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cosmonaughtt · 5 years

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how I'd rewrite Danny Phantom

forever salty that elmer glue ruined such a good concept so it’s my territory now

Ghosts are dead, 100%. The science behind it is very paranormal investigation-y but the Fenton family is ten thousand times better than the other “ghost hunters” of their time.

Also, there are some ghosts that come from metaphorical deaths. I.E. Pandora, she technically didn’t exist but when the Ancient Greek culture died out, so did the gods and goddesses. They’re not technically ghosts but they are ectoplasm-based, so they get lumped in with them.

The Fenton family has been a bit dysfunctional for the past four years (10-14 for Danny, 12-16 for Jazz) because it took four years for Jack and Maddie to build the ghost portal. Jazz took over and learned how to really clean the house, while Danny learned how to cook. He’s not the best, but Danny can definitely make some good Ramen from scratch.

Maddie and Jack realized a bit later that the portal had overtaken their life and feel really bad for abandoning their kids, and when it didn’t work they tried to rekindle those relationships. Even with it working, they still do.

We all know what happened when the portal finished; it didn’t work. Because Jack put a switch on the inside that should’ve been on the outside, not the “on-off” button. The switch was loose and when Danny knocked into it, the portal turned on, because it was just waiting for a little spark-- like how when a cord is not totally plugged in.

This was the beginning of summer, around the end of May, and a month after it was technically done. Danny (no stranger to the hospital, he’d been in a few times when he was younger because he was born two weeks premature) was in the hospital until August, a few weeks before school started. He was exempt from his eighth-grade exams and passed all of his classes, so the district let him slide.

Danny doesn’t have an ice core. As cool as it is (pun intended) it makes no sense in the narrative. Like, he was electrocuted, and he’s got the “ghost-stinger” ability, why would he have ICE POWERS? He’s got an electricity core instead (slightly inspired by the electric undead oops).

His ghost sense is less of a mist and more of a gut feeling, and he literally becomes a static electricity magnet.

Danny’s character is a bit closer to the show.

He's quiet around strangers, but open with his friends. Trust thing.

Still made fun of for being the kid of two weird parents, but he’s honestly used to it by high school. He’s also bullied for his autism and ADHD, but he’s been bullied for them for about ten years so he’s used to it.

Still wants to be an astronaut-- science is his best subject, second to math. History is his third-best, he hates English and Gym class.

He’s tiny and scrawny, like a toothpick. It comes from being a sick child, though after the accident he’s able to lean out and gain a bit of “muscle”.

After the accident, he gets a bit paler than he was before and doesn’t tan. There’s also a Lichtenberg scar covering about half of the right side of his body from the accident, going from his fingertips, up his arm and over his chest, neck, about down to his knee.

He’s incredibly self-conscious about it but it doesn’t hurt, weirdly enough. For the “first season” he covers up and wears a lot of sweaters and long-sleeves.

His pulse and body temperature are much below normal. The hospital was concerned with this after the accident, but after a few days of him seeming fine, they had to drop it. Danny can also hold his breath about five times longer than a normal human.

Is he half-dead? Yes, technically. Does he not try and think about his mortality? Yes.

He enjoys puns and jokes still, though he makes them more as Phantom.

Speaking of Phantom, no, he doesn’t go by “Danny Phantom”. Just Phantom. He is trying to avoid dissection from his parents, you know.

Phantom has no scars from the accident, the only thing that he has in common with his human half is the mole on his cheek, but it’s green now (because yes, both halves have freckles!) because of his ectoplasm. He’s much more floaty, and if you don’t focus on him he looks like he’s made of television static. He also has little fangs.

You can see his details better up close, and the longer you spend with Phantom, the more details you can see. All ghosts are like that, their energy is on the fritz all the time and human eyes need to adjust to it to understand certain features. The only reason Sam and Tucker know him right away is because they watched him, y’know...

Danny is asexual, only realizing the identity in the middle of freshman year when Sam literally had to explain that yes, Danny, sexual attraction is a thing and not made up. (Based on my own experience.)

Sam and Tucker are both different in this story, but they still remain Danny’s only friends. They have other friends, though.

Sam is still goth.

She wears all black and even dyed her ginger hair black. There aren’t many surviving photos of Sam with her natural hair, she made sure of it.

Sam is like... punk-goth? Punk-goth-grunge? She identifies as goth, but her clothes can fit all three categories, really.

100% bisexual, has bi pins all over her bag. Out to her parents, who are slowly trying to understand. She doesn’t mind they/them pronouns, either, and her gender identity is just a shrug with middle fingers.

She knows a lot of the LGBT students at school and is the vice-president of the GSA she helped found.

Both Sam and Danny had a mutual crush on each other through half of freshman year and all of eighth grade, Sam decided that she’d rather be friends and Danny realized it was mostly him wanting to be friends.

Sam is vegan. She isn’t as pushy about it as she is in the show (I feel like it was extreme and really made fun of vegans/vegetarians, I know it’s a kids show but still) and all of her family is vegan, too. She’s big on animal rights, but recognizes the line to not cross.

Her family is also Jewish, like in canon.

Though she did campaign and successfully get the school cafeteria to have a “Tofu Tuesday” every other week, so that’s something, at least! (And where Mystery Meat would start)

Still mourns My Chemical Romance, into all music like that.

Tucker is still a “nerd”, but he doesn’t get picked on by the jocks for being a nerd.

He’s pretty hipster, too. His red beret is now a red beanie, and he has naturally curly hair poking out. He loves his natural hair, he just loves the beanie.

His “nerd” seems from his technological abilities. He has the latest smartphone a month after it comes out, and always has a “tablet”/iPad knockoff in his bag. He knows how to take things apart and sell them for money, and is also pretty good at programming.

Tucker DEFINITELY has a gaming channel. He only has about 3,000 subscribers, but that’s still pretty good. His most-popular video is him talking about the Indie game industry. He might try and program some of his own games (ahemPhantomfangameahem)

He loves meat, just like in the show. He jokes about it a lot with Sam, and Sam jokes back. Sometimes they can lead into fights if neither are in the mood, but both of them are pretty good-natured about it.

Tucker is a ladies-man, and a man’s-man, and a nonbinary’s-man-- he’s pansexual. Doesn’t figure out that’s a thing until he stays behind school one day to help Sam with the GSA, but once he does he’s out and proud. Still flirts terribly, though, but now no one is immune from his terrible flirts.

Scared of doctors and needles-- had a bad experience as a child, projects it on everything medicine-related. Tries to avoid taking medicine at all cost, unless it’s really severe. Hates flu season, can be a bit of a hypochondriac/germaphobe. Has one of those Bath and Body Works hand sanitizer things on his bag.

Out of the trio, he’s more terrified of the ghosts, though after a while he gets used to them.

The A-Listers and school remain mostly the same.

Wes Weston is 100% a thing.

The A-Listers are more preppy than before, and definitely try and get away with what they can with modern fashion-- at least, Paulina and Star will. Dash and Kwan are a bit fashion-deaf (Kwan. Owns. Crocs.)

They’re still jerks and Dash still picks on Danny a lot, but the teachers are more competent and he can’t get away with more physical stuff unless no one is looking. Dash is probably a victim of his own domestic abuse at home and takes it out on people-- totally wrong and not moral, but he doesn’t think there’s much of an option. Only Kwan and Paulina know about his situation.

Kwan is pretty smart and strong, but he dresses like a disaster. He mostly sticks to wearing his letterman jacket and a black t-shirt and jeans, but if he ever has to “dress-up” or wears something else, it’s awful. Cargo shorts galore. Crocs. Someone get the Fab 5 to help him, please.

Paulina is pretty prissy, and doesn’t like getting dirty often. She’s a cheerleader and she’s good at it, but she’s only second-in-command of the squad, or however that works. She doesn’t mind, less work for her to do, and the person in charge enjoys it a lot. Paulina tends to make fun of Sam and Tucker’s clothes often, and like the rest of the A-Listers, everything listed above for Danny (sans the Phantom thing). Once Phantom becomes big, she gets a huge celebrity crush on him, probably has ten different Stan accounts for him.

Star is the head cheerleader, and enjoys every moment of it. She also enjoys math, and she’s really good at that too. Of the canon characters, only Danny can keep up. She isn’t good at much else academia-wise, though she does enjoy a bit of biology and forensics. Much smarter than most people think-- it will astound you.

Valerie is a part of their squad at first, only because she, Paulina and Star live in the same neighborhood. After Valerie moves to an apartment, their friendship falls apart after a big fight-- this is entirely not ghost-related, by the way. Vlad only contacts her after learning that her dad was hurt in a ghost attack and Phantom wasn’t there to help, and emotionally manipulates her. She becomes the Red Huntress and hunts Danny, and they do date for a few months before calling it quits. I’m not big on shipping, per say, but if there has to be a canon endgame, it’ll be these two.

Wes Weston. He’s technically canon? I guess? But also fanon? Either way, having a character like Wesley Weston trying to expose Danny as Phantom and always failing is hilarious, but can also introduce other things into the series as well. How does Wes know? Is he like, psychic, or something...?

Oh, and Vlad.

He’s much more emotionally manipulative. Danny was really considering having him train him in ghost-powers and stuff until Vlad made an off-comment about Jack, and Danny saw through the act.

They’re very much enemies. Not frenemies, but enemies. Danny is terrified of Vlad, but doesn’t want him to hurt his family.

Vlad, above all, wants a family. He missed out on those years being in and out of the hospital because of his own, botched accident, and he has scars all over his face from the “ecto-acne” that he hides with makeup.

He’s equivalent to Elon Musk, but less of a weeabo. DALV Corporations has a lot more stock in experimental sciences, though, including paranormal investigation. When he learns that Jack and Maddie had successfully created the Ghost Portal, he puts a lot more funding into their projects and reconnects.

Still got the creepy Maddie-crush. Does get a cat named Matti, though (no connection or correlation, shut up, Daniel). Hates Jack because of his own accident, and begins to despise him even more for not noticing the scars left on Danny’s accident, too.

Less of a vampire in ghost form. He has a fire core, which makes a lot of his ectoplasm heat-based. Probably has laser eyes that Danny desperately tries to emulate but alas, cannot. The only reason he has a leg up on Danny is experience, not strength. He was only blasted in the face, not the whole body, after all.

