The Disclosure Podcast
Join best-selling author Ed Winters as he dives into veganism and our connection with animals, touching on everything from philosophy and psychology to health, science, politics, and the environment.
The Disclosure Podcast
Unpacking the truth about ultra-processed plant-based alternatives, food politics, RFK Jr., and more | In Conversation with Marlana Malerich
Is the fear around plant-based alternatives really based on science, and what does it teach us about the nature of misinformation? In today's episode, I chat with Marlana Malerich about plant-based alternatives, carnivore diets, seed oils, RFK Jr., meat lobby groups and more.
Marlana Malerich is a PhD candidate at University of Sussex Business School where she is focussed on the plant-based industry in the U.K. and Europe. Prior to the PhD, she has worked over ten years at the intersection of food and sustainability, and has served as an adjunct assistant professor, focusing on animal agriculture and the future of protein.
Marlana co–founded Rooted Research Collective, a group of multidisciplinary academics whose mission is to transform research insights into actionable and data-driven strategies for a sustainable plant-based food system.
For more exclusive content and personal writing from me, check out my Substack here.
On my Substack, I share not only my own reflections and personal thoughts on veganism, but also my journey and struggles. You’ll get a deeper insight into the issues that matter most to me and, in doing so, I hope it helps you feel more connected to your own veganism as well. It’s a space where we can connect and explore the intersection of compassion, reason and rationality together. By joining my Substack you also support the work that I do!
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Links to Marlana's work:
- https://rootedresearch.co/publications/nutrition-misinformation-digital-age/
- https://rootedresearch.co/insights/upf-pbm-instagram-sentiment-analysis/
- https://www.greenqueen.com.hk/ultra-processed-foods-plant-based-meat-guide-research-faq/
Danish Action Plan for Plant-based Foods - https://en.fvm.dk/Media/638484294982868221/Danish-Action-Plan-for-Plant-based-Foods.pdf
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SPEAKER_02:Welcome to the Disclosure Podcast. If you enjoy this episode and the work that I'm doing here, then please consider checking out my sub stack where I post regular articles. You can also support my work by becoming a paid member of my sub stack through which you will also gain access to weekly articles or by making a donation through my website. Links for everything can be found in this episode's show notes. For those of you who do support my work, thank you so much. I am incredibly grateful and appreciate it very much. Leaving a review for this podcast is also really helpful and encourages more people to listen to it. I hope you find this episode interesting and informative, and thank you for listening. Hey, everyone, and welcome to this episode of the Disclosure Podcast. In today's episode, I am thrilled to be joined by Milana Malaric. Milana is an expert when it comes to information around plant-based alternatives, the ultra-processed conversation, and around sustainability and farming and agriculture in general. She has a BA in environmental studies from St. Mary's College of California and a master's in science, which is in relation to environmental studies, global food security, global food systems, and sustainability from the of Edinburgh. Milana also was awarded the Best Dissertation Prize for her work on household food waste behaviour during the COVID-19 pandemic. Milana has been working in the intersection of food and sustainability for over 10 years now, and she is a co-founder of the Rooted Research Collective, which is a group of multidisciplinary academics who are working to sort of transform research insights into data-driven and strategic policies that can be implemented to help create a sustainable plant-based future. Milana is currently working towards her PhD, and I am so thrilled to be joined by her today. So thank you so much, Milana, for joining me on the podcast.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you, Ed. It's great to be here.
SPEAKER_02:I want to talk about a wide range of different things. I mean, there's so much we can talk about, obviously, and your work really encompasses such a wide variety of different subjects that we could probably film five, six hours worth of content and only really scratch the surface. But I guess what I think is probably of most interest right now is maybe this conversation around UPS, ultra-processed foods. I know that you published a report last year looking at ultra-processed foods and, of course, the conversation around plant-based alternatives on ultra-processed foods. But before we dive into that, maybe the first question is, how do we define what an ultra-processed food is?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so that question is a bit more contingent than you might think. And a lot of researchers are trying to figure out this at this moment. Ultra-processed foods are kind of what you think about when we think about junk food. So generally, that's how they're presented in the media. So think about like crisps, hot dogs, cakes, and processed candies and things like that, sodas as well. And that's how they're presented in the media. Actually, the designation of ultra-processed foods is a bit more complex. And in order to kind of delve into the varying definitions of ultra-processed foods, we really need to talk about the NOVA system. So the NOVA system was created in 2009 by Dr. Carlos Monteiro. He was a Brazilian researcher and... The kind of quick history and backstory there is he noticed that there were a lot of foods coming into Brazil, coming from the global north, coming from kind of global multinational companies, and they were undermining the local food system. And so that's kind of the impetus for his creation of the NOVA system, which was puts foods into different categories based on their level of processing. The NOVA1 classification is minimally processed or unprocessed foods, and these are generally like vegetables, whole cuts of meat, things along those lines. The next level is NOVA2, which is processed culinary ingredients, and this is maybe like your oils, butter, fats, things along those lines. And then the third categorization, NOVA3, is processed foods. So these are foods that resemble NOVA1 foods. So for example, like a processed meat or a canned fish, something along those lines. And then we get to NOVA4. These are the ultra-processed foods. And they have a somewhat complicated definition. They tend to be obviously heavily processed. Some of the other definitions include a wide range of ingredients that you wouldn't usually find in your kitchen. And they tend to be higher in salt, fat, sugar content and may encourage overeating. So those are the kind of broad categorizations.
SPEAKER_02:So I guess what's interesting about this conversation is when we talk about ultra-processed foods, The initial thing is to say, well, look, this is obviously a conversation that has lots of merits. We should be shifting away from these foods. And that clearly makes sense when we're talking about shifting from cookies, donuts, and sweets to say fruits and vegetables and pulses and such. But I suppose one of the things that perhaps your research has touched upon, well, I know it certainly has, and is an area that my work touches upon from what people say to me, is the idea that plant-based alternatives become a factor in this narrative because they are by definition ultra-processed. And I suppose if we have this sort of broad perspective that ultra-processed is bad and unprocessed is good, then that leads to the conclusion that sort of alternative meat products must therefore be bad for us as a consequence of them being ultra-processed. Is that too simplistic or does that ring true?
SPEAKER_01:I mean, I think that sums it up. And that is one of the contentions with the Right, yes. But nutrition is really not considered. And that's why we have products that may be less healthy and are less healthy, such as like butter or red meat in a NOVA one or two classification, which then kind of, in my opinion, creates this artificial halo around animal products. Whereas plant-based meat will often end up in the ultra processed category. But when you're looking at it at them compared to their animal counterparts, they tend to be healthier from a nutrition perspective. So it's very complicated. I
SPEAKER_02:mean, it is complicated. I suppose the issue is it's so reductive. If we're not looking at nutrition outcomes or health outcomes and nutritional profiles of these foods, and we're simply categorizing them based on whether or not they technically fall under the ultra-process category, that's not only unhelpful when it comes to sort of looking between unprocessed and processed. It's also unhelpful when we're looking at different types of processed foods, because surely not all ultra-processed foods are the same in terms of their health outcomes anyway. Obviously, cookies and donuts are going to be worse than other foods that might be classified as ultra-processed. So how do consumers make informed choices when the information they're being given is often so simplistic?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and I think that's part of the trouble. And we're seeing this even in research that's come out recently in the last, I think in the last year, there was a really large overview of different papers that were identifying the health implications of ultra-processed foods. And you might remember some of the headlines from this paper. It was like 32 different diseases associated with ultra-processed foods, including heart disease and diabetes and even mental health issues. It was a there were some pretty scary conclusions in that overview. But then when you look at the paper and the breakdown of the different products they were looking at, you can see that not all ultra-processed foods contributed to those health outcomes. Some of them, such as fortified breads, that was one of them, actually had the alternate impact. They tended to make people more healthy. So even in these studies, what we're seeing is The results are inconclusive. We can say generally a lot of ultra-processed foods may contribute to unhealthy dietary outcomes. But it really depends on the category of the product.
