Vegetables

‘The rise of natural winemaking means more accidentally vegan vintages’

Janet Forgrieve for SmartBrief:

Vegans out for a meal pay attention to the ingredients in each dish to make sure there aren’t animal products but, until fairly recently, few thought to ask about the wine.

That’s changing as more people learn about the animal products that can be used in winemaking and seek out vegan vintages. Wine, though made from plants, is often processed using ingredients derived from animals to remove sediments and fine particles.

[…]

In the world of wine, more winemakers aren’t necessarily focused on the vegan aspect, but a growing number are opting for natural methods, which means eschewing straining and fining in favor of letting sediments separate naturally and, sometimes, accepting that there will be fine particles present, Jacoby said.

“I think the natural wine movement has been great for us, but I don’t think they [winemakers] have a vegan agenda in that choice,” Jacoby said. “It’s just a nice overlap for us.”

It’s lovely when popular things just happen to be vegan. I sometimes think about how excited I would have been, if I were vegan in the mid-90s, to learn that Oreos were accidentally vegan. Being able to participate in the minutiae of society (like buying things that are advertised) and talk about the foods that surround us, it’s a big deal. It’s a form of representation, albeit small. And this is the same sort of thing.

I hadn’t realized that natural wines were more likely to be vegan. I’ll have to pick up an extra bottle of orange to celebrate.

If you’re looking for the best way to check if your wine is vegan, Barnivore is what you’re looking for. It doesn’t have an app yet, but one is in the works.

‘Why are people malnourished in the richest country on earth?’

Tracie McMillan writes a thoughtful and difficult piece for National Geographic:

Chances are good that if you picture what hunger looks like, you don’t summon an image of someone like Christina Dreier: white, married, clothed, and housed, even a bit overweight. The image of hunger in America today differs markedly from Depression-era images of the gaunt-faced unemployed scavenging for food on urban streets. […]

In the United States more than half of hungry households are white, and two-thirds of those with children have at least one working adult—typically in a full-time job. With this new image comes a new lexicon: In 2006 the U.S. government replaced “hunger” with the term “food insecure” to describe any household where, sometime during the previous year, people didn’t have enough food to eat. By whatever name, the number of people going hungry has grown dramatically in the U.S., increasing to 48 million by 2012—a fivefold jump since the late 1960s, including an increase of 57 percent since the late 1990s.

And these numbers will keep growing as the divide between the poor and the wealthy grows wider.

It can be tempting to ask families receiving food assistance, If you’re really hungry, then how can you be—as many of them are—overweight? The answer is “this paradox that hunger and obesity are two sides of the same coin,” says Melissa Boteach, vice president of the Poverty and Prosperity Program of the Center for American Progress, “people making trade-offs between food that’s filling but not nutritious and may actually contribute to obesity.”

It’s terrible that obesity would be an indicator of hunger or malnourishment. It could be a different picture if the government would subsidize the right things. This part, with emphasis mine, speaks to that:

These are the very crops that end up on Christina Dreier’s kitchen table in the form of hot dogs made of corn-raised beef, Mountain Dew sweetened with corn syrup, and chicken nuggets fried in soybean oil. They’re also the foods that the U.S. government supports the most. In 2012 it spent roughly $11 billion to subsidize and insure commodity crops like corn and soy, with Iowa among the states receiving the highest subsidies. The government spends much less to bolster the production of the fruits and vegetables its own nutrition guidelines say should make up half the food on our plates. In 2011 it spent only $1.6 billion to subsidize and insure “specialty crops”—the bureaucratic term for fruits and vegetables.

The USA needs to subsidize produce with a focus on health. Every dollar that goes against that is a dollar squandered, and it’s easy to see this in our population. The government is the reason fast food is cheaper than vegetables. The general health of the people should be considered our government’s problem, because it starts with what crops they subsidize.

‘The US Government’s Trove of Beautiful Apple Paintings’

The National Agricultural Library has over 3800 splendid watercolor paintings of apples. And if that doesn’t satisfy you, they have strawberries, softly translucent grapes, golden pineapples, and purple raspberries. A visual feast.

All made between 1886 to 1942, these tinged-by-time paintings look incredible up close. Click on one and then download a high-quality dopamine festival for your eyes.

Now, I’m hungry

(Via Kottke.org)

Oat Milk

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.

‘Introducing Atlast™ Food Co.’

Our core insight is that conventional food processing technologies can’t mimic the structure of meat. And neither can most plants. But certain mushrooms, when grown in a precise manner using the patented Atlast™ Food Platform, show promise of delivering that critical meat-like texture. (This fact shouldn’t be surprising given that certain hard to cultivate wild mushrooms have long been recognized as convincing meat substitutes.)

So about a year ago we started on our journey to grow a plant-based steak. Or, more accurately, a myco-based steak.

People have been doing some fascinating things with mushrooms recently, so I’m excited to see what Atlast can do. Their photos are intriguing.

If you’re looking for other interesting mushroom products, I’d start with Pig Out Chips. They’re smoked, delicious, and the closest thing I’ve had to bacon in decades. You can find them on their website, and I just recently saw them at Sprouts Markets. Check their website for other stores that carry their products.

And check out the ‘Seafood’ tower at the all-vegan Crossroads restaurant in Los Angeles. I speak about this experience with Jesse Mullenix and Alex Irit in episode 2 of the Vegan-Carne Alliance podcast.

‘SODEXO BRINGS ECO-FRIENDLY VEGAN MEALS TO 5,000 CAFETERIAS WORLDWIDE’

“When you see there are more than 20,000 known edible plants on our planet, and yet our food comes primarily from a dozen of them, there is definitely opportunity to change and discover new ways of eating,” John Wright, senior vice president, Sodexo Food Platform, said. “Today, we are helping consumers as they look for ways to adopt more sustainable diets. Future 50 Foods represents an exciting opportunity for our chefs to innovate in the kitchen and share Sodexo’s Love of Food (campaign) with diners in a way that’s also good for the planet.” Last year, Sodexo launched 200 new plant-based dishes at hundreds of corporate, university, and healthcare cafeterias nationwide.

This is a big move by Sodexo. They are the world’s largest food vendor and serve 13,000 sites with over 100 million people eating meals with them each day. Honestly though, the thing that I found incredible was the part about the 20,000 known edible plants.

It makes sense that there are that many plants to eat, but I’m just not sure I’d ever seen that figure. Now I’m wondering how many I’ve tried, or if I’m in the double-digits percentage-wise.

That’s the sort of number I like to see when I think of what it’d be like to eat at Noma or Vespertine. I hope they open my world up by introducing me to vegetables that I’ve not only never tasted, but maybe never even seen or possibly even heard of.

‘Cauliflower Steaks Are an Abomination’

Jack Shepherd speaking the truth:

Cauliflower steaks were invented by the same devious villains who saddled us with Portobello mushrooms. It’s a fucking mushroom. It is nice with other things or in a sauce! It is not the food itself. This cabal is trying to make us eat fruits and vegetables as the main course by making them into shapes like “round and big” and thinking we won’t notice the difference. These evil fuckers haunt weddings, taunting vegan guests with grilled vegetables while everyone else gets to have food for dinner. It’s the same fucking people who are trying to make eggplant burgers happen, and I will not allow it.

Amen.