At some point there’s probably an argument with Vlad and the Fentons and he decides “screw it” and makes an offset of DALV that focuses on ghost-hunting.

No Mayor thing, but he does move away from Wisconsin to live in Amity Park.

Amity Park is... Well, it’s something.

It was already a pretty creepy town before the ghosts get involved.

There’s always been unexplained murders, disappearances, and strange lights in the sky that no one could identify—a lot of hints towards something other-than-ghosts existing, which makes sense.

Amity Park is much weirder after the ghost portal opens. Not because of the ghost attacks and their ghostly superhero, but because the veil was torn a bit, and it was felt throughout the town.

On the moment of Danny’s accident, there was a massive power outage, and they become a bit more frequent to everyone’s dismay. Much of the older residents of the town are against ghosts—if excepting Phantom, on occasion. The younger residents are more open to the undead spectres, though, and are much less afraid of them.

Phantom becomes a youth icon, and his twitter account that started off small and as a joke gets him national popularity.

Tucker, naturally, rides this wave and gets a giant boost in YouTube subscribers, especially after he posted a few videos with Phantom. No one questions this except the A-Listers, who just want to know howhe did this.

Okay that’s enough of an info-dump I don’t want to spoil everything. I’ll probably post this stuff on my ao3—calling this story “Hero Complex” for now, still working on the title.

#Danny phantom #Danny phantom au #Danny Phantom rewrite #dp rewrite #dp #the cosmos speak #hero complex

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deadpet-fanclub · 6 years

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I’m thinking about animals

You have to just kinda accept your hypocrisy of loving animals but also being okay with eating them. I’m in the same boat, I’ve spent my entire life (from when I was old enough to watch tv) adoring nature documentaries, animals, spent my higher education learning about them and actively volunteer to help them / look after them / pursue a career involving them, and yet I still eat them.

If you put a cow in front of me I wouldn’t want to harm it or see it get harmed, animals do have emotional intelligence, feel pain, understand certain concepts such as death and want to survive. I recognise my own hypocrisy here and actively try to purchase vegan when possible but I am not a vegan 90% of the time, if I had my own personal chef making my meals for me I think I’d easily be able to be happy with a vegan diet, but convenience and low cost more than anything keep me eating meat. I’ve seen the process of meat factories and whilst it breaks my heart to see and makes me cry if I do watch, it hasn’t stopped me eating meat.

Some extreme vegans might tell you that you can’t possibly love animals if you still choose to eat them, that’s undeniably false, human complexity makes sure that it’s a possibility and I myself am a prime example of treasuring and respecting the life of animals basically on par with human life, whilst still consuming them.

I know for a fact that human beings are never going to as a species refrain from eating meat, so no matter what percentage of the population cuts down or goes vegi / vegan the meat industry will always exist and be causing harm to animals both in life and death with their poor practices. It’s just one of those sad realities of life you have to come to terms with. As barbaric as some of the practices may be and the condition they keep them in, cost efficiency and profit will always win. It’s kinda like the clothing or tech industry, do you feel guilt and sadness over the fact that your clothes or your phone were probably made by a sweatshop worker in terrible conditions? Are you gunna stop buying them? No probably not. You don’t have to see it happening and watch their faces whilst they suffer. You know it’s happening but it doesn’t matter. It’s pretty amazing what we’re capable of blocking out. Whether you acknowledge it or not you inadvertently contribute to the suffering of humans and animals with your purchases. I as an individual can literally do nothing to change that whether I go vegan and stay naked or not, because it’ll still happen. So what can I do but accept it?

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acaseofthewiggins · 6 years

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Fred/Willow for the ship. 4, 9, and 10 for the questions.

Yay, Fred/Willow! Those two are so adorable, and they just make a lot of sense as a pairing.

There was never really a chance in cannon where that could have developed, making me kinda wish that they’d brought Willow in to AtS Season 5 in addition to Spike.

But yeah, to my surprise I actually got two asks for this pairing, you and an anon. So I decided to answer both sets of questions in one post.

For @scienceofficer-winifredburkle:

4.What they do on date night

I feel like these two could happily kick off their date night by first spending the entire day in a museum. Any kind of museum, though Fred would probably vote for the Science Center, while Willow might want to check out the new exhibit at the LA County Museum of Art. They debate good-naturedly and eventually settle it with a coin toss. After the museum closes they go somewhere nearby for coffee and gelato, talking animatedly about their favorite parts of the exhibits. Then, buzzing off of the sugar and coffee, they’d take a long walk together, eventually stopping on a whim at some little restaurant that neither of them have been to before, but which looks totally adorable. The place turns out to be a vegan bistro. Neither Fred nor Willow are vegan but they agree that the meat industry is terrible and gamely agree to give the place a go. Fred munches on her tempeh reuben as she talks at length about some of her more exciting recent experiments in combining magic and technology. Willow listens with interest, frequently asking informed questions. She’s learned to be more cautious about magic after her stint on the dark side, but she can’t help getting excited by the idea of the results that (carefully conducted) study could yield. She asks Fred if she could share her lab and Fred blushingly agrees.

After dinner they stop at a nearby theater which happens to be playing a major fantasy/action blockbuster that everyone’s been talking about. Throughout the first half of the movie Willow keeps turning to Fred, making little asides about the inaccurate portrayal of magic in the movie. Some might find this annoying, but Fred’s far more interested in what Willow has to say than what’s on the screen. At one point, when Willow turns to her, Fred gets up the courage to do what she’s been wanting to do all night and gently kisses Willow on the lips. Neither Fred nor Willow catches much of the movie after that.

Much like with my Wesley/Angel ask, I’ve written I’ve less written about a typical date night than told the story of a hypothetical first date. Oh well!

9. Which one swears more

Willow. Neither is big into profanities, but Fred has a sort of an innocence to her that she never really loses, while Willow has gained a bit of an edge over time.

10. What TV shows they watch together, and which ones they hide from the other

God, I don’t know with this one. I think I’m just not very good at answering this question. I don’t actually watch that much TV. They’d probably watch things like Charmed and Star Trek (especially Voyager) together. And as far as what they’d hide… Er… Fred might hide anything that she thought Willow would hate for depicting witches in a negative manner. Can’t really think of any good examples. That one season of American Horror Story? Ooh! And Fred might have to watch some of her nature documentaries in secret, to protect Willow from her frog-fear. For Willow’s part, I can’t really imagine what she’d have to hide from Fred. Fred seems open to pretty much everything.

For Anon:

14. What nicknames they call each other

Fred confuses everyone by sometimes calling Willow “Sali”. Most people assume that “Sally” must be her middle name or something, or even that “Sally” is her birth name and Willow is a chosen name. In fact, it’s short for “salix”, which is both the Latin word for “willow” and the name for their genus. (Thank you Wikipedia.) Willow might start occasionally calling Fred “Wini”. Then she wouldn’t be able to resist occasionally going from there to the next logical step and calling her “Pooh Bear”, which would really confuse people.

13. Which makes a bigger deal of birthdays

I feel like a slight competitive side to them might come out around birthdays, seeing who can surprise the other with better birthday parties, more meaningful gifts, etc. It would be super lighthearted competition of course, each genuinely loving the challenge of finding new and creative ways to make the other one smile. So I guess my answer is both.

12. What they do for their anniversaryMuseums! Hahahah, I’m obsessed. But I think that Willow and Fred would be too and would want to commemorate the memory of their first date by finding new museums or exhibits or historical sites or whatever that they can explore with each other, giving them stuff to talk about for days to come.

Thanks to both of your for the asks!

#buffy #btvs #angel #ats #willow rosenberg #winifred burkle #femslash #fanfic #meta #shipping #shipping game #ask

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easyfoodnetwork · 4 years

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Fake Meat Alone Won’t Save the World

Not as long as factory farming is still a part of the food supply chain, anyway

In the middle of July, Impossible: The Cookbook, a compendium of recipes designed to showcase the plant-based meat engineered by Impossible Foods, was launched with grimly impeccable timing: Four months into the COVID-19 pandemic, meat shortages and revelations about the terrible conditions in meat processing facilities, where the virus had infected more than 25,000 workers nationwide, had cast an unforgiving light on the country’s industrial meat industry.

Impossible insists there is a better, highly versatile alternative to meat consumption, embodied in recipes like Kwame Onwuachi’s Ethiopian spiced meat with hummus and toasted cashews, where crumbled Impossible Burger takes the place of more traditional ground lamb. It is one of 40 recipes from a slew of well-respected chefs that demonstrate that the only limitation to what you can do with Impossible’s faux flesh is your own imagination.

The word “vegan” is conspicuously absent from the cookbook’s introduction, which instead proclaims that the book is “for people who love meat.” This is the kind of crafty messaging that has defined Impossible since July 2016, when the company launched its signature “bleeding” ersatz beef patty: This may be vegan meat, but it is designed to appeal to actual meat eaters. It’s clearly working: By early May of this year, sales of its products had shot up 264 percent since March.

The Impossible Foods story has been told many, many times since the company launched in 2011. It’s become a juggernaut with almost $1.5 billion in funding, a grocery store footprint that is 30 times larger than it was six months ago, and like any good tech unicorn, a proper direct-to-consumer website. Given Impossible’s projected growth, expanding product line (Impossible sausage was introduced in June), and compelling pitch (“We’re making meat,” the cookbook reads, “mouthwatering, craveable, nutritious meat — from plants” that “requires 87 percent less water and 96 percent less land to produce” than a conventional burger), it is tempting to think that plant-based meat is the way of the future. Impossible: The Cookbook suggests that it is not merely a possibility, but an inevitability, the only direction in which progress points. Impossible Foods CEO Pat Brown implied as much in an interview last year. “We are dead serious,” he said, “about our mission to eliminate the need for animals in the food chain by 2035.”

With a subtitle proclaiming “How to Save Our Planet, One Delicious Meal at a Time,” the cookbook — and, by extension, Impossible Foods — is promising no less than a brighter tomorrow that will be built upon patties wrought of soy and potato protein, disgorged on an endless assembly line monitored by contented, fairly compensated workers as happy cows roam on distant fields, free to live out their natural lives.

