Nourishment, nonsense, & not giving up
Because Fear Can’t Be the Only Story
For the umpteenth time, I dearly wish we lived in boring times.
We started the week with Spain and Portugal suddenly going dark. I know people who didn’t have electricity or internet for 24 hours. I also know folks who were counting their Euros to see if they could buy dinner because card machines and ATMs were not working.
Then there was the dreaded milestone of the One Hundred Days of Ineptitude as well as the interventions of a former head of state with fossil fuel interests and a big mouth.
But hey, we are bombarded with bad news, all day, every day. So this week, I’m turning to developments that are more heartening and give us hope. So congratulations Canada!
Also, I’m in Geneva next week for work. If you’re there doing food systems stuff or have tips on where to get tasty food that doesn’t break the bank, drop me a line.
In 2004, I came across “The Power of Nightmares”, a three-part Adam Curtis documentary charting the rise of two movements - the neoconservatives and radical Islam - and how the former uses the latter to sow fear.
I found the documentary fascinating but wasn’t fully convinced by all the arguments.
However, one key premise did: that governments, who used to come to power promising riches, comfort, and a better life, now canvass for votes promising protection from the nightmares, the terror, and the enemies out to destroy our way of life. It posited that fear is now the dominant force in modern politics.
That was 21 years ago. It feels like fear has become even more pervasive in our daily lives. How do we change that? Can we?
I don’t know, but one way I try to overcome it is to remember that no matter how bleak things look or how impossible it sounds, many of us do live in better times than our forefathers. Learning about the developments below helps, too.
Norway leads the way
On Apr 25, Norway dropped this piece of exciting news: it is banning the marketing of unhealthy food and drinks to children.
The products affected include things medical experts consider the most unhealthy: candy, soft drinks, ice cream and energy drinks. For cereals, yogurt and fast food, the level of ingredients like sugar and dietary fibre will determine whether they can be marketed to children. You can see the full product categories here (in Norwegian).
You will still be able to find these products on the shelves, it’s just that marketing them will now be illegal. What does this mean?
Well, if DeepL is correct, this means “advertising in cinemas in connection with films that are specifically aimed at children under 13 years of age, and that start before 18:30; competitions with an age limit lower than 18 years; and distribution of tastings and product samples to children”.
There are some exceptions to the ban, including sponsorship for non-profit purposes but only for certain product categories.
The regulation, which protect all children up to the age of 18, came into force on Apr 25 but there is a transition period of six months to give the industry time to adapt to the regulation, so it will take full effect on Oct 25.
“We are taking responsibility and ensuring that fewer children are exposed to negative pressure that lead to an unhealthy diet, which in turn can be harmful to their health,” Minister of Health and Care Services Jan Christian Vestre was quoted as saying in the press release.
As can be expected, public health advocates have applauded the move, which seems to go further than those currently in place in any other country.
In the UK, the Tory government had committed to a ban on junk food adverts on TV in 2021 but it was delayed at least twice. The Labour government has confirmed it will finally come into effect this October. A ban on junk food advertising in outdoor spaces has also faced push back from the advertising industry, as per the BMJ.
Numerous studies have shown a link between advertising and consumption of unhealthy foods, especially for children. This recent one, for example, looked at 77,000 U.S. households over a nine-year period and found that advertising drives sales of high-sugar cereals when it’s aimed directly at kids under 12, but not when it targets adults.
So hooray to Norway!
Call out corporate corruption in health
When corporations use their powers to shape regulations and exploit intellectual property rules “in ways that harm human and planetary health”, such behaviour should be labelled as corruption, said this intriguing commentary for The Lancet.
“The tobacco and ultra-processed food industries exemplify the detrimental effects of corporate influence on public health. For decades, tobacco companies lobbied aggressively against health regulations, contributing to millions of preventable deaths worldwide. Despite still causing more than 8 million tobacco-related deaths annually, the tobacco industry now claims through its public-relations campaigns and selective science that it focuses on “harm reduction”, particularly by selling new products such as e-cigarettes.”
“These tactics allow the industry to argue that it deserves a seat at the policy table, all while shifting to new types of addictive and harmful products, targeting youth, and continuing to oppose tobacco control,” wrote the authors from the Faculty of Public Health & Policy at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.
