Food Tech is Eating the World
plus hot girls drinks catawba wine
It’s been a minute, folks! The past few weeks have been exceedingly busy for me. But they also have been exceedingly good: I ate and drank my way through San Francisco, and also toured Stanford for the first time (!!!). I am so excited to spend the next sixish years there, and to continue exploring all bookstores and bites the Bay Area has to offer.
While there, I was lucky enough to be invited to give a lecture for Professor Londa Schiebinger’s class on plants, medicine, and empire. For those who haven’t heard me wax on and on about her book on the subject, she writes about the intersections of gender, history of science, and imperialism. I spoke for about 45 minutes to her students on the topic of colonial foodways. I traced the history of the potato’s introduction to India, from the “Columbian Exchange” to today, and I also showed how Carolina rice moved from West Africa to the Carolina Lowcountry, smuggled in the hair of enslaved women, and was subsequently introduced by British imperialists to the Indian subcontinent in the hopes it would ameliorate the impacts of famine.
Speaking with these students (most of whom were sophomores studying Science and Technology Studies) reminded me of how earth-shattering global history can seem at its first encounter, full of explanatory potential and the ability to break down long-held cultural myths. The history of seemingly simple dishes like aloo gobi or masala dosa, as I argued to students, reveals a longer history of imperial ideals and failures, as well as concomitant environmental and cultural changes. I’m not sure exactly what form my dissertation will take, but after speaking with these students, I am feeling so invigorated and ready to continue exploring the possibilities and perils of this sort of global food history.
This week, the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems released their new report titled “The Politics of Protein: Examining Claims about Livestock, Fish, ‘Alternative Proteins,’ and Sustainability.” If you haven’t read it in full, you can check it out here. The report takes the contentious topic of protein head-on: it reads, “Discussion is characterized by bold and conflicting claims, as industry groups, philanthro-capitalists, influential media figures, and many others weigh into the debate. Their claims offer competing visions of what problems need to be addressed, and how they should be solved.”
These “bold and conflicting claims” tend to be characterized by a few narrow understandings of the food system, including the reduction of sustainability to greenhouse gas emissions to the exclusion of other problems including biodiversity, chemical pollution, land degradation, and more; the “failure to differentiate between world regions” that fails to understand “the realities of food insecurity and livelihood challenges in many parts of the world”; and the failure to consider the power dynamics of the food system. These lenses lead many to champion a few misleading “simple silver bullet solutions,” including the idea that “‘alternative proteins’ are a win-win-win for animals, people, and the planet,” and that “technological advances can rapidly reduce the negative impacts of livestock.”
Food writers more eloquent than I have been noting this for a long time, but let me just put it bluntly: I do not believe food tech will save the world. As Civil Eats argued in response to the IPES report, “the idea that these alternative proteins can save the planet is highly speculative,” based on a “narrow assessment of which products can deliver the most protein for the least CO2.” And, even if “plant-based meat” may be better in terms of GHG emissions, this obfuscates the full story: “Products like the Impossible Burger and Beyond Burger source their ingredients from chemical-intensive (and therefore fossil fuel-intensive) monocultures and rely on heavy processing—all of which has major impacts on human health, biodiversity, and climate change,” as Civil Eats noted. And, let’s just point out the fact that most of the “plant-based meat” on the market is being shilled by corporate food giants, intent on maintaining profits at all cost.
What, then, is the way forward? First, as IPES notes, we should probably stop valorizing protein at the expense of all other nutrients, which stems more from “flawed marketing and nutritional campaigns” than actual need. We need to start measuring all aspects of sustainability, not simply isolating greenhouse emissions. We need to address the root cause of the system: the issue is not that we need more protein-enriched foods, but rather systemic poverty and access to nutritious diets. And, we should probably think more imaginatively about our food systems as we move away from rampant meat (and proto-meat) consumption, to draw on the argument of food writer Alicia Kennedy. As the IPES report concludes, “Underpinning all of these recommendations is the need to widen our lenses and open the door to truly transformative reform pathways.” Without that imagination, we will continue to be stuck in our narrow—and pernicious— mindset.
Other food-related pieces occupying my mind:
Passover starts this week, and I loved this important piece on Black American Jewish traditions at the seder table.
This article about a bread-maker in Ukraine continuing to bake in light of current attacks by Russia is both poignant and devastating, and demonstrates the critical role food plays beyond mere nutrition.
This Civil Eats piece on pesticide-coated seeds highlighted the problems of a simple binary between the “natural” (coded as good) and “unnatural” (coded as bad).
In my quest to learn more about the catawba grape (a hybrid between Vitis vinifera, the typical wine grape used in Europe, and Vitis labrusca, a grape indigenous to North America), I was put in touch with Phil Plummer, the winemaker at Montezuma Winery in the Finger Lakes region of New York. He very kindly sent me a few catawba wines to try (which I think officially makes me a wine influencer).
This was a sparkling catawba wine, which was actually one of the first commercial wine styles available in the United States (Henry Longfellow actually wrote an ode to this type of wine). While this style fell out of favor after Prohibition devastated the Midwest and East Coast wine industries, Phil and others are trying to bring it back (more on that soon in a piece I am writing for Civil Eats!). Phil made this wine in the same style as champagne. It won’t be sold commercially until it is aged more, but I loved trying this early rendition. To me, it tasted like a strawberry piquette with a little bit of salt (perhaps from the yeast). And, the color, as you can see, was absolutely gorgeous. Stay tuned for more tastings of catawba wine!
Here is a brief update on some of the food-related work I’ve been engaging in lately:
I was asked to review a new book on wine in the British Empire for Gastronomica, so I am making my way through that now.
This summer, I am presenting my work on instant coffee and the robusta plant at the Oxford Food Symposium, so I am just starting to work on a draft of that.
My article on toddy, which I hope to submit to a peer-reviewed journal sometime this summer, is beginning to come together!
And, a few other miscellaneous projects (yes, I am a little stressed about all this): I am working on an article co-written with my colleagues from the Folger Shakespeare Library on the chili pepper and disgust for a special issue of Global Food History, my digital humanities narrative on maize will come out with the Plant Humanities Lab next month, and I am working on a more historically oriented piece on catawba grapes for Arnoldia Magazine.
Thank you all, as always, for reading. This week, I am pickling some more daikon radishes which I got in my CSA. I made this recipe last week and it was so easy and good! I can’t stop munching on them.
Love, Julia