Vegan-Carne Alliance

‘Fort Sill’s dining facility is the first to offer troops a 100 percent plant-based entrée at every meal ‘ ∞

September 25, 2019

The Guns and Rockets Dining Facility at Fort Sill, Okla., is setting a new standard for healthy food options by offering a 100 percent plant-based entrée during every meal.

It’s the only dining facility in the Army providing options for soldiers who don’t eat meat, eggs or dairy, Chief Warrant Officer 2 Jeremy Patterson, a food adviser for the 75th Artillery Brigade, told Stars and Stripes via telephone Friday.

This is great.

Let’s hope meals-ready-to-eat (aka MREs) happen next. There are currently 24 MRE options, with 4 that are vegetarian. It’d be nice to see at least 1 option be vegan. Being deployed is hard enough, but imagine not being able to eat well either. If most of the whole world is grouchy when not fed, I’m scared to imagine how that might affect someone who’s main job involves a gun.

‘Your Questions About Food and Climate Change, Answered’ ∞

September 25, 2019

This came out earlier this year, but it’s still a terrific resource for understanding the impact our food has on this earth.

‘Disney’s US theme parks are going vegan’ ∞

September 24, 2019

In a sign that veganism is making its way into the American mainstream, Disney announced Tuesday that plant-based food options will be added to every dining location in their US theme parks.

Now, it’s the happiest place on earth.

The Implausible Burger ∞

September 24, 2019

Oh, Stephen. You silly goose.

‘What cell-cultured meat can tell us about our culture’ ∞

September 17, 2019

Sam Bloch (in bold) interviewed cultural historian Benjamin Aldes Wurgaft about the future of lab-made meat, and I found the end especially interesting:

John Berger said the zoo is an epitaph to a lost relationship between humans and animals. Part of what I believe you’re trying to do in Meat Planet is write cultured meat into that epitaph.

That’s what I’m implying. You could see industrial agriculture as a kind of epitaph. And you could also see cultured meat extending that process. It’s a product of the consumer imagination in which we don’t expect to be close to the animals that we eat. We don’t even expect to be close to other people, right? We’re still in the model of industrial production—we’re just trying to shift its basis.

Cultured meat is simultaneously a radical break and a conservative move. It’s a conservative move in the sense that it attempts to conserve a model of diet, and a way of living, and a set of ideas about markets and economic and population growth, that we’ve been living with for a long time. It’s friendly to the way business is already done.

‘Veggie Mijas and the vegan diet revolution’ ∞

September 16, 2019

Victoria Leandra has a great new piece up about Amy Quichiz’s queer and POC-group Veggie Mijas. It touches on many parts of veganism that need to be talked about more:

People of color also experience underrepresentation in the vegan mainstream, Quichiz tells Mic. She used to be the only person of color at vegan events she attended while in college and having white vegan friends who often policed her for her decisions. Many would shame her for not being “a real vegan” if she ate a free meal on campus and took the meat off the plate — their shade is, she now knows, an egregious example of privileged snobbery.That food-shaming, at one time, made Quichiz feel that a vegan lifestyle was out of her reach.

What Quichiz speaks about in this article is important to all communities, and especially ones of color.

Black and Brown communities are often food deserts, areas with limited access to affordable and nutritious food, and understanding the circumstances under why someone can’t be vegan 24/7 is important to the Veggie Mijas’ mission. They serve as a resource for recipes with items you may already have in your pantry or might be part of your diet already like avocado, rice, beans, or plantains. This ethos also translates to its events, where vegan or not, all POC are welcomed if they have a willingness to learn.

Learning how to cook in this environment sounds incredible. Food is society’s glue, and Veggie Mijas seems like it’s building something important and new.

Eating habits start from an early age, so Quichiz’s vision is to instill a strong sense of food values in children elementary-aged to teenagers by empowering them to eat healthier. There’s a direct line to the entire community, who Quichiz and her cohort can influence and support.

This is the thing that I hope grows, across this community and others. Cooking is difficult if you’ve never done it. I know when I first was learning to cook, the prospect of cooking an onion was a scary prospect. Cutting? Dicing? A big hot pan? I’d never done it, and I had no idea what to do. Just having one person around to help makes cooking a survivable and often fun endeavor.

I ordered their cook book. It helps support their work, and I bet it’ll be delicious if you’re looking to expand your cooking with simple staples like rice and beans.

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

September 16, 2019

“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.

