It found consumers ‘understand Nutri-Score best’.

The score awarded a food is based on the amount of calories, sugars, saturated fat, salt, protein, fibre, fruit, vegetables, legumes and nuts in the product.

NutriScore ranks foods from -15 for the ‘healthiest’ products to +40 for those that are ‘less healthy’. On the basis of this score, the product receives a letter with a corresponding colour code: from dark green (A) to dark red (F).

It’s currently in use or recommended by France, Belgium, Germany, Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, Slovenia, and Austria. It’s a great start, and I hope it moves to the USA soon.

‘The Plant-Based Movement to Transition Farmers Away from Meat and Dairy Production’ ∞

January 15, 2020

Nadra Nittle for Civil Eats:

As contract farmers struggle to stay financially afloat and concerns about animal agriculture’s role in climate change mount, MFA launched its Transfarmation Project in November to help farmers currently raising animals on a large scale grow crops such as hemp, mushrooms, and hydroponic lettuce instead. The group will include investors, engineers, entrepreneurs, and policymakers in an effort to provide alternatives. During the first phase of its fledgling project, MFA plans to help 10 yet-to-be named individuals leave factory farming behind.

“We decided to create a platform where we would have this conversation about our current factory farm system and how to get the people who want out involved in the plant-based space, whether it’s hemp or even solar and wind energy,” said MFA President Leah Garcés. “I’m not pretending that taking 10 farmers out of factory farming is going to end it, but we’re trying to work collaboratively and be constructive about creating new jobs for those who want them.”

As America’s preferences move away from dairy, I hope programs like this will lay a framework for how to move forward.

‘Saudi Society Is Changing. Just Take a Look at These Coffeehouses.’ ∞

January 15, 2020

Vivian Yee for the NYTimes:

“I visited this place and was in a total shock!” Tarak Alhamood, a customer at Nabt Fenjan, a Riyadh coffee shop, raged online recently. “YOU r VIOLATING the rules of this country. I hope this place get closed permanently.”

The blame lay not with the matcha iced tea and flat whites (good, other reviewers opined), the nondairy milk options (appreciated), the chocolate cake (don’t miss) or the prices (less popular).

The issue was the decision that made Nabt Fenjan a daring outpost of the new Riyadh: Originally opened only for women, the coffee shop began allowing male and female customers to mix in late 2018. […]

In early December, however, the government announced that businesses would no longer be required to segregate customers — the latest expansion of the social reforms initiated by the de facto Saudi ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Social change while caffeinated and full from a pastry sounds delightful.

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

January 13, 2020

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.

‘Farmers Got Billions From Taxpayers In 2019, And Hardly Anyone Objected’ ∞

January 9, 2020

Dan Charles for NPR:

In 2019, the federal government delivered an extraordinary financial aid package to America’s farmers. Farm subsidies jumped to their highest level in 14 years, most of them paid out without any action by Congress. […]

The announcement aroused little controversy. “I was surprised that it didn’t attract more attention,” says Joe Glauber, the USDA’s former chief economist, who’s now a senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute.

Glauber says it deserves more attention, for a whole collection of reasons.

For one thing, it’s an enormous amount of money, more than the final cost of bailing out the auto industry during the financial crisis of 2008. The auto industry bailout was fiercely debated in Congress. Yet the USDA created this new program out of thin air; it decided that an old law authorizing a USDA program called the Commodity Credit Corp. already gave it the authority to spend this money.

‘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.

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.

‘‘Ethical Veganism’ Is a Philosophical Belief, British Court Rules’ ∞

January 4, 2020

Elian Porter for the NYTimes:

On Friday, judge Robin Postle at the employment tribunal in Norwich, in eastern England, ruled that ethical veganism qualifies under Britain’s Equality Act as a philosophical belief and that those embracing it are entitled to similar protection as those who hold religious beliefs.

Under the Equality Act, which was passed in 2010, individuals practicing a religion or holding other belief systems are protected from discrimination in the workplace, if those beliefs are compatible with human dignity and don’t conflict with the fundamental rights of others.

A court ruling that a way of eating should be classified in a similar way to religious beliefs makes sense. For many non-secular folks, a diet is one of the few places where we have to adhere to an ideology—like a religion—every day. Adherence and commitment strike a similar chord too.

✏️ by C. W. Moss