SPEAKER_02:MARK BLYTH Yeah, absolutely. It's interesting you say that. I think there is this, I suppose, wider grouping of these foods, which inevitably leads to conclusions that are not necessarily substantiated. And I remember last year, I think it was, there was this study that was released. And it was looking at four different categories ultra-processed plant-sourced foods, unprocessed plant-sourced foods, and then unprocessed animal-sourced foods and ultra-processed animal-sourced foods. And in the ultra-processed plant-sourced foods, there was meat alternatives, but it only made up 0.2% of the calories that were consumed. And within that same category was sweets and biscuits and cakes and vodka as well was included in that category. And soda, I think also. Yeah, I remember that study. Yeah, and... Unsurprisingly, it showed that when you increase the intake of these foods, your risk of certain chronic diseases was shown to increase as well. But the headlines that were run were all about the alternatives. And I remember the Telegraph, of course, the Telegraph ran this article. It was an opinion piece by a farmer and it was headlined, vegans are slowly killing themselves because of this study, which showed that the increased intake of these foods... increased the risk of certain chronic diseases, even though only 0.2% of it was meat alternatives. And within the meat alternatives was tofu, which is not, by most standards, even ultra-processed, and certainly is not considered to be unhealthy. So even within the meat alternatives, which only made up 0.2% of the calories consumed, were healthy alternatives. Well, more objectively healthy alternatives. But it's crazy that we can then lead with these headlines and consumers see this and their perception of this study is, oh, by the way, these alternatives are going to kill you. And what was also overlooked is within all four of the food categories looked at, the unprocessed plant-based diet was actually shown to be the healthiest and reduced chronic disease risk.
SPEAKER_01:That did not make the headlines.
SPEAKER_02:Did not make the headlines. So really the headline should be, hey, you know, unprocessed plant-based diets are the healthiest for you. Processed plant-based diets, when they contain obviously unhealthy foods, are not good for you. Right. Fair enough. But that's not what the consumer was given or the reader was given. So it sort of perpetuates this assumption and this narrative, which is really negatively impacting the progression of the plant-based food sector and indeed even the progression of people making healthy choices more generally.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. And this narrative has really taken hold in our public perception. There was a study that came out recently that indicated that a third of all consumers associate plant-based products with being ultra-processed. This sort of identifying all protein as ultra-processed has been growing. I think the Boston Consulting Group identified it early on, maybe three years ago. And then there was a study that our team did as well, which looked at ultra-processed foods and plant-based diets. And you can really see sort of the increase in conversation around this in online discourse and also the declining sentiment around plant-based diets. So we are definitely in a time right now where this narrative has taken hold in the public perception and is really complicated for many
SPEAKER_02:reasons. Yeah. I suppose maybe one thing is sometimes people, when you sort of start to defend alternatives, they correctly say, bang on, these foods aren't the healthiest foods you can consume. Clearly there are issues around them. So is there a sort of a nuanced perspective here which sort of maybe starts to reframe plant-based alternatives as not being as bad as maybe people say, but clearly can improve in certain ways as well?
SPEAKER_01:So the study that we did a couple of years ago that you referenced, kind of one of the big outputs was its quality and quantity, not category. So plant-based products are nuanced. They have different ingredient profiles. And, you know, a plant-based deep fried nugget is still a plant-based deep fried nugget. And if you're eating that instead of a bowl of broccoli, I'm not a nutritionist, but I mean, you know, there are health implications there. But when you look at the research that's looked at plant-based products and ultra processed foods and has tried to kind of dig into the nuance that exists there, we see that overwhelmingly plant-based products are healthier, the meat products that they're trying to replace. So there was one study that looked at like Nutri-Score labeling and the plant-based burger that contained soy and mycoproteins, so fungus-based, found its way into the B category, which is more healthy. A pea-based burger found its way into the C category, so slightly less healthy. But the beef burger ended up in the D category, which is one of the least healthiest. However, the beef burger would be considered like a more whole, unprocessed product, whereas like a mycoprotein burger would be considered ultra-processed. So it really has to do with the quality of the product, not the processing category.
SPEAKER_02:It's interesting. I guess that's one of the dangerous elements of this is We know from nutrition science that processed meat is among the worst. But the nutrition science also shows that unprocessed red meat still contributes to chronic disease. Maybe not as much as processed meat, let's say, but still significantly so. And that the consumption of unprocessed red meat is still going to be potentially a problem causer if you consume enough of it throughout your life. But I feel, at least from the conversations that I see and that I'm involved in, that now people have the perception that Choosing an unprocessed red meat burger, for example, is going to be healthier than choosing, let's say, a Beyond Meat burger. But that's not what the actual scientific literature shows. But people aren't driven by the scientific literature. Let's say they're driven by emotion and they're driven by sensationalism and they're driven by viral content online. And it's easy for influencers and for people who create content to speak about half-truths and to miss out important pieces of information and to create a wider narrative that informs people in such a way as to create the assumption that these foods are going to be worse for you, when in actuality the research that's been done so far and is continuing to be done shows that even though they're not necessarily the healthiest foods, there's still a step in the right direction from the animal-based counterparts there.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. And again, it really depends on the product that you're consuming. And I will note that one study that was done in the UK showed that I think it was about a third of all the plant-based products were higher in sodium than they should have been. But something also to note there is that when you're buying a plant-based meat burger, it's already been pre-seasoned. The sodium content has already been added into the product. And so if you're buying... Beef mince, all of those ingredients are added later on. I haven't seen any studies that have compared sodium content post-cooking the products to see if maybe it's a little bit more aligned. But it's something to keep in mind. And I don't want to suggest that just because something is plant-based, it's automatically better for you. But the research certainly shows that generally these products are healthier than the animal products that they're trying to replace.
SPEAKER_02:That's actually really interesting. I've never... considered that before that I suppose when we when we buy pre-made food pre-packaged food or we're buying these alternatives there is the seasoning already added in the sense they're pre-seasoned but if you're buying something like like a mince or something you're seasoning it during the cooking process or for people who do so it would be interesting to see if those levels are comparable by the end of the cooking process if people are just buying sort of a beyond mince or a plant-based alternative mince and they don't season through the cooking but people who are buying the in-process red meat maybe are What does that mean for the ultimate product at the end of it? Fascinating. I've never really considered it.
SPEAKER_01:I really want someone to do a study on this. So if any of your listeners are interested, I would love to. I'm just very busy right
SPEAKER_02:now. Yeah, well, I can imagine. But that would certainly be quite interesting. Perhaps then we can talk about the issue of marketing. And we were speaking before about sort of this artificial halo that's sort of emerged around unprocessed meat, let's say. But I think maybe part of the problem... maybe you'll agree or disagree, was that there was this artificial halo around alternatives, maybe six or seven years ago, where they were being positioned as this incredible revolutionary food technology. Did that open the door to this criticism in a way that potentially wouldn't have happened if they were kind of positioned as more of an alternative from an ethical perspective or even maybe a sustainability perspective? Did these companies sort of open the door to allow this sort of rhetoric to emerge?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's a really interesting question. It's something I think about a lot. I don't know. I mean, it is possible that some of the early positive response was due to the hype cycle. It's a new product. It's really innovative. It's really exciting. And people were kind of happy to jump on board. It was kind of like an elite product, too. You had to go to a special restaurant to get it. And But it's also possible that the incumbent product, meat, has such a stronghold on our culture and history and nostalgia that as soon as some of these kind of rumblings started to emerge, it was a lot easier for people to jump on board with this idea that it was ultra-processed and maybe not healthy for you and maybe eating... conventional meat is better for you? I don't know. I guess that's my answer. But what we are seeing now is kind of a diverting in the industry. So we're starting to see some companies try to position themselves as more healthy by including less ingredients or more healthy by kind of promoting themselves as not processed in the same way, which kind of reinforces the the complications that we've already talked about with processing not being a really good indicator of nutrition. But I also, from like a business perspective, can understand why they might be trying to differentiate. This narrative has really taken hold and consumers are afraid of ultra-processed foods.