The strongest case for the vegan supply chain can be made by considering not what it is, but what it isn’t. The vegan supply chain isn’t factory farms, industrial livestock operations that house thousands of animals under one roof, often in miserable conditions that are not only inhumane but also terrible for the environment. Among other things, these farms generate about 70 percent of the country’s ammonia emissions and 14.5 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, contribute to deforestation, and create lagoons of animal waste that pollute the environment and sicken people in surrounding communities. The vegan supply chain also isn’t slaughterhouses or meat processing plants, where low-paid, often immigrant workers toil shoulder-to-shoulder in physically grueling conditions ripe for spreading COVID-19. And, although this should be obvious, the vegan supply chain is not one built upon abject animal suffering and exploitation.

Compared to that, the vegan supply chain looks pretty good, and Impossible Foods is hardly the only voice arguing that going vegan can save the planet. In 2018, the journal Science published the results of a comprehensive analysis of the environmental impact of 40,000 farms in 119 countries. It found that while meat and dairy supplied just 18 percent of food calories and 37 percent of protein, they used 83 percent of farmland — and produced 60 percent of agricultural greenhouse gas emissions. The upshot, as the study’s lead researcher told the Guardian, was that a “vegan diet is probably the single biggest way to reduce your impact on planet Earth, not just greenhouse gases, but global acidification, eutrophication, land use, and water use.” And last year, a report by the United Nations body on climate science concluded that reducing meat consumption in favor of plant-based diets could have a significant positive impact on our ability to fight climate change.

The vegan supply chain is not necessarily the One Weird Trick for solving all of our environmental and moral problems.

But while there is very little doubt that eating less meat and dairy is better for humanity’s chances of long-term survival in our current home, the vegan supply chain on its own is not necessarily the One Weird Trick for solving all of our environmental and moral problems. Like any agricultural supply chain, it is not automatically virtuous, much less neutral in its environmental impact. To examine some of the issues surrounding the vegan supply chain is to understand why a truly sustainable and ethical food supply chain is defined by more than simply what it is not. It is also to acknowledge that reforming the way we grow our food requires a truly systemic approach.

Even if we do accept that fake meat is the way of the more enlightened future, we still have to ask where, how, and by whom each of its ingredients is being grown and then processed, how the factory where it’s being mass-produced is being powered and how much greenhouse gas emissions it produces, and how much greenhouse gas is in turn produced by the different operations that supply the fake meat’s various ingredients, and packaging, and on and on forever more. Every step of the industrial supply chain — vegan or not — is fraught with these considerations, as well as more vexing questions than encouraging answers.

Take, for example, the soybean, a crop whose byproducts are ubiquitous ingredients in processed foods, both vegan and otherwise. The vast majority of the world’s soy — over 70 percent — is grown for livestock feed, which is why the growing demand for meat, particularly in China, has helped to double global soy production in the past two decades. It is soy grown for livestock feed, not vegan foods, that is a driver of deforestation in South America and its concomitant displacement of Indigenous communities and small farmers.

While only a tiny percentage of soy grown worldwide is for human consumption, the presence of soy in many vegan processed foods means that it is still necessary to ask where that soy comes from, and to question the practices used to grow it. Impossible Foods itself has been criticized for its use of soy, specifically the genetically modified soy in its burger. A host of controversies surrounds GMO soy, but Impossible Foods has defended its GMO ingredients by pointing out that its use of genetically modified soy is more environmentally sustainable than harvesting non-GMO soy, and, moreover, is safe for human consumption.

Along with soy, palm oil and cashews are ingredients that regularly appear in many vegan foods. Increasing demand for both presents a conundrum for anyone concerned about sustainable eating. Palm oil shows up in about 50 percent of consumer goods, including processed vegan foods like margarine, cookies, and ice cream. Palm oil plantations have been linked to numerous environmental and human rights issues, such as biodiversity loss and deforestation, and human rights abuses in Thailand and Indonesia.

The cashew, a foundational ingredient in many vegan dairy products, has been linked to human rights violations in Vietnam, the world’s leading cashew exporter. While some of the more egregious practices, such as the use of forced labor at processing facilities, have been curbed, the difficulties of tracking the cashew supply chain (cashews are often grown in one country, processed in another) mean that it’s possible for worker abuses, such as poverty-line wages and the use of child labor, to go undetected. And the cashew isn’t the only nut with issues: Almond production, for example, requires huge amounts of water, a problem exacerbated by the surging market for almond milk products.

In other words, no matter the crop being grown, there is the persistent issue of how farm laborers and the land they work are mistreated: Whether it is agricultural slavery on Florida tomato farms or illegal deforestation driven by Mexico’s growing avocado trade — which has also attracted the involvement and attendant violence of organized crime — the produce industry is rife with its own exploitative and abusive practices. And that doesn’t even begin to touch on the greenhouse gas emissions produced by plant-based agriculture, whether from artificial fertilizers or practices such as tilling the fields or the transport of produce around the globe.

To look at an Impossible Burger, or any industrial food, is to see a myriad of potentially troublesome links in the supply chain. Which is not to say that it’s impossible, so to speak, to have an ethical and sustainable supply chain. But the demands of capitalism — specifically that for food produced cheaply and at great volume in order to yield a profit — frequently undermine that goal. It’s a challenge that is further compounded by the imperative to feed a growing global population, and the varying standards for what it actually means to be ethical and sustainable at every level of the supply chain, vegan or not. Although switching to plant-based meat offers numerous environmental benefits, the companies that make it must find a way to reconcile the need to scale and make money with the practice of how to do so responsibly.

Even if the Impossible promise turns out to be true, that we can indeed have a perfectly virtuous vegan supply chain engineered by a hegemonic tech company, there is still one inconvenient fact: For any number of reasons — whether cultural or economic — the majority of people on the planet prefer to eat meat and will not give it up willingly, and that will remain the case perhaps even after plant-based meat is a truly perfect simulacrum of the real thing.

There are emerging alternatives. While they aren’t vegan, they do have the potential to accomplish the same goals as plant-based meat, perhaps some even more successfully. The need to create more sustainable alternatives to meat, combined with the preference of many people to continue eating it, has created a potentially lucrative opening for the cell-based, or cultured meat industry, whose inherent promise is meat without all of its accompanying demons. The industry began to get attention in 2013, when a Maastricht University professor named Mark Post successfully made a burger from cow stem cells he had grown into strips of muscle fiber. Since then, a number of cultured meat startups have popped up around the world, growing everything from meatballs to gelatin to seafood. Some observers are bullish about the industry’s potential: Last year, the consulting firm Kearney released a report predicting that by 2040, 60 percent of the world’s meat will be lab-grown or plant-based.

The least terrible option for meat eaters is to support farms that raise animals using sustainable and humane practices.

Cultured meat offers many potential advantages over both conventional and vegan meat, sustainability-wise: Whereas similar ingredients are used to produce both conventional and vegan meat (i.e. soy, potatoes, wheat, and water), cultured meat needs only a diet consisting predominantly of amino acids and glucose — ingredients grown in labs, rather than in resource-intensive fields.

The challenge, though, is producing it at scale, and doing so affordably; according to the Kearney report, the cost of cultured meat was $80 per 100 grams in 2018, versus conventional beef’s 80 cents per 100 grams (a number that reflects the way the industrial meat industry benefits from cheap grain, cheap labor, and direct and indirect government subsidies). While industry experts forecast that cost will be cut to less than $4 per 100 grams in the next 12 years, there are still plenty of hurdles to overcome, such as regulatory approvals and consumer acceptance.

Cultured meat may indeed be one way toward a more environmentally sustainable future, but that future remains relatively distant and highly speculative. For now, perhaps the least terrible option for recalcitrant meat eaters who care about the environment and have the privilege of choice is to support the small, independent farms that raise animals using sustainable and humane practices. Nearly 100 percent of most livestock raised for consumption lives on factory farms. There’s little doubt that small farms can be a more sustainable alternative — one that should be combined with an even more sustainable alternative, which is just to eat less meat. Decreased consumption leads to decreased demand and, in turn, to decreased production. But given that global meat production is projected to be 16 percent higher in 2025 than it was a decade prior, this seems as unrealistic as the likelihood of McDonald’s rolling out cell-cultured Big Macs in time for Christmas.

Rather than looking at the sustainable food supply chain of the future as an all-or-nothing scenario — one that either involves animal products or doesn’t — it’s perhaps more practical to take a holistic view, one that acknowledges the dizzying complexities of food production, as well as the varying definitions and measures of “sustainability.” Put another way, there is no single correct approach to fixing our problems, something illustrated by a 2017 study about the potential of organic agriculture to create a more sustainable food system. A 100 percent conversion to organic agriculture wouldn’t do it, the study found — among other problems, organic farming would require more farmland than its conventional counterpart. A more sustainable scenario, the study concluded, would combine organic agriculture with reductions in food waste and the amount of food used for livestock, along with a corresponding reduction in the production and consumption of meat.

Even supposing there is no magic bullet, there does seem to be one obvious thing we could do to build a more sustainable supply chain: stop factory farming. Because while livestock farming can be sustainable and even ethical, particularly if it’s done on a smaller scale and using practices that favor the environment and human and animal welfare, there is nothing sustainable about the industrial livestock industry. And if climate change, environmental degradation, and worker and animal abuses haven’t given us reasons enough to find a better way forward, then the COVID-19 pandemic has provided yet another compelling reason by highlighting the ways that factory farms, with their overcrowded, unsanitary conditions ripe for spreading disease and promoting antibiotic resistance, may put us at risk for future pandemics.

The call to end factory farming is gaining momentum: Last December, Sen. Cory Booker introduced legislation that would place a moratorium on large industrial animal operations and phase out the biggest ones by 2040. Crucially, the proposed bill also calls for strengthening protections for the family farmers and ranchers who cannot compete with these large-scale operations and are often forced into exploitative contracts with the corporations that control the meat industry.

This kind of support for small, independent farmers is at the heart of what the ethical and sustainable supply chain of the future entails: It is not so much about vegan eating as it is about creating systems that enable farming that is humane for the environment, people, and animals. Plant-based meat can be part of that, and should be — provided that the companies that manufacture it are actively invested in creating a system whose concept of ethics and sustainability goes beyond being simply the lesser of two evils.

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/32O5Kn1 https://ift.tt/34UzD7W

Not as long as factory farming is still a part of the food supply chain, anyway

The vegan supply chain is not necessarily the One Weird Trick for solving all of our environmental and moral problems.

The least terrible option for meat eaters is to support farms that raise animals using sustainable and humane practices.

