Eating with Intention: Imperfect Solutions for an Imperfect Food Chain
Introduction
How often do you think about what you eat? How frequently do you wonder where it came from? The American food system is a complicated web. I have been working in the food & beverage industry for nearly 15 years. I’m fascinated by this industry, from the seed of an entrepreneur’s idea, to the formulation of a product, to the marketing and branding efforts, to the logistics of distribution, the average consumer has no idea what went on to bring food to their grocery store shelves or to their plates.
There are so many factors that affect a consumers’ decision to eat what they do. There is of course taste (always have to start there), there is also price and nutritional content as well as dietary restrictions. However now there are also sustainability and ethical concerns surrounding many (all?) sections of food and beverage. More and more often, consumers are not just factoring their nutritional goals into their decision making, they are also considering how what they choose to consume impacts the planet.
Over the last 20 years I have done sporadic, informal research on food sustainability in my spare time, the more I learned, the deeper the research went. All the time I have spent looking into this topic has been a labor of love. I’m excited to share my journey; the mistakes I’ve made and the progress I’m hoping to make in the future. Perhaps most importantly of all, I’m hoping to share my recommendations for small steps people can take to make a difference with their food choices.
There will be a theme for this blog each quarter. The first theme is sustainable seafood, which I will be writing about throughout Q1, 2024. I want to help people evaluate their current seafood consumption patterns and think about what actionable change might be viable. I’m starting with seafood since I’ve always been fascinated by marine life. Over time this love evolved from an obsession with Lisa Frank sparkly dolphin stickers, to something substantial (i.e. writing an entire blog on the topic). Actually, it was a high school research paper that led me to change my eating habits significantly (more on that shortly) and really ignited my interest in animal rights and, later, sustainability efforts.
I've spent countless hours reading studies, books, online articles, and watching documentaries on the sustainability of seafood and terrestrial farm animals, but despite that and my 15+ years of experience in the food and beverage industry, I've still been a bit reluctant to formally summarize my research and suggestions given that sustainability isn’t my specific field of expertise. I imagine (and hope) that I will continue learning and that means some of what I write today will likely need to be updated in the future. Rather than letting that stop me from sharing what I know now, I’ve decided to go for it. This is something that is very important to me.
Given my profession, I have access to some interesting reporting on food & beverage trends. SPINS, a provider of data and insights for the natural, organic and specialty products industry, recently released their 2024 report. SPINS predicts that animal welfare, regenerative agriculture, upcycled, grass-fed and pasture-raised will all trend in 2024, whereas Fair Trade, plant-based, B Corp Certified and Non-GMO Project Verified will become a lower priority for consumers⁵. This is important in understanding the broader picture of consumption habits of the American population. I’ve long been astounded at how much power consumers have with their dollars without even realizing it. Retail brands (start-up and challenger brands, in particular) go through a long, difficult process in order to get on store shelves. The only way they stay there is if consumers continue to purchase those products. It is so obvious on the one hand, but on the other hand something that we take for granted each time we grocery shop. We make extraordinarily quick judgements; labels have just a matter of seconds to catch consumer’s attention before they pass by. Because what I’ll be addressing in this blog centers more around what you can purchase at the seafood counter as opposed to branded items for sale (although there will be a bit of that, too), we won’t linger on the trends topic too long. But there is no doubt in my mind that if consumers are interested in animal welfare as it relates to branded items, similar thoughts are crossing their minds when they’re making a selection at the meat counter or seafood counter.
Many people understand that the food they choose to eat not only has health-related impacts, but also environmental impacts. I have spoken to countless people (in professional and personal capacities) who genuinely care about both elements, but are not doing anything specific to change their purchasing and eating habits. There are many reasons for this, all of which are valid, including:
Feeling overwhelmed with all of the information available (i.e. analysis paralysis)
A seemingly infinite number of choices (there is an optimal number of choices for consumers and we seem to exceed that on almost every shelf in the store)
A distrust of marketing and/or certifying bodies
I believe that in many respects, things can be as simple or as complicated as we want them to be; the amount of information at our fingertips is a blessing and a curse. Combine a tendency to ignore dense topics that overwhelm us with the judgment often cast on other’s consumption habits, it makes for a real challenge. It is counterproductive to state that something someone else is trying to do to make a difference isn’t enough. If everyone took one small step we would be doing a lot better than if a small percentage of people went to an extreme. As an example, it would be more productive for the average American to reduce the amount of meat by 33%, than it would be to increase the vegan population by one or two percentage points, see below illustration.
A one-third reduction of meat-based meals by the average adult American is more effective than complete elimination of meat by 2% of the population. Instead of scolding or fear mongering, we ought to applaud any effort being made by someone to clean up their eating habits, even if we consider it to be minor.