They gave three reasons for calling these actions “corruption”: moral, political, and legal, and point to The Transparency International’s definition of corruption - “the abuse of entrusted power for private gain” - as what Big Food, Big Oil, et al, have been doing.
“Moving beyond euphemisms such as unethical business practices and explicitly calling out corruption would allow society to play a more active part in safeguarding population and planetary health, addressing the structural conditions that enable corporate actors to behave as they do.”
Get ready for plant-based eggs in Europe
Just Egg, a plant-based egg made with mung beans - which tastes much better than it sounds - is coming this way!
The offering from Californian company Eat Just will begin manufacturing in Europe later this year after striking a deal with the UK’s Vegan Food Group (VFG), where the latter will be the exclusive manufacturer and distributor.
According to Green Queen, Just Egg will be produced in a facility in Lüneburg, Germany (the largest dedicated plant-based factory in Europe), with a capacity to produce the equivalent of 500 million eggs per year.
I had snacks made with Just Egg when I was in DC a few years ago and was pleasantly surprised by how good they were and had often wondered why they haven’t reached us.
The news come at a challenging time for alternative proteins, which have received quite a bit of bad press lately. Cultivated meat in particularly has come in for a drubbing.
Still, plant-based eggs seem to be doing quite well in the U.S., given the price spike of conventional eggs. Just Egg’s sales grew five times faster in January 2025 compared to the previous year and 91% of households purchasing them are apparently not vegetarian or vegan, according to industry think-tank the Good Food Institute (GFI).
Also, global sales for plant-based products in 2024 went up by 5% despite dropping by 4% in the U.S., the same report by GFI said.
Will that soon include proteins made from air? Maybe! Solar Foods, a Finnish start-up I wrote about in 2019, announced last week it has developed a salty caramel flavoured protein shake made with Solein, made through a precision fermentation process using only air and electricity.
A win for the peas
Continuing with the plant-based theme, here’s an analysis from the World Resources Institute (WRI) for those of you already on the non-dairy bandwagon, whether for environmental, taste, or allergy reasons.
We know dairy milk has the biggest environmental footprint when it comes to three key measures: greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs), water use, and land use.
But what about the others? Do the screeching headlines in the Daily Mail and The Sun about how soy, oat, and almond milks are killing our forests and animals have some grain of truth in them?
The folks at WRI looked at milk from cow, soy, oat, almond, pea and the refrigerated or boxed variety of coconut milk, and compared their average GHGs, average water use, and average protein content. The surprising winner? Pea milk, even though the data for water usage wasn’t available!
In general: “Plant-based milks on average generate roughly one-third or less of the greenhouse gas emissions of cow’s milk, and most use considerably less water.”
Morocco’s cannbis legalisation journey continues
Did you know that Morocco has been one of the world’s largest producers of illicit cannabis globally?
I didn’t either, until I interviewed Raouf Farrah, Senior Analyst at the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime, who told me how farming cannabis is deeply woven into the social and economic fabric of the country, especially in the remote and mountainous northeastern region of Rif.
Rif also happens to be an economically and politically marginalised area where this is an important livelihood, providing much-needed income in the absence of other opportunities. It’s also a region where the topography, climate, and soil are ideal for a specific type of cannabis, said Raouf.
The government is trying to change this, by legalising the cultivation of cannabis for medical, pharmaceutical and industrial purposes through a law enacted in 2021.
This is an important and much-needed step that will help farmers in places like Rif. Still, there are many challenges, not least the fact that legal cultivation is still very small and a vast majority of cultivated areas remain in the hands of the illicit economy.
Raouf, who also wrote about this issue here, sees the law as an important step in “reconciliation” for farming communities that have traditionally been underserved and said it must also ensure equity and inclusion.
Baby steps in the U.S.
Synthetic food dyes, including those “used widely across hundreds of thousands of products, from cereals and drinks to chips and candy” could be out of the U.S. food supply by the end of next year, Helena Bottemiller Evich reported in her newsletter, Food Fix.
Some studies have found a link between some artificial food dyes and behavioural issues. Here’s an NYT piece explaining what the research show.
Despite what many headlines say, Helena and Marion Nestle (the OG of food politics) pointed out that none of the dyes have been banned. It’s more like… the industry has been put on notice.