SPEAKER_02:It's interesting when you're saying that. The example that springs to my mind is the example of plant milks. I think generally speaking, there's this idea that plant milks are mostly okay. I don't think they come under the same criticism as meat alternatives. but they do come into some criticism. And one of the criticisms they can face is around sort of additives. And one of them is gel and gum. And people go, oh, gum, right? This obviously means it can't be good for you. And there are certain plant-based companies and certain plant-based milk alternatives that kind of position themselves as being these great healthy products because they contain three ingredients. So maybe almonds, water and a pinch of salt or something. And they go, right, these products are healthier because we don't have the junk, the fillers, the additives. And you go, OK, well, that makes sense. That aligns with the sort of the common rhetoric that exists now around these foods. And then you go, OK, these plant-based alternatives, these milk alternatives that have, say, gel and gum in them. You go, okay, well, does that mean it must be worse then? And then you realize actually the reason the gel and gum's in there is so that calcium can be fortified or can be added. So the plant milk can essentially be fortified because without it, the calcium would kind of separate, sink. So it allows it to be dispersed. It allows you to have a smooth textured plant milk. And you go, okay, so gel and gum, right? And I was looking into this and it just completely blew my mind because Gellingham is considered to be a safe food additive. And they did a study where they gave people quantities that were 30 times higher than you'd get on average through diet alone. And even at quantities 30 times higher, there was no negative health outcomes that were shown during the study period. So then you go, right, you have this safe food additive that you can consume in far higher quantities than we do and still not have negative health outcomes. And it's added into the plant milk so that we can get calcium in there and it can be fortified. So then the question becomes, what's healthier? An almond-based plant milk, let's say, that's just almonds, water, pinch of salt, or an almond-based plant milk that's those ingredients, let's say, but also gel and gum and calcium. And I think what alarms me is people will assume that the minimal ingredients milk is gonna be better, but you're missing out on an essential nutrient. And if you're going from cow's milk to a plant-based alternative, and let's say your main source of calcium was dairy before, predominantly the cow's milk that you had in your cereals, whatever it may be, and you're not replacing that, then you could end up becoming deficient in an essential nutrient. And it becomes this paradoxical thing where it's actually the food that's technically ultra-processed that is ultimately the healthiest one because by consuming that, you're getting an essential nutrient that you wouldn't get otherwise. And I go, I was thinking to myself, this is kind of scary and dangerous because people have been misinformed and in a way, much to my frustration, some plant-based companies are perpetuating this narrative just to try and promote their own products, which seems... unethical because it's maybe actually harming consumers then that's a personal as you could probably tell that's something that I was reading about and I was going ah this is this is not this is not acceptable I don't think
SPEAKER_01:no and I think that brings up a really important point is that these additives often are there for like biofortification or fortification of some in some way and that reminds me of an example I was at an event the other night and I was talking to a nutritionist about this and she works in like low salt. Like she's trying to help folks that are at risk to like reduce their salt intake. And some of the additives they use instead of salt to make foods still taste appealing would technically kind of move the product through the ultra processing categorization or processing categorization and land them in ultra processed foods. But for consumers who are at risk of high sodium, it's really important that they choose that product. And so if they're coming to the you know, to the store with this idea in mind that they need to reduce their ultra-processed food intake, they might be, similarly to your milk example, choosing products that are, like, putting them at risk for high sodium because they're trying to avoid something that is more processed because it might have an ingredient that they don't understand because that's one of the designations, right? Like, ingredients we don't understand, long ingredient list, ingredients not found in our kitchens. So it's incredibly frustrating, right?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it is, isn't it? And that's another great point that you touch upon, which is there's this idea that if you can't pronounce something or spell something, you shouldn't be eating it. Right. Which basically rules out almost everything because the chemical names for most things are beyond most people's spelling comprehension, you know, mine included. I look at sort of the technical names for B vitamins and vitamin E and omega-3 fatty acids.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And you look at those and you go, right, where do I even start with this? But these are essential nutrients. But if instead of saying A-L-A, it said... alpha linoleic acid or something. You go, oh, alpha linoleic acid, acid, that doesn't sound good. I surely don't want to be consuming that. And you can prey upon people's... Ignorance sounds like a strong word. Being ignorant is not inherently a bad thing. We don't know everything. And so we're always ignorant about things we don't know. And people are undeniably going to be ignorant around chemical names and certain scientific narratives and topics because, yeah, these are complex subjects. But if you're a campaigner, you are someone who is looking to create misinformation campaigns, you can use that to your advantage and prey upon people. And we were speaking a little bit outside before about a Center for Consumer Freedom. One of the things, and I'll let you speak about them in more detail in a moment, but one of the things that they did really well is weaponizing methylcellulose as an ingredient that you should be avoiding. And they said, methylcellulose, when you consume too much of it can cause diarrhea or something like that. And it's like, yeah, sometimes it's prescribed to people who are constipated and it's actually prescribed to people, but consuming methylcellulose in the burger is not going to cause you to have diarrhea or have these health ailments. I'll let you speak about the Center for Consumer Freedom because it's a fascinating example of how that can be weaponized in such a way.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, absolutely. The methylcellulose debate is really Fascinating. I mean, methylcellulose is just, it's cellulose, right? Which is what cell walls are made of in plants. Absolutely. Anyway, Center for Consumer Freedom is a really interesting example of the way this has been weaponized, and I think very successfully weaponized. The organization is headed by a man named Richard Burnham, who has ties to tobacco. And I mean, you can find all this online. It's actually a really dark hole, but... I wish I never had to go down, but I had to for research. Basically, they set up this organization, Center for Consumer Freedom, and they really started promoting these ideas that plant-based products were unnatural, really highlighting ingredients that consumers didn't understand, like methylcellulose, and had a really successful campaign. They did a Super Bowl ad. They had big adverts in prominent newspapers. And I do think that some of this ultra-processed narrative can be, and it's like hold on the public and its connection to plant-based can really be connected to that specific campaign. It is also known, and you can find out online, that some of the members of Center for Consumer Freedom are connected with Meat Lobby.
SPEAKER_02:I like to think of these people as sort of mercenaries for hire. This guy runs Center for Consumer Freedom. He's worked with sort of anti- He's worked with alcohol companies or the alcohol industry to sort of go push back against...
SPEAKER_01:Mothers against drunk driving. How can you go against mothers against drunk driving? And also, did he go against PETA as well?
SPEAKER_02:This really highlights, I think, how well he works and how well his organizations work. There's this campaign called PETA Kills. And a lot of people now associate PETA with being an organization that kills animals. And the reason for that is they have sort of shelters. And often what PETA do is they take animals in that no other shelter will accept and they euthanize them. And actually Ingrid Newkirk, I think is her name, the founder of PETA, she originally started working with animals in an animal shelter and she euthanized the animals herself because she saw other people doing it and thought that they weren't treating them with respect. And so she did it in a way because she knew that she could be as compassionate as possible. So her roots are actually in that. Anyway, the idea of euthanizing animals is a really complex one, especially when we talk about dogs and cats. It makes most people uncomfortable. But the problem isn't that PETA have shelters where they take animals that have terrible behavioral problems who can't be rehomed and euthanized them. The problem is that we have a system that allows people to buy pets, raise them terribly, abuse them, give them behavioral problems, and then just dump them on someone else and make them someone else's responsibility. But what the Center for Consumer Freedom did really well is they perpetuate this narrative of PETA kills because it makes PETA seem hypocritical that they euthanize pets, essentially. It's really taken hold. And a lot of people... view them this way. And whenever I see Peter being mentioned, it always comes with this, Peter kills or Peter puts down animals. They kill healthy animals. And it's this sort of half truth, which is, yeah, technically they do euthanize animals, but that's missing the bigger picture of what's actually the systemic problem that's creating this situation. So yeah, but again, it just shows how effective these campaigns can be. Now, I'm not, you know, Peter do things that I don't agree with in terms of sort of certain campaigns and certain marketing things and certain I don't agree with everything they do, but I do fundamentally think it's terribly unfair that they've been criticized in this way. But yeah, I remember that methylcellulose thing. I think it was a spelling bee advert that they did in the Super Bowl.