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/32O5Kn1 via Blogger https://ift.tt/2EE8njn

#Blogger #cooking #Eater #food #recipes

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payment-providers · 5 years

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New Post has been published on Payment-Providers.com

New Post has been published on https://payment-providers.com/burger-king-to-launch-impossible-whopper/

Burger King To Launch Impossible Whopper

In the year 2000, if one had stood on a street corner and predicted that in two decades, the biggest craze to sweep through fast food since the drive-thru window would be artificial meat – well, let’s just say there would be a lot of disbelievers in the crowd.

Twenty years ago, the veggie burger was not the kind of thing that would take the world by storm, because they were not, as burgers went, very good. Which isn’t to say they were uniformly terrible or even that they tasted bad. Some of them even tasted pretty good, mostly when smothered with ketchup and other burger toppings.

But what they didn’t at all taste like, however, was an actual hamburger. As the 21st century was getting off the ground, if one came across another human being eating some kind of veggie burger to satisfy their craving for an actual burger, it was safe to say they were a very committed vegetarian or vegan.

Fast-forward a couple of decades, and the world is waiting with bated breath for the nationwide launch of the Impossible Whopper at Burger King. A veggie burger so well-made, so delicious and so entirely perfected by science that the fast-food chain claims diners will not be able to tell the difference between an ersatz Whopper and the real deal.

Burger King may be making the biggest leap forward in the QSR meatless race, but it is far from a solitary play. Many known names in the fast-food game are investigating their own version of riding the trend; there are even rumors that McDonald’s is considering joining the fray with a meatless option of its own.

As we ponder the burger giants pondering burgers that really aren’t burgers, it’s fair to ask whether meatless meat is a new way of eating for a new era of consumers – or the latest in a long line of food fads that seem like the next big dietary shift, and then fizzle out quietly as consumers’ tastes, quite literally, change.

The March of Meatless Everywhere

Burger King’s experiments with artificial meat began in April of 2019, when it rolled out the Impossible Whopper in St. Louis area restaurants. The Impossible Whopper was a standard Whopper made with a grilled Impossible Burger patty – along with a claim that the meatless burger would offer the same mouth-watering sensation of its beef counterpart.

The magic of the Impossible Burger, according to Impossible Foods, is a mixture of ground wheat and potato protein mixed with “flecks” of coconut fat. The burgers also “bleed” like a proper burger, due to the inclusion of a compound called heme, found in animals and plants. The net result, according to Impossible Burger and Burger King, is a totally vegetarian (but not vegan, since the Whopper has mayonnaise on it) that has 15 percent less fat and 90 percent less cholesterol than a regular Whopper, but tastes exactly the same.

Seems almost impossible.

But Burger King says it is so confident that the Impossible Whopper could fool a fan that they are launching a taste test of their own. Customers who order via DoorDash or the BK app can use the “IMPOSSIBLE” promotion code to buy both a regular Whopper and an Impossible Whopper for $7. That promo will run through Sept. 12.

The Impossible Whopper pilot was so popular in St. Louis that there were lines out the door to buy them, with reports of some locations running out early on – even though a burger with no meat costs a dollar more than one with it. Neither BK nor Impossible have released sales figures as of yet, but the test was clearly a big enough hit to warrant a full-blown rollout to Burger King’s 7,000 or so nationwide locations a few months later – the biggest exposure the product type has gotten so far.

That said, meatless meat has been gobbling up fast food real estate all year.

White Castle, a fast-food chain with a much smaller regional footprint, has already rolled out a different Impossible Burger recipe for its signature slider burgers. Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s both sell a vegetarian burger option made by an Impossible Foods competitor, Beyond Meat.

Dunkin’ doesn’t do burgers, but they have introduced a Beyond Sausage patty to their breakfast sandwiches at select locations. Del Taco has been selling the Beyond Taco for the last six months. And while Taco Bell in the U.S. has not yet introduced fake meat to its taco products, it has rolled out vegan “meat” chainwide in Spain for its tacos and burritos.

Meatless meat has also inspired other food product extensions. Chains like Tim Hortons, New York’s Gregorys Coffee and Bareburger have all embraced a veggie-based “egg” scramble product.

“As we continue to test and get feedback, we will consider expanding plant-based options into other menu items,” a spokeswoman for Tim Hortons told MarketWatch in an email.

It bears mentioning that thus far, the year’s most successful IPO was Beyond Meat’s in April – and it seems the drumbeat of places signing up to include some variation of a meatless product on their menus has magnified since that point. Given the explosion, and the seemingly genuine enthusiasm for the product, one might wonder if there is a big shift underway in our national eating habits.

Then again…

The Shifting World of Food

Creating a long-standing classic that stands the test of time in the world of food is, well, not easy. Food is a trendy, fad-laden place where things are everywhere and then – very quickly – nowhere.

In the 1950s and 60s, one might have feared that for the rest of time, all fruit would be served with marshmallows inside a gelatin mold. For 10 years, the cupcake reigned supreme in the United States as the nation’s most beloved confection – only to suddenly crash one day in 2013, when everyone realized what they really wanted was a cronut. Two years ago, people were writing think pieces about how avocado toast was destroying both American society and the planet’s ecological balance – these days, the artisanal toast makers have all moved on, as the price of avocados has suddenly spiked.

That’s not to say that nothing holds on – spaghetti and meatballs has been on 90 percent of humanity’s top-five list for the last 500 or so years. But more often, things can be delicious and beloved one day and entirely forgotten – or, worse, widely mocked – the next.

Which way will the meatless craze go? At this phase of the game, it is hard to say. Still, three interesting points of unrelated data seem to be worth keeping in mind.

The first is that meatless meat costs more than the real McCoy. Not hugely more – a buck or so over the cost of a burger made of beef. But considering these are $1.50-$5.00 items, the meatless upgrade can add 20 to 60 percent to the cost of the product. Given that the meatless meat’s claim to fame is that it tastes exactly like meat, one might wonder if customers would prefer to pay a dollar less and eat something that tastes exactly like meat, because it is meat.

Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat also say they are providing a burger-like taste in a way that is healthier and more environmentally friendly. Yet both of those claims have been questioned, according to Wall Street Journal reports. The patties themselves, experts note, could be somewhat healthier than a meat burger (although still quite high in fat), but the fast-food versions are still loaded with toppings and other unhealthy preservative ingredients, which means any potential health benefit is marginal. Meat or meatless, it’s still lettuce, onion, cheese, pickles, tomatoes and special sauce on a sesame seed bun.

And while animal husbandry is very land- and water-intensive, so is soybean farming and wheat farming – and the production process for high-tech meat products tends to be on the heavy side when it comes to power use and waste generation. It still might be cleaner than industrial meat production, but it is a bit of a stretch to call it a wholly green process. As meatless meat products become more common, it remains to be seen whether those facts will influence consumers’ decisions to consume them – and, in many cases, to pay more for them.

Finally, there is the interesting data point that the majority of people who eat meatless burgers are meat-eaters. A new report from market research firm NPD Group finds that 95 percent of plant-based burger buyers have also purchased a beef burger within the past year. Committed vegetarians or vegans are not the main drivers of this market – in fact, many people in these groups complain that the products are too much like meat for them to enjoy. According to NPD, the main buyers here are “flexitarians” – consumers who hope to lower their overall meat consumption but are not looking to give it up entirely.

“Although vegetarians and vegans are certainly contributing to the growth in plant-based [foods], they still represent a small (single-digit) percentage of the U.S. population and aren’t the primary contributors,” NPD notes.

The good news is that meatless burgers are pulling from a larger base: There are many more consumers who would like to eat less meat than those who are willing to give it up entirely. But the bad news is that they have to compete against an already ingrained habit: eating actual hamburgers. And they have to be willing to pay more to do it.

Habits, as PYMNTS has noted in the past, are hard things to overcome. Novelty can do a lot of the early heavy lifting – and we imagine all kinds of people will be taking the Impossible challenge to see if they can tell a real Whopper from its vegetarian doppelganger. But once that enthusiasm wears off, will consumers stick with the meatless bandwagon? Or will they follow their stomachs to the next neat new idea in eating?

——————————–

Latest Insights:

Our data and analytics team has developed a number of creative methodologies and frameworks that measure and benchmark the innovation that’s reshaping the payments and commerce ecosystem. The July 2019 Pay Advances: The Gig Economy’s New Normal, a PYMNTS and Mastercard collaboration, examines pay advances – full or partial payments received before an ad hoc job is completed – including how gig workers currently use them and their potential for future adoption.

Beyond Meat, Burger King, fast food, Impossible Foods, Innovation, Main Feature, meatless, News, QSRs, Retail, Saturday Feature, vegan, vegetarian

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tiantianxuexi · 8 years

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Oh you were vegan for 5 years, what made you stop? New vegan here just wondering sorry it isn't Chinese related

heh yeah I’d answer on my main but then you might not see, w/e

So backstory; I was vegan through most of high school, my gap year, and then most of my freshman year of college, meaning I stopped in 2011 when you were lucky if a cafe had soymilk much less almond/oat/rice milk ya punks. I guess just sort of a lot of lil things, the obvious one being I moved to Colombia and I both didn’t want to be a gring@ pest and wanted to be able to just try everything. Since my main reasons for going vegan had been about the meat industry and not especially about eating animals, going to my neighborhood butcher and seeing the cows and things sorta made me feel ok about that.

Environmental-wise I do think eating less meat would be a good thing (though much of the food/enviro crisis is a capitalism thing*), and from all those vegan years I still only do maybe one particularly meaty meal a day if even that. Grappling with ~conscious consumerism~ as a mostly nonsense liberal thing I think also is partly why I decided investing energy into personal veganism wasn’t my priority (but like I dig that Food Not Bombs is vegan). Use of energy being a big thing for me in general—cooking vegan is way easy and decently cheap once you get the hang of it, but when you’re too depressed to move or get groceries tossing an egg in a pan is nice. I don’t terribly care for cheese and am mostly lactose intolerant, but man, eggs have pulled me through some shit. (I also lived off a lot of free leftovers in the college dinning hall)

and I mostly encountered it after I stopped, but there’s A Lot of bad vegan Discourse that I think some snotty people really need to come to terms with. “Cruelty free” is not possible, in a food desert veganism can be expensive, indigenous people herding sometimes makes fucking sense (back to the mongolian nomads—hard to grow shit if yr constantly moving), you’re not a better radical for being vegan, some people have have very real dietary troubles, etc etc diet is really complicated!