“The agency announced Tuesday that it was “establishing a national standard and timeline for the food industry to transition from petrochemical-based dyes to natural alternatives.” This was broadly misunderstood to mean food dyes had been banned, but that’s not what happened,” wrote Helena.
“To ban synthetic food dyes, FDA (the Food and Drug Administration) would need to go through a regulatory process and make a scientific case for why they should be banned. The agency has not done that, at least not yet.”
There’s also some confusion over whether the industry has agreed to a timeline to eliminate these dyes, with RFK Jr initially saying they have, and journalists, including Helena, saying they haven’t.
Marion, who says she’s “greatly in favour” of removing the dyes, actually found the official announcement to be fairly weak, pointing to language like “working with industry” and “requesting food companies” to do this.
“Food companies have never done anything voluntarily that they didn’t have to. No company wants to go first and risk losing market share. Food companies need a firm, mandated level playing field. Despite the rhetoric, this does not do that.”
Still, baby steps, eh?
Thin’s Pickings: The LinkedIn Edition
We Must Remember… or What? - Nic Dunlop
Nic is a friend and a brilliant photographer and film maker whose work and ethos I admire. This is a beautiful and thought-provoking piece on the 50th anniversary of the fall of Cambodia to the Khmer Rouge on Apr 17, which unleashed one of the worst genocides in history that left 2 million people dead or missing.
He wrote about how the Khmer Rouge used language to dehumanise their enemies, calling them “reactionaries”, “parasites”, or “enemies of the people”, and compared it to what Israeli officials are doing today.
“This is how genocide is done - not just through bombs and bullets, but through the slow corrosion of empathy.”
Nic should know. He tracked down Duch, the Khmer Rouge’s chief executioner who presided over the torture and killings of up to 20,000 people at the Tuol Sleng interrogation centre. In 2010, Duch became the first senior Khmer Rouge leader to be convicted by a UN-backed tribunal.
He said what now…?? - Sue Pritchard
A recent opinion piece in Britain’s trade mag The Grocer titled, “ Why the last thing the food strategy needs is the ‘public voice’” riled a lot of people who want our food systems to be better.
This was partly because the article paddled old tropes, like the public only caring about price, but also had this to say when asking who ministers will listen to: “the panel of industry “heavy hitters” sitting on the Food Strategy Advisory Board, or the unfiltered opinions of randoms from Rochdale?”
So Sue, who heads The Food, Farming & Countryside Commission (FFCC), which has been conducting citizens dialogues on food systems, wrote this rebuttal. FFCC’s discussions have yielded some fascinating results which I’ve written about before.
“The so-called heavy hitters, and the proxies they set up, get their voices heard over and over again. It's their toxic talking points that keep undermining governments' will to act,” she wrote.
In her experience, citizens “care about food and they expect governments to act, for a greener, healthier, fairer food system that works better for people and planet”.Climate, Risk, Insurance: The Future of Capitalism - Günther Thallinger
Sobering and pithy piece from the chair of Allianz’s Sustainability Board and member of the Board of Management.
He spelled out why we need to avoid, as much as possible, temperature rises of 3°C and more above pre-industrial levels.We are fast approaching temperature levels where insurers will no longer be able to offer coverage for many of the risks associated with extreme weather, he wrote.
“If insurance is no longer available, other financial services become unavailable too. A house that cannot be insured cannot be mortgaged. No bank will issue loans for uninsurable property. Credit markets freeze. This is a climate-induced credit crunch.”
Why the Demise of USAID Could Be Good for African Food Systems - Million Belay
While mourning the suffering caused by the “abrupt and poorly planned withdrawal”, Million, who has worked on food sovereignty and agroecology issues in Africa for decades, also sees this as a possible blessing in disguise.
“USAID’s influence has not just been technical, it has been deeply political. By funding and embedding itself within African government departments, regional bodies, and agricultural platforms, it has shaped who gets to make decisions, which voices are amplified, and what solutions are considered legitimate. In doing so, it has drowned out the voices of small-scale farmers, indigenous communities, and youth who are calling for food systems rooted in ecological balance, cultural knowledge, and sovereignty.”
Welcome to Denmark - Greenpeace Denmark
The post is in Danish but the video, which I think is brilliant, is in English, showcasing that the country known for hygge and minimalist, drool-worthy designs is also one where pigs outnumber humans.
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