SPEAKER_01:It was, yes. And they had children on a stage doing a spelling bee and they said spell methylcellulose and they couldn't do it. And they were like, don't eat anything that you can't. spell or understand or something along those lines. And then the last line is this smiling kid spelling bacon, P-A-C-O-N. And that was the point. And I mean, that was I think that was 2019. I think
SPEAKER_02:it was.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And, you know, I actually I dug into the records. I tried to see how much money they spent on these adverts. And like in the grand scheme of things, it really wasn't that much money. But I don't think we can dismiss the impact that these types of campaigns have had. Like I said earlier, a third of all consumers in the EU right now associate plant-based meat and plant-based products with ultra processed foods. This narrative has clearly taken hold. How much of that is misinformation from organizations like Center for Consumer Freedom versus how much of it is maybe consumers not fully understanding the product, not understanding what methylcellulose actually is. Yeah, kind of preying on, you said ignorance earlier, but just like, you know, Lack of knowledge. I think I also want to say like the ultra processed framework. For me, from like a consumer psychology perspective, it makes sense that it's taken off. It's really black and white. And people are like exhausted with trying to figure out what to eat and what's the right thing to eat. And all of a sudden they have this really easy framework. It's like if it's whole foods, it's good. If it has lots of ingredients and it's processed, it's bad. Easy.
SPEAKER_02:I think that's it, Milan. You've nailed it. People want some simple, easy advice. Of course, they've got busy lives. They've got to raise families, got to go to work, got to pay their mortgages. They've got all these other considerations. And we can't expect people to sit down and go through health information, nutrition information. It's unreasonable and unfair. So people want simple, easy messaging that creates this often very simple binary that allows people to make these decisions and not really think too much beyond that, but is there a class problem related to that? Does that sort of marginalize or inherently sort of look down upon people who maybe don't have the time, freedom, or financial resources to consume sort of more unprocessed foods?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, for sure. I was on a panel last year at Ava, and we were talking about ultra-processed foods, plant-based meat. And I think it was Dr. Garrett Broad, who was also on the panel, and he brought up this point. Processed foods do play a crucial role in key calories for folks that are potentially not able to. I mean, fruits and vegetables and whole foods are more expensive than these products. And we need to acknowledge that processed foods play a really important role in folks feeding their families and getting key calories. There also was this interesting, I think in Colombia in the last year, they've started to tax processed foods or high-fat, salt-sugar foods. And I read this article, and maybe I'll find it afterwards. You can include it in the links. But they were interviewing folks who were lower income that just kind of would grab food on the go as they were coming and going from work. And that tax has really... undermine their ability to get enough calories to just kind of go about their day. It's like punishing. Maybe reformulation is better than taxation. I mean, that would be an idea.
SPEAKER_02:Well, this is it. Why is the consumer being punished? Shouldn't it be on the companies to create healthier products, to change the fat content, to take out saturated fat, replace it with an unsaturated fat, to maybe add some fiber to those products? It kind of summarizes so perfectly the inherent... inequality that exists, that you have people who maybe struggle to make ends meet anyway, who have been punished because the foods they can afford are not made as healthy as they should be. And the fault of that is because of the companies who are mass producing this food as cheap as possible. It just seems ridiculous to me that we're still in this mindset that it should be the consumer who's punished for that. When maybe you should increase regulation, maybe we should have a process that sort of means that these companies are incentivized themselves to create healthier foods rather than rather than the consumer being punished that that's the foods that they've been offered.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And there's a new, I completely agree. And I've yet, I haven't seen as much like focus on the companies, but there was a new announcement from Gavin Newsom's office in California where he suggested that they would start working with companies to reformulate products. He is using the ultra processed food word, but I think when I was looking at it, It's more talking about high-fat salt and sugar, which is HFSS products, thinking about how to reduce those products in school meals and things like that. So there are different ways we can approach this, but I don't think that passing on the costs to the consumer is the right way.
SPEAKER_02:No. It's interesting you mentioned sort of the American political scene right now. Obviously, what's happening in America right now is... is probably fairly unpleasant for a number of reasons. And I think from our perspective in relation to what we're talking about today, one of those reasons would be RFK Jr. There's a lot of credibility around sort of his broader messaging points. And what I mean by that is we need to make food healthier. We need to improve what children have been fed in schools. These are sort of rallying messages that everyone broadly agrees with, that the issue is when you actually listen to the things he suggests and what he actually represents. It's easy to make sort of broad talking points that you have sort of bypassed some consensus around and most people agree with. And that unfortunately legitimizes his actual more particular viewpoints. And I saw a video with him, two videos actually, One was him talking about scary things that are added into foods. And one of the things he referenced was the technical name for vitamin B2, which is an essential nutrient. And he read it out and he said, it contains this. And you think, what, B2? Which just summarised everything so perfectly. And then to make matters worse, he did an interview with Sean Hannity from Fox News. And this interview, it's mad. It's in a fast food restaurant, a fast food restaurant. And during the interview, a server gives him a cheeseburger with fries. processed meat with processed cheese with processed bread and fries and he's talking about how it's great because the fries are fried in beef tallow and not vegetable
SPEAKER_01:oil right excellent
SPEAKER_02:so this is the man who's going to make America healthy again he doesn't know what vitamin b2 is and essentially he thinks it's bad and he says that eating fries and cheeseburgers and fast food restaurants is okay if they're fried in animal fat
SPEAKER_01:versus seed oils versus
SPEAKER_02:seed oils I mean actually that's an interesting conversation the seed oils side of things that seems to be a really important part of the whole misinformation campaign that's sort of leveled against plant-based alternatives.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and just in general it's really taken off. So I'm working our team at Rooted Research is also working on a nutrition misinformation study with Robbie Lockie at Freedom Food Alliance and we have been able to access like 800,000 rows of data from Meta Instagram One of the themes is seed oil. And we're still working through the data to just try to better understand what exactly the narrative is there. But it does tend to be a big part of these carnivore diets, ancestral diets, and ketogenic diets. Seed oil is really demonized. And to bring it back to the NOVA system, seed oils would be further along in the processing, whereas beef tallow would be considered more of a whole, less processed food, which again kind of reinforces this idea that processing is just one way of looking at it and probably not the best way of determining whether a food is nutritionally sound.
SPEAKER_02:It's really interesting with the seed oils thing because I wrote a book a couple of years ago and did an updated version. I included seed oils, sort of a discussion around seed oils in it. And when I was approaching it, my view was, I kind of thought that what I'd write is, yes, seed oils aren't great for you, but you can avoid them if you want to. And then when I was looking at it, I've completely fallen for this seed oils thing, because actually the evidence around seed oils is completely the opposite of what people say. People say seed oils cause inflammation. And that's not true. They're not pro-inflammatory. People say they increase the risk of chronic disease, yet compared to saturated fats, animal-based saturated fats, they're reducing chronic disease risk. The problem is not the seed oil, like if you have sort of a vegetable oil at home that you maybe use in a salad dressing. Yeah, if you fill up big industrial fries with it and you're frying over and over and heating up and cooling it down, you're going to have problems with it. But that's just because of the process, not the actual oil itself and the idea of using that seed oil. And I couldn't believe just how much my impression had been warped around it. And I watched a video this morning, actually, of this sort of left-wing commentator who was criticizing RFK Jr. for the things I just referenced. And even he said, well, beef tallow instead of seed oil, fair enough. But have you seen what's in the bread buns he's consuming? So even these people who are saying RFK Jr. is spreading misinformation still accept that element of the misinformation, maybe because it's so prominent, so strong, or maybe feeds into maybe a bias that they already have. I'm not... I'm not sure why are we so susceptible, I guess, to that?