I think going vegan was a really good experience, it made me think about all the weird animal things that weasel their way into processed foods and it basically forced me to learn how to cook (but then again oreos are vegan and I ate a lotta those). Not great for social things (after hs I also didn’t have any vegan friends) and I think that’s a valid concern as an anxious person who gets super mean if I don’t eat sooo yeah. Aside eggs I’m still pretty vegan at home and I like it that way. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Not a solid answer, but I’d resent anyone labeling it just “a phase,” everything’s a gaddamn phase doesn’t make it less legit. Anyway wow that was really long and still not that specific but I have so many thoughts!!! I just don’t wanna rant w/out knowing yr vegan feelings ya feel. Good luck on your new quest don’t be an ass & these are still two of my fave cookbooks!! (probably just bc they were my first. oh I also really like this but I didn’t use it much for whatever reason even though I have an actual copy. also ridiculously extensive baking book)

*I recently got this and am stoked to read it

#srry yall not relevant #i just have so many feelings but tldr: got more radical but also more depressed #I also like that I think vegan food keeps longer even though that's probably only slightly true #food is hard sometimes

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mrandyzavala · 7 years

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VEGAN LIFE | Plants Only

Vegan: One who abstains from consuming and using any animal products and byproducts. It is a pretty simple concept, yet one that has incensed thousands on both sides of the debate.

Even if you aren't vegan, or aren’t planning on becoming one, it is beneficial to be aware of what it means to have a vegan lifestyle. Having guiding principles for your life that help you be more aware and kind is great, no matter what the reason. Learning about different ways others choose to bring that into their lives encourages us all to make conscious decisions, even for the small things in life.

To be clear, we recognize that we are part of the debate as well. We are all about conscious living at SALT, but we still carry non-vegan items from time to time, and we do so mindfully. A leather bag that has the longevity to keep a lifetime of replacements out of landfills is something we feel worth investing in. There are so many ways to live consciously, being vegan is just one of them. Even though it is not a lifestyle we fully adhere to, we think it's important to be part of the conversation so that we can be educated about the different ways people choose to reduce their impact.

There are all kinds of reasons that people choose to be vegan. Regard for animal welfare is an obvious one. Another is not wanting to contribute to the effects that the meat industry has on our environment. Mass deforestation of acres of arable lands to raise food for livestock and to house them, not to mention the waste that is produced contributing to climate change. Many people feel that living on a diet that consists only of vegan sources of food is the best choice for their personal health. These are the top reasons, often times bundling together. Whatever the reason, in the end being vegan focuses on kindness; to animals, to the Earth, and to oneself. Nothing wrong with that, right?

As with many hot button issues, education (or the lack thereof) seems to be at the root of the conflict surrounding veganism. On top of that, with the internet out there, it makes it too easy for proponents of both to find material that supports their viewpoint. Unless you are dealing with trained professionals who have run proper scientific research, we can’t be sure that the information we’re seeing isn’t merely opinion, at least when it comes to the question of personal health.

It is easy to see from the footage in documentaries like Forks Over Knives that on the whole, animals in the commercial industry are mistreated, with terrible living conditions, physical abuse, and the administration of growth hormones. And we can literally watch our limited forests disappear in favour of land for livestock or for raising their food sources, with "livestock or livestock feed covering 1/3 of the Earth's ice-free land"(http://ift.tt/1pK0kDp). If we re-purposed the feed we raise for livestock, there would be enough food to end world hunger. Fresh water takes a hit too. It can take 2,500 gallons of water to produce one pound of beef (http://ift.tt/1pK0kDp). So there is no debating that from an environmental or ethical standpoint, consuming animals isn’t a great lifestyle option.

“Rather than think of veganism as an identity, it’s wisest to use it as a concept that can inspire you to remove animal products from your life” https://www.vegan.com/what/

We like that approach because it doesn’t draw a harsh, immediate line in the sand. It is a concept that motivates you to use less animal products, and therefore be kinder to the Earth by respecting her creatures and limiting the impact we make on her environment. We are passionate about protecting the Earth, the oceans in particular, so we are all for choices that decrease the impact on our seas.

What can you do?

The obvious one: Become vegan! Find vegan alternatives to replace what you would normally get out of land animal and seafood proteins.

Only eat line caught, local, seafood. Commercial fishing pillages sealife at alarming rates that will leave our oceans a comparable wasteland by 2050. Their long nets wreck havoc, dragging coral, sea plants, and other animals out along with the daily catch.

Decrease your intake of animal products. Only consume meat once or twice a week from a sustainable source.

Get your cosmetics from companies who don’t source ingredients like seaweed, algae, sea minerals, fish scales, shark liver, whale oil, and horse pee (yup). Read this list and we promise, you will find all the motivation you need.

As much as possible, purchase items that didn’t have to travel far to make it to your home, including food, to decrease the use of fossil fuels. Support local!

Be conscious in all your consumption. Only shop with companies who have verified sustainable, ethical production practices. Not sure about a brand? Ask them!

The biggest thing to remember is that these changes don't have to, and are unlikely to, happen all at once. You shouldn't go home and immediately donate anything in your house that is made from an animal product or wasn't consciously purchased. You already have them, if you get rid of them they will still need to go somewhere, and you will probably need to replace them. Even though you could find a more sustainable option, you are still going to be consuming more than necessary. When you decide to apply new principles to your current lifestyle, ease into them slowly. As long-term vegans will tell you, drastic adjustments are less likely to stick.

To get more in-depth information about a vegan lifestyle, check out https://www.vegan.com. They have a great perspective on how being vegan could be right for you, and a ton of awesome educational resources, like documentaries and cookbooks (some of our faves listed below!) that can inspire you.

Great Vegan Cookbooks:

Oh She Glows, either version - Angela Liddon

Thug Kitchen, either version – by Davis & Holloway

But I Could Never Go Vegan – Kristy Turner

from SALT Shop - Journal http://ift.tt/2Dmm1AU

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3one3 · 7 years

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The Sequel - 826

Brody’s

André Schürrle, Juan Mata, other Chelsea/BVB players, and random awesome OC’s (okay they’re less random now but they’re still pretty awesome)

original epic tale

all chapters of The Sequel

“How did I not know about this place? How long has it been here? How do none of my friends know about it? Why is it a secret? How have I been living 45 minutes from a concentration of the hottest girls I’ve ever seen, and not known about it? I don’t even care if they’re all lesbians,” Marco said, marveling at the clientele at Brody’s, the restaurant and bar that Christina wanted to go to.

“They are not lesbians,” she groaned for the third or fourth time since arriving there and getting cozy in a corner booth. She looked up at the ceiling, as if to ask a higher power for strength to deal with her friend. Marco and André both were thoroughly impressed by the sheer volume of gorgeous women hanging out in the unique eatery. That ceiling she was looking at was all corrugated steel and pipes, because the restaurant was really an empty warehouse made inviting by knocking out walls and putting in tons and tons of huge windows, bamboo scaffolding to separate different types of seating and from which to hang enormous drapey plants, and all organic feeling furniture and decor. There were plants everywhere- potted ones shelved on the bamboo, dangling ones creating a kind of canopy above diners’ heads, and vines tying it all together. Booths and chairs were upholstered in off-white cotton canvas and cream wool, just like the couches and settees and more relaxed style sitting chairs. Tables ran the gamut from 10’ long solid pieces of wood from what must have once been some almighty trees, to thin square marble toppers on dark wooden legs, to low ovular birch coffee tables with cage-like bases that sort of nodded to the cellular bamboo network. There were some loveseats with thin metal pipe frames too, and they had darker wood tables and benches to go with them. Each little area of the restaurant had its own type of furniture that was mismatched and yet complementary, down to the range of pillows from white and cream giraffe print to delicate Asian floral designs.

All of these wonderful pieces were hosting happy people having a good time, and a disproportionate number of those people were good looking and cool enough to be models. There were quite a few men around too- enough to make Christina wonder why her men were still talking about lesbians- and they weren’t ugly. Everyone was dressed stylishly, whether they went for sneakers, jeans, and sweaters, or dresses and heels. Coffee and wine were the popular drinks of choice, and it was hard to tell how the staff kept the appetizer bar well stocked. Guests were invited to help themselves to millet arancini, Korean bbq meatballs, shrimp ceviche, cheese of every origin, a selection of hummus flavors and breads and crudités to dip in them, 6 different bites of tofu, pickled vegetables that Christina had never seen pickled before, mini soups in shot glasses, tiny avocado toasts with their own buffet of accompaniments, and fruit for days. That stuff was included in the cost of an entree, or available by itself for a set fee. The dinner menu offered an almost overwhelming number of salads and grain bowls, pasta dishes, burgers with meat or alternatives, fried chicken, more soup, and a bunch of different pizzas. There was vegan this and that and gluten-free everything. All ingredients, save for some of the seafood, it was noted, were local, organic, and “boutique”, meaning someone went and picked out every bushel of green beans and carton of eggs instead of ordering blind and in bulk. The prices reflected that, and that might have contributed to the narrowing of the customer demographic. Just as everyone in the place looked like they took care of themselves and wore nice clothes, they all looked like they came from a certain class.

“How do you know? Some of them might be lesbians,” André pointed out. He liked it at Brody’s, and not just because everywhere he looked there was a fit girl with a pretty, cute, or sexy face, being pretty, cute, or sexy with her friends. After five minutes at their table, he began to wonder if some of the plants emitted something that made everyone happy and high, or if the food was laced. He’d never been anywhere that just felt good like that. It was a pleasure to be there and he wanted to stay and eat the delicious food and look at the delicious people forever. It seemed like everyone there was really into each other. People got up close and personal to talk, and laugh. Food sharing was rampant. It felt almost as if he and Christina and Marco were the only people looking around at the surroundings instead of remaining fully absorbed in each other.