The Game Changers Trailer ∞

September 16, 2019

Over the last decade or two, I don’t think anything has been more important to veganism than documentaries. Today marks the release of a new one called The Game Changers. This is how they’re talking about it on their website:

Directed by Oscar®-winning documentary filmmaker Louie Psihoyos and executive produced by James Cameron, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jackie Chan, Lewis Hamilton, Novak Djokovic, and Chris Paul, The Game Changers tells the story of James Wilks — elite Special Forces trainer and The Ultimate Fighter winner — as he travels the world on a quest to uncover the optimal diet for human performance.
Showcasing elite athletes, special ops soldiers, visionary scientists, cultural icons, and everyday heroes, what James discovers permanently changes his understanding of food and his definition of true strength.

Whenever I meet folks new to veganism, they usually talk about how documentaries like Forks Over Knives, Food , Inc., and Earthlings changed their perspective. I think The Game Changers is a new category of film that we’d been missing, especially of this caliber, with world-class athletes talking about the benefits they’ve seen in their bodies and lives. I haven’t seen it yet, but I’m interested. When this thing hits Netflix, its effects are going to be massive — especially within the crowd of people who think veganism means sacrificing strength.

‘Shalt thou eat an Impossible Burger? Religious doctrine scrambles to catch up to new food technology.’ ∞

September 16, 2019

Laura Reiley with an incredibly interesting piece for the Washington Post:

This month, Tyson announced it is investing in a company that will launch plant-based shrimp early next year, raising a curious question. Will it be kosher? The short answer is its ingredients — which mimic the verboten crustacean with a proprietary algae blend — could well be both kosher and halal. Once the product launches, the company will seek certification so that Jews who keep kosher and Muslims — certain Muslim groups avoid shellfish — can enjoy a shrimp cocktail, scampi, a po’ boy or ceviche.
And yet. In this era of plenitude and choice and disruptive technology, what is permissible, what is forbidden and what is flouting the letter of religious law? The food system is in flux, the rise of plant-based meats and the promise of cell-cultured meats bending categories such that legislation, ideology and theology are scrambling to keep up.
If God says no pork, how does He feel about a very persuasive forgery? And if only beef from the forequarter is permitted, how will observant Jews parse meat grown in a lab, no bones and no quarters at all? How do you bleed an animal with no blood or slaughter an animal humanely if there’s no slaughter? And if you give up meat for Lent, what constitutes a cheat?

This bit from Rabbi Eli Lando, the chief customer relations officer with OK Kosher, is an interesting question:

“Is it a violation of the spirit of the law? That becomes a realm that you can never end.”
[…]
The prohibitions, he said, are about the actual creatures (pigs, shellfish, rabbits and reptiles), not a plant-based facsimile, however uncanny the likeness. Strictly kosher Jews, he notes, are frequently big fans of fake crab made of finely pulverized white fish. Lando sees plant-based meat as a revolution of sorts.

“A person today knows that being kosher does not mean you have to go to the back of the store and look for something like a second-class citizen. Having those products commonly available is achieving a great milestone,” he said.

And I didn’t know this was part of the Muslim tradition of Halal:

The inspection and certification process is similar for halal foods. For plant-based products designed to imitate haram products (pork and other foods forbidden by Islamic law), Roger Othman, director of consumer relations for Islamic Food and Nutrition Council of America, said words matter.

“Plant-based bacon bits, for example. The product would qualify to be halal but may be repugnant to halal consumers if the word bacon appeared in the name,” Othman said. “Halal consumers would not know what pork chews like, maybe not even what it smells or looks like. If plant-based, it could qualify to be halal, but the naming should not contain any pork-related words.”

Which ties slightly back into to the recent legal flare-up between many states’ meat-industries and free-speech advocates that would allow plant-based foods to call themselves “meat”, “sausage”, or even a “burger”. It would be interesting to see if certain products might be repackaged or relabeled depending on what stores they end up in — so that they might be allowed into Halal shops or supermarkets in certain states that deem meat-related labeling illegal.

It’d be interesting if many vegan products, once fully mainstream and with widespread use, moved to welcome religious or more niche audiences by changing parts of their products to appeal to those needs. Maybe we’ll see the same product packaged twice: one named to reference a similar flavor or product (i.e. Tofurkey or things labeled “Chik’n”), and then another where the words give the impression of an entirely new category of product (e.g. seitan, tofu, tempeh). Or if Impossible developed another heme product that they didn’t test on rats to try to entice a certain group of strict vegans. All of these things are possible, but I don’t know what it would take to be cost-effective.

✏️ by C. W. Moss