SPEAKER_00:This is a great question. I
SPEAKER_02:do not know. It's hard, isn't it? Well, what is it? It's like, is it because people want to eat animal products? And if we're being told animal products are bad, that makes us feel guilty or negative by eating them. But if we're told, actually, no, that's not true. Animal products are fine. It's the seed oils that are bad. That's reaffirming to us a narrative we want to be true rather than the narrative that is true. Is there a sort of motivated reasoning in there?
SPEAKER_01:I mean... Yes, I would agree with that. I think that... So my research right now is focused on the plant-based industry and consumer acceptance of plant-based products. And I think that's a really important framework. We need to better understand consumer acceptance and how the industry is responding to pressures from the meat industry and changing consumer perceptions. But one of the things I think about a lot and I really want to integrate into my research is the... compelling cultural value of the incumbent product, which is meat. And if we're not recognizing the value it holds in culture, nostalgia, even like religion, masculinity, and understand the history of the role meat has played in our society, like, I don't know how well we can address what's happening right now and transition people away from It has a stronghold on us. Like it is associated with wealth and prosperity and all of these things and has been like this isn't a modern thing. I love food history. So in another life, I'd love to be a food historian. And there's some really phenomenal books just about like food. early days in like colonization of the Americas and the types of diets that were imported and how they were meat heavy and why and all of these belief systems that existed. Anyway, I will go off on a tangent if I carry on. But all that to say, we have to recognize the hold that it has on our culture. And potentially that's why people are more likely to believe like a steak is healthier for you than a Mycoprotein burger.
SPEAKER_02:Do you think then that the sort of the health side of things is potentially a little bit of a facade, that that's not really the reason people are making these choices, but it's a convenient thing to just kind of say, oh, I'm not being driven by emotion or irrationality. I'm not being motivated by this sort of cultural behavior that's so ingrained I might not even be conscious of it. It's because I've heard that plant-based alternatives are bad.
SPEAKER_01:Like maybe there's the subconscious leaning because of all of the things I just mentioned, and then the health side. conversation just makes sense. But it's interesting too, because I mean, when you look at consumer studies, consumers also choose plant-based for health reasons. So there's kind of this like diverging group of people, some that believe that eating less meat is good for you and they might choose plant-based because of health reasons. And then there seems to be this other sort of mindset value set where consumers choose don't think eating plant-based meats is healthy and actually like eating more meat is healthy.
SPEAKER_02:There is an interesting disparity, you're right. With vegans, sometimes I've done events and vegans will say, part of the problem is we shouldn't have these products. If we just had whole plant foods, then we would just bypass all of this and we wouldn't have to be dealing with this and that. And we wouldn't have to deal with people saying veganism is not good because you have to eat processed foods. How much of a role do you think alternative proteins play? And if someone was to say to you, it'd be so much better if we didn't have cell culture or we weren't going to have cell cultured meat and we didn't have plant-based alternatives and we just had fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, legumes, whole grains, the most healthy foods that we can consume. Would that be better or do these alternative proteins, are they important enough that this criticism will be bearable in the long run? I
SPEAKER_01:mean, there is research that suggests that plant-based meat products operate as like a stepping stone for consumers that are trying to eat less meat but want something that is familiar to the foods they usually eat. I've heard this argument a lot. Like, why don't we just eat more beans? Why don't we eat more tofu or... even tempeh or some of these other things. And I think maybe a driver from the early days of the industry was that consumers will replace these meat products with our products, and everybody's going to be happy, and it's going to satisfy their taste buds, and they're not going to miss meat. And I don't think that has fully been the case. But there is research that indicates it operates as a stepping stone. But there's also, like I was reading a study from maybe like four or five years ago where consumers were asked what kind of alternative meat products they might like to see on the shelves. And more than anything, they actually wanted more like bean-based alternatives, like more whole food products versus like something that tastes like meat. So I'm also curious to see how much... How much the early days of the industry were driven by this really cool technology that we can make this product that tastes like meat versus segmented consumer studies. I don't know. I can't really speak to that because I'm not sure, but I'd be curious.
SPEAKER_02:Certainly so. I guess it's interesting how... fundamentally, people felt a little bit let down by plant-based alternatives. There was a lot of hype around them and some of them are genuinely really good. And I think sort of the dairy alternatives are really strong. Maybe cheese obviously has a bit of work to do still. I mean, there's plenty of bad plant-based cheeses out there, but there's also plenty of good ones. But in milks and yogurts and such, I think what's interesting about milk is maybe People don't drink soy milk or almond milk or oat milk with the expectation that it will be like cow's milk. We kind of view them as a product in and of themselves. And we don't think, oh, soy milk doesn't taste like cow's milk, therefore it's not a good alternative. It's sort of flavoursome in its own right. I never used to like cow's milk, so I'm a little bit biased in two ways. I think it's much nicer, soy milk. But with alternatives, there's this expectation that they have to replicate the meat that they're sort of closely aligned to. Do you think there's... a way of maybe thinking about these foods as sort of a novel food in itself, something that, yes, we want them to taste like beef and chicken, but are they enjoyable as a new product in and of themselves?
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. But I do think that part of the reason why we're in this predicament is because the very early days of alternative meats really promoted these products as, like, it's beef made from plants. You know, you can substitute them for any of your recipes. You know, this really, like... This idea that this product is new and novel, but you can very easily replace it into your daily diet just the way you would be eating meat. And so I think it was marketed in such a way that then created space for consumer letdown when those products didn't exactly meet those expectations. Now, I think the marketing strategies will probably have to shift because a lot of these products are not meeting the taste requirements that consumers want. Taste is a huge barrier. When we look at consumer studies, it's cited quite often.
SPEAKER_02:I think you're right. It is the foundation on which these products will succeed or fail. And actually, when I was asking that previous question about, should we view tasty foods within their own right? That's... I realised as I was saying that, there's kind of a little bit of me sort of accepting these foods aren't the same, you know, and me kind of rationalising, well, they don't have to, they can be nice as their own things. That in a way sort of signifies that even from my own perspective, they've mostly failed to kind of match the flavour and maybe even the texture of the foods that I used to consume when I used to eat animal products. But without meeting those standards, there's probably going to be the problem where they won't. But then does that create an unfair... an unfair situation where plant-based alternatives have to taste the same as animal products, but a lot of the time to get that flavor requires them to maybe be a bit fattier, to maybe be a little bit less healthy because they're replicating something that isn't healthy. So it's like, we have to have a vegan beef burger or a vegan bacon, that isn't ultra processed, that is healthy if you analyze it, but it has to taste the same as something which is a class one carcinogen and which is filled with saturated fat and which is clearly one of the most unhealthy foods you can eat. So it's like plant-based alternatives are stuck between a rock and a hard place, right? How do we bridge that gap?
SPEAKER_01:I mean, I think we're kind of seeing some examples of that with two of the main plant-based meat companies in the US, so Impossible and Beyond. They've kind of responded to this idea push back in two really different ways which are fascinating so beyond has created this these products that are using avocado oil they have less sodium they they've been um i think they're designated heart healthy you know like they've they've just really moved into that um space of being a healthy product i haven't tried them so i'm not going to speak to like the taste um But that's kind of how they've responded. And then we see kind of on the other end of the spectrum, Impossible, which has really doubled down on taste, enjoyment. Like the products are fatty. They are salty. I really like their hot dogs. I think they're delicious. And it also could be due to their different... I don't know what their consumer segmentation looks like, but I know from... From a friend of mine that works at Impossible, like 95, 96% of their consumers also eat meat. So they're really trying to appeal to consumers that eat meat, like meat, enjoy it, but maybe want an alternative every now and again. Whereas Beyond is maybe pivoting to be a product that is more regularly used in daily lives. I don't know. These pivots are happening. This is such a... This industry is just emerging and we're already starting to see these like differentiations. It'll be so fascinating to see how well they do, how they continue to pivot. Yeah, it's a really exciting and also like complicated time in the industry because we're still learning so much about what consumers want and need. And we'll probably have to just differentiate products based on different consumer segmentations.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, yeah. It's fascinating to know that there's that sort of... disparity between the two approaches and like the directions that are both going in. We don't really have impossible here. I think we've got like the nuggets and such, but sort of their sort of main products like the beef with the heme iron and such, we don't have here, at least not yet. Hopefully, I presume that that will hopefully change if there's sort of regulatory approval at some point.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I know they have started looking into regulatory approval. I don't know where they're at in the process, but yeah, because of the genetically modified precision fermentation angle. I think it's going to take a little bit longer here.