“Okay, some might be lesbians,” the rider relented with an eye-roll. Like the two girls on the couch by the table with the nice candles, who have been holding hands most of the time since we got here, she thought. I saw a guy and girl making out before though, so they can’t all be lesbians. Plus, they’re just not. She knew where she heard about Brody’s, and knew it would have been mentioned if the restaurant and bar were some kind of exclusively lesbian hangout. Christina liked it there too. The music was wonderful, and she’d never heard a single one of the songs before. The hidden speakers played what she’d begun to think of as the soundtrack to a very cool, smart, beautiful, important “it” girl’s very cool, fun, deep, meaningful life of leisure, love, lust, and self-exploration. Just hanging out there made her feel like a way cooler person. The easygoing songs weren’t all happy sounding- some threatened to make her deeply rooted melancholy bubble up a little, and others made her long for something unidentifiable- but they all sounded good to her ears and to whatever inside of her woke up for special music and somehow consumed it more comprehensively than just listening to the notes. They triggered her ability to feel the music. André had to tell her to stop Shazam-ing the songs and enjoy his company instead.

That wasn’t really necessary. They’d only been there for 20 minutes when Marco got distracted by the hot girls again and paused the conversation about Auba’s ambitious partying agenda, and Christina was very much integral to all the conversations- particularly her partner’s contributions to them. He did his hair, and he was wearing a pretty boring thin black sweater that just made him look sexy no matter what he was doing but in particular when he did anything with his hands, like pick up food, or his glass of wine. His smile, both the one he did with his lips and the one he did with just his unique blue eyes, was captivating. She wasn’t sure if it was the mood of the place that brought something extra to that smile, or if he was just more authentically amused that night when something was funny, or when he knew something, or when he felt something inside and couldn’t stop his face from showing it. Whatever the reason, it was working for him from the get-go and he got plenty of his wife’s attention.

“Seriously,” Marco stressed after downing a whole heavily laden toast point in one bite. “How did you find out about this place?” He narrowed his eyes at Christina, implying that she wasn’t anywhere near important enough to know about such an interesting and rewarding establishment.

“So there’s this...Well...I guess you could call it almost like an industry magazine,” the rider began. There is no way this won’t sound obnoxious, she lamented to herself. “You can’t subscribe to it. Someone has to recommend you to the publisher, and then-“

“What industry?” Dortmund’s favorite son prodded, brows pinched together and impatience laced throughout his face and his voice.

“Err...”

“Spit it out, Chris,” André laughed. He had no idea what she was talking about, but thought her squirming and discomfort was funny. To him it looked like she was trying very hard to hide something embarrassing, and he couldn’t imagine what it might be. The rosy pink color glowing through her cheeks was nice though. He liked that.

“It’s sort of like...”it” girls,” she said, her voice low. “It’s for girls who get around a lo- Not like that! I don’t mean it that way! Jeez. I mean, like...girls who know a lot of people, and travel a lot to certain places, and have relationships with important people, and...have a lot of money. It’s the female answer to all the spoiled rich guy lifestyle magazines, I guess.” Her shoulders sagged as she struggled to explain the magazine in a way that didn’t sound terrible to her own ears. She didn’t like the idea of being part of the exclusive club she was describing.

“Why is it a secret? What’s in it? Why does it have Düsseldorf restaurants in it? This isn’t exactly a significant place,” Marco pointed out. He was clearly skeptical. André was too. He fixed his girl’s hair down her back and kind of watched her profile with an inadvertently scrutinizing expression on his own.

“It’s not a secret. There are tips and deals in it though, and they’re like...only available to certain people. Imagine a grocery store circular but for the super rich and important. It has places all over the world, and then there’s some features about people and stuff too. It’s a lot of fashion, partying, planes, boats, real estate, cosmetic surgery and the craziest skincare and spa services ever...”

“Who sent it to you?” the uncomfortable equestrian’s partner inquired while she sipped her XO and Sprite in hopes of calming the heat in her cheeks. She read his question differently than he intended. He sounds disappointed in me, Christina decided. He’s using that soft and “but why?” tone he does when he doesn’t understand why I’ve done something he doesn’t like. But I don’t know if it’s because I didn’t tell him, because he thinks this is a Juan thing, or because he thinks I’m turning into the kind of girl who cares about a magazine like that. Hmph. Where is my fried chicken? I’m the kind of girl who goes to the clean eating jungle living room warehouse restaurant and orders the fried chicken. “Hello?”

“Oh. Um. Athina Onassis.”

“Who?” the boys asked in unison.

“She’s the only living heir to Aristotle Onassis.” Look at these idiots. “The Greek shipping tycoon? Once the richest guy in the world? Married to Jackie Kennedy? Is any of this ringing any bells?”

“Maybe?” André squinted into the distance, searching his memory for some thread that could connect him to the people she was talking about. It all sounded a little familiar.

“I know shipping heiresses are more important to Americans but I’m pretty sure everyone knows about the Onassis family.” She side-eyed him back.

“How do you know her?” his teammate asked.

“She rides. She does big stuff but she isn’t very good, which is remarkable actually. If you’re worth $720 million, you should be able to buy a better career, I think,” Christina laughed to herself. “Anyway, I know her husband a little bit. He rides too. He’s better. He’s Brazilian and has Olympic medals and has been around forever. Actually, he’s the one who rode Rio at the Rio Olympics.” That last part was like a thoughtful aside because she’d actually forgotten about it. Onassis’ husband, Doda Miranda, was at every show. She spoke to him all the time and he was courteous enough not to hold any kind of grudge about the horse ending up with her and becoming a better competition mount. They never really talked about him. Doda was one of the riders with whom Christina maintained a more social than professional relationship. That is to say, she was more likely to start a conversation with him about his daughter than his stable. They talked more at the horse show parties than the warm-up ring.

“So you know someone with $720 million?” Marco was still suspicious.

“Yeah, I guess. Athina is really nice. Our beach chairs were next to each other in Miami one morning and we talked a bunch. Lukas loves her.”

“Auba getting private jets to fly him and his friends across Europe to go clubbing doesn’t seem that ridiculous now,” André remarked. Her horse show life is still so foreign to me, he remarked further just to himself. You can’t even get the whole picture when you go to one with her, or even two in a row like last summer. It’s such a big group of people that it’s all different at the different kinds of events. She’s with all these jetsetters when she does the Tour, and the hardcore, tough competitors at the Nations Cup things, and then a mix I guess at World Cups and the other stuff. I wish I could know her circles better, he rued, watching her have some kind of fork fight with his teammate over a zucchini croquette. I go to training, I see the same people every day, and I tell her the highlights. Sometimes I go out with non-football friends, and I tell her about whatever dramas are happening in their lives. It’s more or less always the same. She has a whole private life away from me. Even when it seems like she’s telling me everything when she’s traveling, I always find out about things after that she never mentioned.

“Guys, is Mario alive? I texted him today when I made the mistake of setting up the ice bucket for my leg in my office where there is literally nothing interesting to do for 30 minutes but look at my phone. He didn’t answer. I miss him.” Christina turned her lower lip over and looked from footballer to footballer, hoping to crack one of them. She’d been trying to get information about their friend for weeks- ever since she saw how much Stefanie liked that guy she met in a bar and brought to the cookout, really- and her husband evaded her inquiries in a variety of crafty ways.

“Yeah,” the other one said without making eye contact. “He’s bored too. He can’t do anything. But he’s alive.”

“Are you guys doing enough to support him? Are you talking to him all the time and helping him keep his head up?”

“Yeah of course we talk,” the taller of the two pacey forwards insisted. He looked at her in a way that erased her earlier fear that he was disappointed in her for qualifying as an international “it” girl worthy of the exclusive magazine for that sort of girl. He couldn’t help it. Even as he reflected on the parts of her life that seemed perpetually out of reach for him, a part of her that he knew very well stood out. Christina was, above all else, caring. Mario was far from a significant friend to her and she still cared for him enough to worry when she couldn’t see for herself or be reassured about how he was coping with his health situation, and to be persistent in her quest to make sure he wasn’t neglected. “He has plenty of people supporting him, Prinzessin. I promise. He’s happy being with his family right now.”

“Okay. I want to talk to him next time you have him on the phone though. Can you let me out so I can go pee? I need to make more room in my tummy for food.”

André slid off the comfortable canvas banquette to let her out of the corner, and then watched her wander around the other tables and bamboo and plants to find the restroom. Her rolled, ripped and holey jeans were fairly relaxed in terms of fit, and her sweater was long in the back, so there was no perfect butt to admire from his seat but she was wearing tall heels and her clothes could conceal her shape but not the cadence of her walk. He didn’t like when Christina walked away from him. He liked watching it though.

“She looks good, bro,” Marco said, infringing on his momentary space-out.

“She always looks good,” he mumbled. He unlocked his phone in his lap under the table too.

“Yeah but I’m talking about overall. She’s not so depressed. I personally think she is irresistibly sexy when she’s all moody and depressed, but from a conventional beauty standard, obviously, she is looking good.” The co-captain was still looking at the area where Christina walked through and had long since departed, his face kind of squinching on one side and then the other as he tried to narrate his train of thought. “I was a little bit worried about you two recently. I have everything you tell me over here, on one side, and then what I see of her myself on the other. I think she was doing worse than you thought. Now she’s more like herself though,” he hasted to clarify, lest his friend take offense.

André wasn’t offended, or surprised that Marco noticed a change. His observation just illustrated a concept the newer Bee had already considered: that Christina was indeed more like herself, but that her relationship with him wasn’t exactly “itself” again. He thought she was less at sea in terms of who she was and what she wanted and how she felt about herself. He thought she still didn’t know what she felt about their relationship, or what she wanted to feel about it. As good as things were during her little spell at home, there was a persistent feeling inside of him that his wife was going through the motions. It was the distant looks he caught, like when she smiled and joked around with him about something and then her smile evaporated the second she turned away, almost unnaturally abruptly. It was the lack of intimate pillow talk. Christina didn’t shrink into a tiny ball on her pillow and talk to him in her innocent little girl voice about her most guarded thoughts and issues at night anymore. It was in her insomnia. The busy wife, mom, trainer, rider, and public figure woke up in the middle of the night a lot and disturbed his sleep with her tossing and turning and getting up for water or to use the bathroom. She also never seemed to take advantage of opportunities to sleep late, and only napped when Lukas wanted to nap with her. It was in his inability to make her giggle with sheer joy. It used to happen all the time. She used to erupt into an animated expression of hilarity and happiness that André thought was pure, unadulterated, and adorable delight. Just watching her do it made him feel good. The only time he could remember seeing it in recent past was when Christina was on the phone with Juan. Their day to day relationship was significantly happier and more peaceful than any time in recent memory, without question, but it wasn’t as strong, connected, and rewarding as he knew it could be.