I want to address the high school paper I referenced earlier. It all started when I wrote a startlingly lame paper (shoutout to getting a B- on a paper that would inspire a lasting change in my life). I forget the exact assignment, but generally it was supposed to be a paper about something you took a moral stance on. I chose animal furs. Wearing mink coats was not at the height of its fashion relevance when I was a teenager, but you saw (and still see) fur coats being worn sometimes. Furs were originally used for utilitarian purposes (i.e. clothing for warmth), and grew to have tremendous cultural significance, and progressed over time to become a show of wealth and style. Then there was the backlash following the 1970s animal activism movement and the following protests and campaigns against wearing fur eventually resulted in a faux fur trend. In my high school paper I argued that faux fur was also not acceptable because people may not know the fur you’re wearing isn’t real, so if they like the style they might go out to buy a real fur coat. It’s 2024 and I personally do not believe that fur has the cache it once did, I’m not so sure someone even wants to wear faux fur anymore. After writing my thinly researched high school paper (despite that, I made a few valid points), I started to consider the ethical treatment of animals in general. We don’t need to kill animals to have a coat. Do we need to kill animals to eat? I went down a rabbit hole I wasn’t ready for at that time. The horrible images of chickens in cages and gory stories of how veal is raised put me over the edge.
I’m generally an all-in type of girl. Dive in the deep end and go for it, but I fully recognize not everyone is this way. The best choice for me at the time was to stop eating meat entirely and shortly thereafter, I did just that. I removed all land animals and went pescatarian (I do not think that word existed at the time), see table below for a description of this term and others.
I reintegrated specific types of poultry (poultry will be the focus of my second quarter blog, so much more on that later) into my diet soon after, and have been eating in that same way for nearly 20 years. My basic diet contains many types of seafood, select types of poultry, eggs & dairy, fruits & veggies, grains and goodies too (although I try to limit overly processed foods as much as I can). I eat zero red meat, and zero pork.
My thought process was simple: we are doing all these horrible things to the animals living on land so seafood is a better source of protein from an animal welfare standpoint. Although my heart was in the right place, this logic is obviously super flawed. Why did I make the assumption that fish and other marine life are being treated well? Looking back, I think I just wanted a solution to ensure I wasn’t part of the problem with the mistreatment of cows, pigs, chicken, etc. But I can, am, and will continue to do better.
I think it is useful to step back and consider things from a macro point of view: why are we defining some animals as wildlife and others as food? We lump all animals from the sea as seafood, this is addressed in countless articles and books. In most Western European languages it is called “sea fruit” and in Slavic it is called “gifts from the sea”⁴. We don’t call cows, pigs and chickens “land food”. We have completely dissociated fish from wild animals and defined them as food, it is pretty inane (not to mention insensitive).
Once we are able to wrap our minds around the fact that we have already defined marine species as food and not animals, we need to consider all of the other elements that factor into our decision to eat seafood. The SPINS 2024 predictions report stated that sustainability metrics can be categorized in three ways:
Animals (welfare, biodiversity)
Planet (environment)
People (labor practices, corporate responsibility, diversity)
I’ve identified a similar set of buckets that I believe are worth consideration:
Nutritional value (fat, calories, etc.) and presence of contaminants (i.e. mercury, PCBs)
Sustainability (i.e. threatened & endangered species, ecosystem impacts)
Ethics (i.e. human rights, animal rights)
Cost, which is a critical consideration given everyone’s access to healthy food in this country is vastly different and everyone’s budget is also extremely different
Everyone will prioritize the above factors for themselves. My interest in sustainable consumption was not born out of a concern for nutritional value, the catalyst for me was sustainability and ethical concerns. That won’t be the same for everyone, but because it is my particular area of interest that is what I will be focusing on in this blog over the course of Q1 2024. I’m going to separate my research into two parts: fish and shellfish. Join me as I help to explain what we know and put into perspective what I think we can do. I hope to help readers consider what changes are realistically doable for themselves. Is doing something small is better than doing nothing at all? “Perfectionism is the enemy of progress” is something I keep coming back to.
I plan to post one full length blog on my website each quarter and post highlights on LinkedIn as well to make the content more easily accessible to those who don’t want to read through the details. I would absolutely love feedback, comments and questions. What are you interested in as it relates to sustainability and human consumption? I’d love to consider your suggestions for future quarterly themes.
My last note is a small disclaimer: I’m going to be recommending brands but I want to be super clear that I’m not being compensated for these mentions. These are brands I genuinely believe in and I’m not receiving payment to share their names.
Sources: Eating with Intention, Q1 2024