SPEAKER_02:Certainly, yeah. And maybe that speaks to sort of the wider political differences. How much of a role does politics have in terms of the eventual success of these alternative proteins?
SPEAKER_01:I don't know what it's going to look like in the US. This is a really complicated time. And I think RFK and the Maha movement, I don't know what they have said about alternative proteins yet. plant-based proteins and cultivated meat eventually in the future. But I can't imagine that that's going to be a top priority. Wow, I don't know. What do you think?
SPEAKER_02:I think if you look at America, which is the easy one to look at, at least temporarily, if you think about RFK Jr., he talks against seed oils. He's promoting beef tallow. He is an advocate for raw milk. These are not things that necessarily bode well in anyone's favor. And obviously he's now part of this sort of wider sort of populist right wing movement. And if you think about other people involved in that, you think about Governor Ron DeSantis in Florida, who has banned cell cultured meat, who views alternative proteins, veganism, all these things as part of this sort of broader woke culture that he wants to fight against. I guess part of the problem is, and we see it here as well, but especially in America, I think veganism, the idea of consuming plants over animals, has become a part of the culture wars. And this weaponization of the narrative soy boy, the idea that consuming tofu and soy products is sort of some weak, lefty, liberal thing to do. You're feminizing yourself. And it plays into what you were saying earlier about masculinity and culture and these bigger attitudes. And if we establish that some of the biggest drivers of these sort of cultural norms and behaviors and mindsets that are so deeply ingrained that they're influencing people in ways that they're not even conscious of. And then we understand that veganism and meat eating is also a part of this. We're not really just dealing with this sort of surface level of discussion of are plant-based alternatives healthier? What does the science show? What is the best diet from a sustainability perspective? These are sort of surface level discussions because You know, we can talk to people who may be ideologically more aligned. Maybe they're environmentalists. Maybe they are sort of maybe more left wing. Let's say they're a little bit more open minded to think about animal rights and animal ethics and such. We only make up a fraction of those people. I mean, as a movement, we struggle to engage people who are environmentalists, who are more interested naturally in social justice and ethics and how our behaviors influence those around us. And if we can't even necessarily get through to these people who are more ideologically similar, my goodness, what chance do we have with people who are ideologically opposed in all these different ways and who reductively label what we're discussing as being woke and that just shuts down any critical thinking, any sort of sincerity is shut down by just labeling something reductively, which is the ultra-precious thing is a reductive label, but the woke label is so reductive, so simplistic and so disappointing that this is, political discourse. This is work like what you do, the research you do, the hours and the expertise that you and your colleagues pour into researching this stuff and you present it to people and then you'll have someone in Texas who wouldn't even look at it because it's woke.
SPEAKER_01:That's what we're dealing with. Immediately written off as woke research. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I think it's been very successfully politicized as you've very well laid out. And I think it really does have to do with these layers. Like you said, there's these conversations about health, nutrition, and processing. But then there is, you know, hundreds and hundreds of years of like cultural attachment to these products that plant-based is trying to replace. And if we don't talk about this, we're never going to get to this place. And one of the things that I've looked at in my research is, so I use like business theory and marketing theory to kind of explain plant-based adoption. But I'm also curious about like food theories. And there's one by Pierre Bordeaux who wrote Distinction, which is a social theory of taste and how you choose foods. And he really speaks to ideological attachment to meat and class and how different groups of people eat and what that means for their like identity, right? And there was a study that came out that used his theory to apply kind of a theoretical lens to folks in urban poor areas in the U.S. or, you know, urban economic, like lower economic status. And one of the most interesting things that came out of that study was that people were talking about the foods that they ate. And if they could still put meat on the table, they believed they had not reached rock bottom. Meat was a signifier of still having a social status, even in these really economically devastating areas. Vegetables and fruits did not really play a role, but meat played a role in them feeling like they still could make it. Fascinating.
SPEAKER_02:That
SPEAKER_01:is. Did
SPEAKER_02:they sort of conclude as to why that could be the case?
SPEAKER_01:I mean, in history... eating a lot of meat is considered, you know, it's associated with wealth, prosperity. And that like really struck me because it's like, even though they're not explaining why, there's this mindset exists that's ancient, you know? So
SPEAKER_02:in essence, they were using meat as a substitute for a lack of empowerment, more generally, socially speaking.
SPEAKER_01:An indication of... We haven't hit rock bottom.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Oh, wow.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Speaks to just how powerful it is as a symbol. I guess that's meat is a symbol. It's not about... Obviously, people view it from the perspective of getting protein and calories. And there is... That does exist. That's why people will eat it. But that's not necessarily the biggest reason.
SPEAKER_01:No.
SPEAKER_02:Or at least... Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:It's not the primary reason or it's not the only reason. And there was a New York Times article that really exemplified this because there was, I can't remember his name, Sean Baker maybe. Sean
SPEAKER_03:Baker, carnivore
SPEAKER_01:guy. I think so. He's a carnivore diet advocate. And one of the lines in the article really kind of exemplifies this because he said something about I get to eat like the royalty used to eat every day. Right. Like this idea that like the fact that he eats like giant amounts of meat is this like class identity like attachment and I mean he talks about like masculinity and testosterone but then there was like this like I eat like royalty and I'm like
SPEAKER_02:oh it's so sad isn't it yeah and you think what what are you what what do you lack within yourself that makes you feel the need to substitute that. And that's an interesting thing. I've spoken a little bit about masculinity in, I think I did an episode a long time ago about masculinity. And one of the things that I thought was interesting was how, if we associate meat with masculinity, then that suggests to me that by eating meat, you feel like you're substituting a lack of masculinity, like you have an insecurity there. You know, in the same way that, you know, as vegans, we substitute B12. So we supplement B12 because we know that in our diet naturally, we're not going to necessarily have B12. So if I'm eating meat to supplement masculinity, does that mean I think that I'm lacking masculinity? It reeks of insecurity to me, not of confidence, of maturity, of authority, of autonomy. It seems the opposite. I look at that and I hear you say, he says this, and I think, that seems weak, ironically, that you would speak in such a way as to say, well, it makes me feel like royalty. What's the aspiration there, to be tyrannical, to be authoritarian, to rule over others? What's the aspiration here?
SPEAKER_00:I have no idea, but meat helps him feel that. It's fascinating.
SPEAKER_02:He clearly feels like he's lacking something generally, which is interesting. And I suppose that is the wider carnival thing. It's not just about meat. There's a sort of a wider geopolitical, sociopolitical context around it, which plays into maybe some conspiratorial thinking around the World Economic Forum or the idea that as Maybe government guidelines and nutrition guidelines are pointing us towards more plant-forward diets. That in a way is signaling that plant-based diets are part of a wider conspiracy because these authorities that may be carnivores and people who have that persuasion would naturally distrust. Well, these people or these organizations they distrust are starting to promote plant-based diets more, which is legitimizing their carnivore diets to them more.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Exactly. It's just very strange, circular thinking, but you definitely see that when you're looking at... Like carnivore influencers, there is this strong thread of like, don't trust the authorities. Authorities are lying to you. Trust me, buy my supplements, you know.
SPEAKER_02:The classics.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. One of the things we'll do with this study that we're working on right now is we're identifying like the main influencers that are spreading nutrition misinformation. But a second part of that is to look for potential vested interests, see how many of them are connected or selling their own products, just to see how many of them have a vested interest in spreading this misinformation. But yeah, the carnivore thing is particularly worrying. I mean, it's bizarre, but also it has serious public health implications if it's widely adopted. Yeah. So hopefully with some of what we do and what some other researchers are doing, we'll raise more awareness around it.