“She’s getting the riding sorted out,” André provided almost dismissively as explanation for his good friend. “The results are getting better so she doesn’t have to keep freaking out and making it worse. Chris is the same as us but worse. You don’t feel normal or good in anything if you’re having a bad time in training or on the pitch. She doesn’t either. Her standards are too high,” he mumbled, still without looking up from his phone. He wasn’t even looking at anything, just scrolling up and down Instagram without really seeing what was there.

“Maybe it’s that,” Marco shrugged in his periphery. “Or maybe it’s that you’re not acting anymore like the sadistic dog owner who has a pet just to enjoy punishing it for misbehaving.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“Is it? I think you liked jerking her around by the chain, maybe just a little? Chris was looking at you like a little puppy trying to follow the rules and do what the master wants, but the master kept expecting her to come faster, and sit more nicely, and wait longer too piss. Control is exciting, bro, I know. There is a rush. Zoe gets off on making people do what she wants. Sometimes I think she would love to physically force Noah to stay in the bathtub, like violently hold him down in the water.” The slightly ginger player smiled in what the other one judged a weirdly fond way for someone talking about his partner hurting his son. “It looked like that at times when you guys were having problems. It sounded like that the few times she called me, like last fall. I told you about it...”

“I don’t like or want to fight with her,” André replied definitively. “I don’t try to control her. It wasn’t about that, ever.” That is completely off base, he reiterated to himself. Shut up, Marco. You’re ruining this place. Everybody else here is oozing chilleria and he’s here being a dick. I know he’s trying to help but c’mon. Shut it.

“Okay, man, fine. You know better than me, obviously.” Marco got the implied message.

Christina returned about 30 seconds before the arrival of her almond meal fried chicken, a roasted vegetable and super green pesto pizza, and balsamic grilled pork chops. That was enough time to show the guys the treasure she found in the bathroom: honey ginger candies, individually wrapped, with an adorable little bee on the packaging. She said it was only natural that a little sweet that good was associated with bees, like them. Her crispy chicken came with some honey too, for the biscuit that shared the plate. They also got sweet potato fries and garlic asparagus for the table, and another round of drinks. Whether André was correct to think that his wife had been phoning it in a little, or hovering just short of authentic happiness, there was no question that she was delighted with the fried chicken. Consuming it appeared to be an orgasmic experience. There was no talking after declaring it “oh my god so good”. He watched her dutifully pull the crunchy brown coating off in just the right proportion with each piece of breast meat and then navigate it into her mouth so that the salty outside hit her tongue first, and watched her use naked pieces of juicy meat to hoover up breading and biscuit crumbs around her plate. No bit of almond meal breading would go to waste. She seemed to hurry in the beginning, unable to eat all the deliciousness fast enough, and then realized she would soon run out and instead wished to savor it.

André was happy that something she wanted actually worked out for her. She’d been looking forward to going to Brody’s for a while, and it was better than expected. He knew Christina was having trouble matching experiences to expectations lately. Even if she never expected much luck in her life because bad things always seemed to stalk the good ones, so much success in the show ring raised her expectations in another way. The rider expected things to work when she went about them in what she believed was the right way, and that wasn’t always happening anymore. Her best wasn’t always good enough for first place. It was somehow trickling down into other things too. Working with Vegas wasn’t going as smoothly as she thought it should, or so she complained each time her partner tried to tell her how much he appreciated being able to watch her work. Lukas wasn’t taking to his new learning games as quickly as she thought he should do so close to his second birthday. Even some of her cooking experiments weren’t turning out for her. Her effort to hide disappointment and frustration was obvious, and completely see-through. André kept reminding himself that their getting along each day and her looking less like a single mother of four with three jobs didn’t mean she was as happy and content as she could be, and that her feeling better about her riding and reasonably satisfied with her trip to North America wasn’t the same as her feeling proud, fulfilled, confident, and hungry for more. A restaurant wasn’t a big deal, but it was still nice to see something deliver on the promise she assigned it.

“Stop eating so much pizza, dude,” she said to Marco, scolding. Evidently only she was allowed to stuff her face. “You have to beat Hoffenheim this weekend. I can’t take Champions League qualifying. You have to finish third.”

“And eating the healthiest pizza I’ve ever seen is going to prevent that how?”

“It’ll slow you down. You’ll bee offside a million times because you have to run early because you know you’re lugging around a pizza gut.”

“He’s offside a million times in every match anyway,” André interjected. His pork chops were delicious too, and guilt-free.

“What gut? I have negative gut,” Marco argued, lifting his button-up shirt to show Christina his stomach. Even slumped on a cushy seat, it was flat, narrow, and defined.

“But pizza is heavy! It sits in your tummy for days!”

“That’s just because you are very small and you eat too much, Prinzessin.” The injured BVB forward reached over to poke her stomach. It was full of Sprite bubbles, free appetizers, and salty chicken, and he was sure she would be uncomfortable and plaintive later.

“Zoe tried to make cauliflower crust pizza for Noah the other day because his girlfriend’s nanny makes gluten-“

“Wait, his girlfriend? Noah has a girlfriend? He’s three.”

“Of course he has a girlfriend. This is his second one,” Marco scoffed. “He broke it off with the first one because she was stingy with toys. He picks up girls at the gym.”

“What?” Christina finally stopped eating, so great was her surprise and confusion. I clearly don’t talk to Zoe enough, she decided.

“He goes to this little kid gym a few times a week. It’s basically just a padded room full of sports equipment and they turn 20 kids loose to do whatever they want. They’re supposed to have organized games but I think it must be impossible to get 20 three-year-olds to play team sport,” the player explained. “No meets girls and they get attached, and then Zoe or the nanny has to set up playdates with the girl’s mom. Right now he’s going with a blonde a bit older than him. He likes her braids. They ride bikes together and play fetch with Higgins. Anyway, whenever he goes over to her house, the nanny- who is soooooooo hot by the way-“

“Okay you have a nanny fetish. Seriously. Stay away from the nannies. Are you sure Zoe keeps firing yours because they’re bad nannies, or is it just because you flirt with them?” Christina narrowed her eyes at him and then looked at André for support.

“No I don’t. So the hot nanny makes gluten-free pizza with carrot pepperoni. I don’t know what that is. I don’t know how you make carrot into pepperoni. Noah loves it though and every time Zoe asks him what he wants to eat he says Kat’s pizza. That’s the nanny, Kat. Kat told her she was giving the kids gluten-free pizza the first time Zoe took him there. Apparently most people clear the playdate menu with the other parents or nannies ahead of time? So Zoe started looking up gluten-free pizza when Noah kept saying he wanted Kat’s pizza, and instead of finding the ones that are still like bread, like this one, she found the cauliflower crust. We found out quickly that No’s stomach doesn’t like cauliflower,” Marco laughed. “It got so big. I was afraid it was going to explode. It was all gas. He couldn’t stop with the gas, and his stomach made so much noise, and he was crying because it was so bad. You know in Willy Wonka when the kid blows up into a grape? His stomach was like that. It was funny but disgusting, and I felt terrible for him. We don’t give him cooked cauliflower now. It seems okay if he has a few bites of the raw kind.”

“Poor kid. Lukas got Schü’s stomach. He can and will eat pretty much anything. I try to make new stuff for him and he eats it whether it’s good or not. I really want to do something special for his birthday but I don’t know what. I don’t know what kind of cake would delight a two-year old. I was thinking maybe like one hidden under a chocolate dome so I can use syrup to melt it? If you were two, would you be amazed by that?”

“I’m like 15-times his age and I’m amazed by it,” André piped up.

“Yeah but he’s more sophisticated than you, babe,” Christina teased. He didn’t appreciate it.

“I’m sure all he wants for his birthday is for you to actually be here to celebrate it with him instead of putting it off a week because of a horse show, again.” He kept his eyes on his food, but still caught the daggers Marco shot across the corner of the table at him.

