Trending: unconscious
Food trends, like all trends, are a result of our collective search for quick and easy solutions to the everyday concerns of life that we'd rather not spend time or mental energy on. Effectively a food version of Steve Jobs and his black pullovers. He's said to have worn them daily to free up more mental energy for creating the Apple Brand/Cult.
I spend way too much time and energy deciding what to wear, especially with a hangover, so I get it! It's a simple trade-off: am I ok with wearing a black pullover every day of my life vs am I willing to spend energy on dressing better? We all look for simplification because it makes things easy and we do love easy. But the problem is that anything done thoughtlessly is always going to have an inferior outcome.
False trade-offs
Quinoa vs meat
In one corner we have humanitarians calling attention to the impact the popularity of quinoa → has on the poor in the countries where it's farmed. In the other are animal rights activists like PETA explaining that quinoa is more ethical → than factory-farmed cattle.
From my perspective, in both cases, the negative impact comes from how prone we are to jumping on trend bandwagons, both as consumers and capitalists looking for profit. The big problem with cattle farming is mass demand for meat and thoughtless consumption. The problem with quinoa farming is mass demand for it and thoughtless consumption. So to me, forsaking all animal products in favour of the next trend just shifts the problem, which is our human urge to follow the crowd. A behavioural economics concept known, funnily enough, as 'herding'.
Avocados: daily vs banned
Vegan cafes in Iceland, all-avocado eateries in Amsterdam, low-carb crazes in Cape Town, festival food: avos are a one-stop meal shop for all kinds of trends → all over the world. And an environmental and social disaster → for the big producing regions.
Just as thoughtlessly abandoning an old favourite for a new trend doesn't make a lot of sense to me, neither does blindly eliminating a highly nutritious newly popular food, as some UK restaurants have → done with avocados. The issue isn't eating avocados, it's our obsession with it. Neither quinoa nor avocados need to be consumed daily as a meat replacement - meat itself doesn't need to be consumed daily! And if you're not eating it to replace meat, is an avo every day really going to keep the doctor away?
When the food tech company I used to work for assessed everyone's ordering behaviour, it emerged that I was eating 5-6kg of avos a month! I defended my obsession arguing that it was healthy, especially as I've had to give up so many salad ingredients on this journey. Leave me my avo! ... On rye for breakfast, in salad for lunch, as a side for dinner and as a cookaround for dessert. Bestie pointed out that nobody needed that much "health" and that obsession isn't love.
Local vs global
Buying local reduces the carbon impact of transportation and supports local producers. Seems a no-brainer. But when local demand for produce rachets up and can't be sustainably met, something's got to give: go global VS intensive, damaging local farming.
The seasonal aspect of sustainability is difficult for me. I love avocados and as such, of course I want them all year round. When they're sitting there, staring at me longingly from the fresh produce aisle, it's hard to reject their juicy advances, despite their foreign heritage. Pre-Brexit, I could argue that choosing Spanish over South American was still keeping it kind of local. But politics and economics aside, local vs global isn't the point. Spanish farmers are under pressure to feed sustainably-minded European and UK consumers all year round and are resorting to damaging farming practices →.
"We always defend that products should be local, but not at any cost."
Javier Egea, Ecologists in Action
In the UK there is much debate about imported meat vs British farmed. The sustainability comparisons unfairly penalise small, sustainable farms along with the high environmental impact mass-producing behemoths. But aside from that, to me the debate again misses the point.
Animal products are as seasonal as fruit and veg.
When I eventually managed to move on from the unseasonal fruit and veg temptations, it hadn't even occurred to me to consider the seasonality of anything on offer in the meat section that followed. But when you do stop to think, it's quite obvious. There are times in the year that animals breed, which means that having fresh meat available throughout the year requires either unnatural breeding methods or importation →. To make matters worse, the bulk of production doesn't always coincide with big demand times, such as Easter. And then there's shoppers tastes to cater to - the cuts of meat locals want more of. It's clear that our consumption demands drive much of the "need" in these damaging cycles.
Eat less. Eat seasonally. Eat sustainably.
Everything in moderation is BS in my opinion. Love in moderation sounds awful. But so does love in extremes. We all have stories, either our own or others, of extreme and destructive passions. I believe that love is, above all else, respectful and that it serves to lift those who experience it, not destroy. It's much the same for food. All food.
Sustainable farming can have a positive impact!
Pasture-based farming can be an extremely efficient and appropriate way to provide high quality protein and nutrients. With support and the income to continuously improve science and tech-based farming methods, Sustainable Food Trust → says "farmers will be able to prove what is already known anecdotally - that grasslands can operate as a carbon sink and farming operations can be a net carbon gain".
Either/or vs neither/nor
Leather supports cattle farming, an industry known to cause environmental destruction and animal suffering. Mass-produced vegan fabrics → such as cotton, polyester → and nylon are known to cause environmental destruction and human injury or illness →.
Veganism has become mainstream. And for mainstream, read fashionable, oversimplified and profitable. At what cost? While conscious vegans are putting in the effort to look under the hood, the intense complexity and impracticality of being truly sustainable is a barrier that most consumers gloss over by simply buying or ordering whatever is labelled "vegan". Ka Ching. That's all self-serving opportunists need to do.
Vegan ≆ sustainable
When I started looking under the hood, I was overwhelmed too. Going beyond the simple trade-offs like meat vs vegan made me feel like running screaming as I encountered sustainability landmines on both sides of the fence. My efforts trying to avoid them when choosing a tote bag ended up in a frustrating and painful situation involving a sturdy-looking bag made of paper → breaking 1 day into my first remote working adventure in Turkey. Fine. Perhaps my heap of remote working paraphenalia wasn't what it was intended for, but the neither/nor approach of painting whole industries with good or bad brushes doesn't work for me.