SPEAKER_02:Do you think that it is becoming widely adopted? Is it sort of just a social media trend? You know, it gets clicks because it's a little bit novel, a bit controversial, a little bit unusual. Or do you think that is sort of permeating into general society?
SPEAKER_01:This is purely anecdotal evidence, but I have noticed in the last year or so, When I talk about it, someone will be like, oh, my cousin is doing that. Or, oh, my friend at work is doing that. Or, I just tried that. It didn't really work, but I did it. You know, purely anecdotal. I don't know. But I don't think that was the case like five years ago. People weren't just randomly adopting meat-based diet.
SPEAKER_02:No, I guess, yeah, that's true. And I guess the problem is they have been legitimized. And there's a certain irony, which is, They're sort of positioned as anti-establishment, but then you have Joe Rogan, the largest podcaster in the world, talking about them. You have Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, one of the most influential people in the world right now. He talks about carnivore diets. Again, we have RFK Jr. promoting sort of more red meat, less plants. This isn't an anti-establishment way of thinking. Mark Zuckerberg, at what point do we recognize that this is the establishment now in terms of the upper echelons of political power and influence in the U.S. especially? It seems strange. There's like a disconnection.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, but they've positioned themselves as, I mean, from the very onset of this political party, they've positioned themselves as counter to establishment. So anything that they are pushing forward is going to be seen as such by those folks that follow them and adhere to their values.
SPEAKER_02:Is the picture rosier in Europe?
SPEAKER_01:I think so.
SPEAKER_02:Okay. In what way would you say that?
SPEAKER_01:I think that it's a really scary bar to compare it to, so... Everything looks better. Everything looks better. I know that, you know, the UK at least has seen some decline in plant-based uptake. There's less new consumers trying the products. And this is according to some research that's come out from GFI. But in other countries like Germany, for example, we're seeing, you know, a rise in plant-based uptake. I think what Denmark is doing with the Danish action plan for a plant-based future is really incredible. There's definitely like coalitions happening. Even here, like Plant Futures, IndyCore is working with a bunch of industry leaders to promote plant-based in this really cohesive messaging strategy, which is the first of its kind. There just seems to be more energy. I'm also here, and I'm not as involved in... in the US as it used to be and avoid US politics every once in a while for mental health.
SPEAKER_02:Exactly, to retain
SPEAKER_01:some semblance of sanity, I think. I think it would be interesting to hear from someone who maybe is more entrenched in what's happening in the US.
SPEAKER_02:In terms of what you referenced in Denmark, you referenced something that they've done that's that you find particularly notable?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so the Danish action plan for plant-based future is incredible. This is the first of its kind, like a country-wide strategy for increasing plant-based production, consumption, education around plant-based diets. And I think what is particularly amazing about this is that it really had bipartisan participation. So there were organizations from animal, traditional ag, the Vegan Society, Denmark also was involved policymakers lobbyists lobby groups the political groups came together to produce this action plan and I'm not going to get it all right I haven't read the entire plan in a while but I think what's really interesting is they actually put money towards these things so there's like an incentive for farmers to grow more plant-based products they're establishing like chef training for vegan food um There's a few other like initiatives that really aren't just like, oh, we're going to do this. It's like, we're going to do this. We're going to put money towards it. And it's like bipartisan across all of these different groups of people. I think it's a phenomenal example of what can be done when we like. work with people that maybe are outside of our value system. And they've done a really great job.
SPEAKER_02:And it's fascinating that it's in Denmark, because we conventionally, from a food perspective, associate Denmark with pig farming, quite intensive pig farming, and pork products. And we import a lot into this country. And so the agricultural perception is actually not necessarily one that you'd think would lend itself to the more plant-forward attitude, but would be more sort of maybe entrenched in more traditional viewpoints around agriculture.
SPEAKER_01:I think that's what's really exciting too. It's like in a meat heavy country, this is possible. And I spoke with the head of the vegetarian society there last year. So it's been a while, but when I talked to him, they were thinking about ways to implement in different countries in Europe. So I'm not sure where they're at now, but yeah, it'd be good to follow up and see.
SPEAKER_02:Certainly. And from a UK perspective, There's recently been, I think it was cell cultured meat for pet food, has been granted regulatory approval. And I think it's now available, at least they were doing a trial, I think, weren't they?
SPEAKER_01:It is, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Does that sort of signify a broader shift in terms of the UK's perspective on cell cultured alternatives?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. My own personal opinion is it might be, I think it's fantastic that it exists. I do wonder about it being a pet food first.
SPEAKER_02:Oh,
SPEAKER_01:right. Interesting. Like a transition to like human food.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, that's interesting.
SPEAKER_01:It's an interesting idea. And then my co-founder at Rooted Research, Alice Johnson, she's at Aston University. She does cell culture biology and working on lab-grown meat, actually growing meat on like mycelium instead of other scaffolds. Anyway, she could explain it better. But... We were talking about this recently, and we're seeing some of the same narratives around cultivated that we're seeing around plant-based, which is this ultra-processed, fake food. And so culture is still a ways away from getting to mass market, right? But I really hope that we can navigate this UPF debate now with plant-based so that we have better tools once Cultivator reaches market. Because in some ways, I almost feel like it's a harder sell for some people. I'm hopeful, but we really have to get the marketing and narrative strategy right this time.
SPEAKER_02:Absolutely. So do you have any ideas for what sort of an effective narrative would be? How do these companies go about avoiding repeating the same mistakes or being implicated in the same criticisms.
SPEAKER_01:Do intensive consumer marketing studies. Segment your consumers. Better understand how these groups respond to different language. When we're talking about these products, find out what their values are. Are they in it for health? Are they in it for the environment? Are they looking for a cheaper product? Whatever it might be. Segment your consumers. Study them. Identify narratives that resonate with consumers and educate to the best of your ability. And also focus on the taste. So one of the other things that I think the plant-based vegan community struggles with is there was a study that came out last year or two years ago that showed that an online discourse, vegans when we're talking about food, we're talking about identity. When omnivores are talking about food, they're talking about taste, and pleasure, and community, and nostalgia. And it's really hard to make that jump. When you're talking about identity here, and then you're talking about taste and food over here, where is that overlap? So I would also say to cultivated companies, and I know some of them have already started doing this, bringing in chefs early on to identify really delicious ways to cook these products and emphasize the flavor. because it's tasty. I actually had a chance to try cultivated chicken in Singapore a couple of years ago. Yeah. And it was fine.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Would you say, did it taste like actual chicken?
SPEAKER_01:It tasted like turkey to me. Like turkey. From what I remember of Thanksgiving holidays. Yeah, of course,
SPEAKER_02:of course.
SPEAKER_01:That's interesting. I mean, I'm probably not the target market.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:But yeah, it's convincing enough.
SPEAKER_02:Kind of fills me with great sadness in a way. Well, two things fill me with a bit of sadness, which is sometimes vegans are sort of quite critical of cell cultured meats. And they seem sometimes more hung up on the idea of whether it's technically vegan or not, and whether vegans should eat it. And I think we kind of missed the point, you know, it's not really for us. And if you don't want to eat it, then that's absolutely fine. Don't, by all means, don't. But sometimes I feel like we can be our own worst enemies in terms of how we approach things that could be generally quite beneficial. But it also fills me with sadness because cell cultured meat in a way is two things. I think it represents some of the most amazing things about our species. We're so clever. We're so clever. Just think that we can take cells from an animal and produce meat. Isn't that just absolutely incredible? Like, how did we get so smart? And yet the irony is the reason that we quote unquote need this is because we're so smart. deep rooted in emotion and transgressive behaviors and myopic worldviews. And it's almost like we need this incredible symbol of the best of our species, progressiveness, technology, science, to try and overcome something that represents, I think, some of the worst attributes of our species now, violence and animal cruelty and environmental harm and blah, blah, blah. And I guess it's that sort of that challenge of kind of been really excited for something, a little bit apprehensive about it in terms of its necessity. And then also, I suppose, worried about how we as a community then overcome some of these narratives. And I already feel tired of having to talk about how this real food thing and this ultra processed thing. And yet really, if we talk about cell culture, which in terms of its potential is probably the biggest thing that we have in front of us right now in terms of positive potential. Yet there will be probably significant significant criticism leveled against it in a way that maybe even surpasses some of the stuff that we've been discussing today.