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easyfoodnetwork · 4 years

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Not as long as factory farming is still a part of the food supply chain, anyway In the middle of July, Impossible: The Cookbook, a compendium of recipes designed to showcase the plant-based meat engineered by Impossible Foods, was launched with grimly impeccable timing: Four months into the COVID-19 pandemic, meat shortages and revelations about the terrible conditions in meat processing facilities, where the virus had infected more than 25,000 workers nationwide, had cast an unforgiving light on the country’s industrial meat industry. Impossible insists there is a better, highly versatile alternative to meat consumption, embodied in recipes like Kwame Onwuachi’s Ethiopian spiced meat with hummus and toasted cashews, where crumbled Impossible Burger takes the place of more traditional ground lamb. It is one of 40 recipes from a slew of well-respected chefs that demonstrate that the only limitation to what you can do with Impossible’s faux flesh is your own imagination. The word “vegan” is conspicuously absent from the cookbook’s introduction, which instead proclaims that the book is “for people who love meat.” This is the kind of crafty messaging that has defined Impossible since July 2016, when the company launched its signature “bleeding” ersatz beef patty: This may be vegan meat, but it is designed to appeal to actual meat eaters. It’s clearly working: By early May of this year, sales of its products had shot up 264 percent since March. The Impossible Foods story has been told many, many times since the company launched in 2011. It’s become a juggernaut with almost $1.5 billion in funding, a grocery store footprint that is 30 times larger than it was six months ago, and like any good tech unicorn, a proper direct-to-consumer website. Given Impossible’s projected growth, expanding product line (Impossible sausage was introduced in June), and compelling pitch (“We’re making meat,” the cookbook reads, “mouthwatering, craveable, nutritious meat — from plants” that “requires 87 percent less water and 96 percent less land to produce” than a conventional burger), it is tempting to think that plant-based meat is the way of the future. Impossible: The Cookbook suggests that it is not merely a possibility, but an inevitability, the only direction in which progress points. Impossible Foods CEO Pat Brown implied as much in an interview last year. “We are dead serious,” he said, “about our mission to eliminate the need for animals in the food chain by 2035.” With a subtitle proclaiming “How to Save Our Planet, One Delicious Meal at a Time,” the cookbook — and, by extension, Impossible Foods — is promising no less than a brighter tomorrow that will be built upon patties wrought of soy and potato protein, disgorged on an endless assembly line monitored by contented, fairly compensated workers as happy cows roam on distant fields, free to live out their natural lives. The strongest case for the vegan supply chain can be made by considering not what it is, but what it isn’t. The vegan supply chain isn’t factory farms, industrial livestock operations that house thousands of animals under one roof, often in miserable conditions that are not only inhumane but also terrible for the environment. Among other things, these farms generate about 70 percent of the country’s ammonia emissions and 14.5 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, contribute to deforestation, and create lagoons of animal waste that pollute the environment and sicken people in surrounding communities. The vegan supply chain also isn’t slaughterhouses or meat processing plants, where low-paid, often immigrant workers toil shoulder-to-shoulder in physically grueling conditions ripe for spreading COVID-19. And, although this should be obvious, the vegan supply chain is not one built upon abject animal suffering and exploitation. Compared to that, the vegan supply chain looks pretty good, and Impossible Foods is hardly the only voice arguing that going vegan can save the planet. In 2018, the journal Science published the results of a comprehensive analysis of the environmental impact of 40,000 farms in 119 countries. It found that while meat and dairy supplied just 18 percent of food calories and 37 percent of protein, they used 83 percent of farmland — and produced 60 percent of agricultural greenhouse gas emissions. The upshot, as the study’s lead researcher told the Guardian, was that a “vegan diet is probably the single biggest way to reduce your impact on planet Earth, not just greenhouse gases, but global acidification, eutrophication, land use, and water use.” And last year, a report by the United Nations body on climate science concluded that reducing meat consumption in favor of plant-based diets could have a significant positive impact on our ability to fight climate change. The vegan supply chain is not necessarily the One Weird Trick for solving all of our environmental and moral problems. But while there is very little doubt that eating less meat and dairy is better for humanity’s chances of long-term survival in our current home, the vegan supply chain on its own is not necessarily the One Weird Trick for solving all of our environmental and moral problems. Like any agricultural supply chain, it is not automatically virtuous, much less neutral in its environmental impact. To examine some of the issues surrounding the vegan supply chain is to understand why a truly sustainable and ethical food supply chain is defined by more than simply what it is not. It is also to acknowledge that reforming the way we grow our food requires a truly systemic approach. Even if we do accept that fake meat is the way of the more enlightened future, we still have to ask where, how, and by whom each of its ingredients is being grown and then processed, how the factory where it’s being mass-produced is being powered and how much greenhouse gas emissions it produces, and how much greenhouse gas is in turn produced by the different operations that supply the fake meat’s various ingredients, and packaging, and on and on forever more. Every step of the industrial supply chain — vegan or not — is fraught with these considerations, as well as more vexing questions than encouraging answers. Take, for example, the soybean, a crop whose byproducts are ubiquitous ingredients in processed foods, both vegan and otherwise. The vast majority of the world’s soy — over 70 percent — is grown for livestock feed, which is why the growing demand for meat, particularly in China, has helped to double global soy production in the past two decades. It is soy grown for livestock feed, not vegan foods, that is a driver of deforestation in South America and its concomitant displacement of Indigenous communities and small farmers. While only a tiny percentage of soy grown worldwide is for human consumption, the presence of soy in many vegan processed foods means that it is still necessary to ask where that soy comes from, and to question the practices used to grow it. Impossible Foods itself has been criticized for its use of soy, specifically the genetically modified soy in its burger. A host of controversies surrounds GMO soy, but Impossible Foods has defended its GMO ingredients by pointing out that its use of genetically modified soy is more environmentally sustainable than harvesting non-GMO soy, and, moreover, is safe for human consumption. Along with soy, palm oil and cashews are ingredients that regularly appear in many vegan foods. Increasing demand for both presents a conundrum for anyone concerned about sustainable eating. Palm oil shows up in about 50 percent of consumer goods, including processed vegan foods like margarine, cookies, and ice cream. Palm oil plantations have been linked to numerous environmental and human rights issues, such as biodiversity loss and deforestation, and human rights abuses in Thailand and Indonesia. The cashew, a foundational ingredient in many vegan dairy products, has been linked to human rights violations in Vietnam, the world’s leading cashew exporter. While some of the more egregious practices, such as the use of forced labor at processing facilities, have been curbed, the difficulties of tracking the cashew supply chain (cashews are often grown in one country, processed in another) mean that it’s possible for worker abuses, such as poverty-line wages and the use of child labor, to go undetected. And the cashew isn’t the only nut with issues: Almond production, for example, requires huge amounts of water, a problem exacerbated by the surging market for almond milk products. In other words, no matter the crop being grown, there is the persistent issue of how farm laborers and the land they work are mistreated: Whether it is agricultural slavery on Florida tomato farms or illegal deforestation driven by Mexico’s growing avocado trade — which has also attracted the involvement and attendant violence of organized crime — the produce industry is rife with its own exploitative and abusive practices. And that doesn’t even begin to touch on the greenhouse gas emissions produced by plant-based agriculture, whether from artificial fertilizers or practices such as tilling the fields or the transport of produce around the globe. To look at an Impossible Burger, or any industrial food, is to see a myriad of potentially troublesome links in the supply chain. Which is not to say that it’s impossible, so to speak, to have an ethical and sustainable supply chain. But the demands of capitalism — specifically that for food produced cheaply and at great volume in order to yield a profit — frequently undermine that goal. It’s a challenge that is further compounded by the imperative to feed a growing global population, and the varying standards for what it actually means to be ethical and sustainable at every level of the supply chain, vegan or not. Although switching to plant-based meat offers numerous environmental benefits, the companies that make it must find a way to reconcile the need to scale and make money with the practice of how to do so responsibly. Even if the Impossible promise turns out to be true, that we can indeed have a perfectly virtuous vegan supply chain engineered by a hegemonic tech company, there is still one inconvenient fact: For any number of reasons — whether cultural or economic — the majority of people on the planet prefer to eat meat and will not give it up willingly, and that will remain the case perhaps even after plant-based meat is a truly perfect simulacrum of the real thing. There are emerging alternatives. While they aren’t vegan, they do have the potential to accomplish the same goals as plant-based meat, perhaps some even more successfully. The need to create more sustainable alternatives to meat, combined with the preference of many people to continue eating it, has created a potentially lucrative opening for the cell-based, or cultured meat industry, whose inherent promise is meat without all of its accompanying demons. The industry began to get attention in 2013, when a Maastricht University professor named Mark Post successfully made a burger from cow stem cells he had grown into strips of muscle fiber. Since then, a number of cultured meat startups have popped up around the world, growing everything from meatballs to gelatin to seafood. Some observers are bullish about the industry’s potential: Last year, the consulting firm Kearney released a report predicting that by 2040, 60 percent of the world’s meat will be lab-grown or plant-based. The least terrible option for meat eaters is to support farms that raise animals using sustainable and humane practices. Cultured meat offers many potential advantages over both conventional and vegan meat, sustainability-wise: Whereas similar ingredients are used to produce both conventional and vegan meat (i.e. soy, potatoes, wheat, and water), cultured meat needs only a diet consisting predominantly of amino acids and glucose — ingredients grown in labs, rather than in resource-intensive fields. The challenge, though, is producing it at scale, and doing so affordably; according to the Kearney report, the cost of cultured meat was $80 per 100 grams in 2018, versus conventional beef’s 80 cents per 100 grams (a number that reflects the way the industrial meat industry benefits from cheap grain, cheap labor, and direct and indirect government subsidies). While industry experts forecast that cost will be cut to less than $4 per 100 grams in the next 12 years, there are still plenty of hurdles to overcome, such as regulatory approvals and consumer acceptance. Cultured meat may indeed be one way toward a more environmentally sustainable future, but that future remains relatively distant and highly speculative. For now, perhaps the least terrible option for recalcitrant meat eaters who care about the environment and have the privilege of choice is to support the small, independent farms that raise animals using sustainable and humane practices. Nearly 100 percent of most livestock raised for consumption lives on factory farms. There’s little doubt that small farms can be a more sustainable alternative — one that should be combined with an even more sustainable alternative, which is just to eat less meat. Decreased consumption leads to decreased demand and, in turn, to decreased production. But given that global meat production is projected to be 16 percent higher in 2025 than it was a decade prior, this seems as unrealistic as the likelihood of McDonald’s rolling out cell-cultured Big Macs in time for Christmas. Rather than looking at the sustainable food supply chain of the future as an all-or-nothing scenario — one that either involves animal products or doesn’t — it’s perhaps more practical to take a holistic view, one that acknowledges the dizzying complexities of food production, as well as the varying definitions and measures of “sustainability.” Put another way, there is no single correct approach to fixing our problems, something illustrated by a 2017 study about the potential of organic agriculture to create a more sustainable food system. A 100 percent conversion to organic agriculture wouldn’t do it, the study found — among other problems, organic farming would require more farmland than its conventional counterpart. A more sustainable scenario, the study concluded, would combine organic agriculture with reductions in food waste and the amount of food used for livestock, along with a corresponding reduction in the production and consumption of meat. Even supposing there is no magic bullet, there does seem to be one obvious thing we could do to build a more sustainable supply chain: stop factory farming. Because while livestock farming can be sustainable and even ethical, particularly if it’s done on a smaller scale and using practices that favor the environment and human and animal welfare, there is nothing sustainable about the industrial livestock industry. And if climate change, environmental degradation, and worker and animal abuses haven’t given us reasons enough to find a better way forward, then the COVID-19 pandemic has provided yet another compelling reason by highlighting the ways that factory farms, with their overcrowded, unsanitary conditions ripe for spreading disease and promoting antibiotic resistance, may put us at risk for future pandemics. The call to end factory farming is gaining momentum: Last December, Sen. Cory Booker introduced legislation that would place a moratorium on large industrial animal operations and phase out the biggest ones by 2040. Crucially, the proposed bill also calls for strengthening protections for the family farmers and ranchers who cannot compete with these large-scale operations and are often forced into exploitative contracts with the corporations that control the meat industry. This kind of support for small, independent farmers is at the heart of what the ethical and sustainable supply chain of the future entails: It is not so much about vegan eating as it is about creating systems that enable farming that is humane for the environment, people, and animals. Plant-based meat can be part of that, and should be — provided that the companies that manufacture it are actively invested in creating a system whose concept of ethics and sustainability goes beyond being simply the lesser of two evils. from Eater - All https://ift.tt/32O5Kn1

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