SPEAKER_01:Potentially, yeah. And I agree. It's incredibly complicated, but I think it goes back to these layers that we were talking about, right? Like taste and price and health, but then this cultural attachment. And I'm not sure we can untangle that fast enough. So cultivated meat might... bridge that gap in a way that plant-based isn't really able to do that, as long as, like I said, we get that narrative right and the messaging right and really understand what consumers are worried about and what they're interested in.
SPEAKER_02:How much do you think ethics plays a role? I'm somewhat biased because I became vegan for ethical reasons, and that's the biggest point that I try and argue with people is But I also know that there's a lot of hesitancy around ethics when it comes to how products are marketed, in terms of how we promote plant-based diets. A lot of people think that's probably the most controversial thing. What do you think the role of sort of an ethical conversation is in relation to promoting alternatives as opposed to sort of the philosophy of veganism, let's say?
SPEAKER_01:I think people don't like to be reminded that some people find their ethics... Or some people find them unethical. Right. You know, and I'm not convinced that's the approach. We are tackling hundreds and hundreds of thousands of years of like entrenched ideas around this product, meat. And people don't like to be told not to do something and why they're wrong for doing it. And... I think the messages are going to resonate with different people in different ways. The ethics message resonates with me as well. But some people, it'll be the environmental method. Some people would just be like, this tastes amazing and it's affordable and I'm going to eat it.
SPEAKER_02:Right. And I suppose if cell cultured meat becomes commercially viable and is scaled up, could it become cheaper than meat from animals?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it should. It's just going to take a while. Take
SPEAKER_02:a
SPEAKER_01:while. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Do you think the consumer has that patience or does the market have patience? Because I guess there's investors, there's lots of money. They're going to want to see a return at some point. Is there the capital and the will to wait to that point?
SPEAKER_01:You know, Mark Post, I think he was the original creator of that$300,000 lab-grown beef burger. Yeah. He was at a GFI conference maybe three years ago, and I think he said, like, we've got another 30 years ahead of us.
SPEAKER_03:Right.
SPEAKER_01:Which was, honestly, for me, like, quite a relief, because I'm like, finally someone's just saying it like it is.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Like, we've got to work on this for a while. And we're already seeing, like, at least in the plant-based alt-protein movement, there's a decline in investor interest. Maybe these things aren't panning out in the same way that they used to. Yeah. I think we're going to get there. I'm really convinced we will, but I don't know what it's going to look like in between. But we have to. We have to find an alternative to what we're doing right now.
SPEAKER_02:Certainly. This is the thing,
SPEAKER_01:isn't it? This is just not tenable anymore. We cannot carry on.
SPEAKER_02:No. I mean, that's the sort of bottom line law of this, is that change isn't something that we have much of a choice over. At a certain point, the change is just a reality of the fact that we have a system that can't can't continue, at least in the way that it is, especially as we have growing populations globally. We have a growing population of humans, but we also have per capita meat consumption rising. It's this double whammy. And vegans, I think one thing that we struggle with is we obviously have made gains, let's say past 15, 20 years especially. But then if you think about the rise in population globally, it's like there's this sort of parallel happening where you could have more and more vegans, but you've also got more and more meat eaters. And on top of that, you have more and more meat eaters coming consuming more and more meat because per capita consumption is increasing and so clearly something has to change in a way that we haven't been able to achieve so far and I guess that's where this idea of alternative proteins and technology is so important because without it we have the same tools, the same messaging, the same conversations that we've had for 20, 30, 40, 50 years and we can see that that is just not going to be enough to get to where we need to be especially if we want to see an end to the crux of the problem which is this rampant systemic abuse of animals and the terrible catastrophic damage it causes and the infectious diseases it results in the antibiotic resistance that comes as a consequence the idea that we are going to combat all of those things without something radical and new and transformative I think is idealistic but probably maybe a little bit naive and so that speaks I guess to the importance of us addressing this and maybe as vegans not falling into the trap of perpetuating this misinformation. And yeah, there's always going to be nuance. We have to establish that these foods aren't the best and they're not quite where we need them to be. And yes, we should reduce sodium. And yes, there are these criticisms and some of them are valid, but maybe not in the way that we're told that they are or the scope of that. But they also serve a really important point, which is people have this deep attachment to animal products and we need to meet them where they're at in terms of hitting those sort of desires that they have to have the same flavors, the same texture, And to be able to, and you said memories earlier, that's so true. It is nostalgia. It's this memory of meat and the festivities and traditions and family meals and first dates and all of these things play into this perception. If we take that away from people and don't give them something else, we're asking them to remove a piece of their identity in a way that maybe they're not willing to do. And there is that. And I think you're right. That's how cultured meat thing works. perhaps we can evoke those memories in a way that shows that this is just a continuation of that. It's not actually a new thing. It's just a different way of producing the same thing. There's a power, I suppose, in meeting people there and appealing to that side of them as well.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I completely agree. And I think as, well, as a vegan, I am on board with cultivating meat. Like, I think we need this as a stepping stone. So I think you put it beautifully. So we can just...
SPEAKER_02:We can, we can end that. You're very kind. Maybe just one very final question. In terms of the ultra processed foods thing and the narrative around plant-based alternatives, do you see that there is a positive in terms of this? Does it incentivize companies to maybe change, to improve their messaging? Does it sort of maybe provide an incentive for companies to not be complacent, but to continue to improve and meet the challenges of these evolving narratives?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I think so. And we are already seeing some of that. I think that I think the challenge is we can't we the industry has to be careful not to push back on ultra process being good too hard because we're Accidentally or intentionally aligning with companies that are doing that, like Nestle and Coca-Cola and these like multinational companies that are really pushing this narrative. So this is, it's a very touchy line, but we also have to recognize that like... There's a lot of nuance that exists here. And maybe consumer education is part of it. Maybe we've just missed the bow on that one. I don't know. Companies have the responsibility to respond to their consumers and give them what they're asking for. So maybe that means reformulations. Maybe that means changes in sodium content, like we discussed earlier, like there are high sodium contents in a lot of these plant-based foods. I think it's an incredibly complicated issue. situation right now and plant-based is kind of struggling to respond to it in ways that are meaningful. And we'll see. We'll see what makes sense. And maybe the UPF thing is like a fad and maybe we'll move past it. I don't know. It's having a moment right now. That's all we know.
SPEAKER_02:It is. And I suppose with most things, there will be a natural pushback. And obviously, in terms of the plant-based sector, this is why your work is so valuable, because it is pushing back against some of these narratives. It is providing nuance where it's desperately needed. And as a consequence, it's arming people with a more nuanced and understanding perspective knowledge base around this to kind of get through that simplistic binary of bad versus good and to provide a little bit more context that empowers consumers to be able to make choices with a broader understanding around it. So that's why your work is so valuable. And that's why I'm very grateful that you've joined me today and have provided all the insights and have really, in many ways, we've touched upon so many things that go beyond just ultra-processed foods from identities to cultures to politics there's so much here but that's why as you say it is complex and um and i appreciate you taking the time to to break it down and to inform us more about this important work that you're doing thank you for thank you for joining me
SPEAKER_01:my pleasure thank you so much
SPEAKER_02:thank you so much for listening if you've enjoyed this episode make sure to subscribe to the disclosure podcast on whichever platform you listen to it as doing so means that you can always stay up to date with new episodes Leaving a review and sharing the podcast is also really helpful. And if you'd like to support the podcast and my work more generally, you can either make a donation through the link in the show notes or sign up to my sub stack where I post weekly and share my thoughts and feelings about the experience of living vegan. In the show notes, you can also find links to purchase my books and to find out more about today's guest, including links to their work. Thank you again for listening.