0:00

This week on the New Yorker Radio Hour,

0:02

I'll talk with the Secretary of Education, Miguel Cardona,

0:05

about the end of affirmative action and the Biden

0:07

administration's position against legacy

0:09

admissions. That's next time on the New Yorker

0:11

Radio Hour, wherever you listen to podcasts.

0:15

Listener supported

0:17

WNYC studios.

0:18

Hi, this is Francie from Portland, Oregon.

0:28

My husband and I are eating as much

0:31

plant-based foods as we can, and we

0:33

totally enjoy them. We do have

0:35

an occasional hamburger. We're in

0:37

our 60s, and we just want to live

0:39

a healthy lifestyle. Hi, my name is Michaela,

0:41

and I'm calling from Scotland. I just

0:44

decided to test out a plant-based

0:46

diet, and I cannot square

0:48

the moral side of eating meat with

0:51

the actual impact on the animals. They are

0:53

sentient beings. They're aware of their surroundings.

0:55

They

0:56

experience happiness. I

0:58

can't participate in that. I'm

1:01

a vegetarian because it's better

1:04

for the planet. It's safer

1:06

for my kitchen.

1:08

And yeah, I just

1:10

feel so much healthier with

1:12

all these veggies.

1:34

It's Notes From America. I'm Kai Wright. Welcome

1:36

to the show. Alicia

1:38

Kennedy has spent much of her career

1:41

reporting on the politics of food,

1:43

of what we eat, and the consequences

1:46

those choices have for the planet. And

1:49

she's chronicled that research, including the often

1:51

overlooked radical roots of plant-based

1:54

eating, in a new book. It's called No

1:56

Meat Required, The Cultural History and

1:58

Culinary Future of Plant-Based based eating.

2:01

Our producer Rahima Nassar spoke with Alicia

2:04

about this history and the question of

2:06

whether we can pursue a different

2:08

future for our climate by changing

2:10

what we eat. And I'm going to share her conversation

2:12

with you this week. We're not taking calls

2:14

during the show, but as always, you

2:17

can still talk to us about anything

2:19

you hear. Just go to notesfromamerica.org,

2:23

look for the record button and leave us a voicemail

2:25

right there. Just remember to include

2:27

at least your first name and where you're calling from.

2:29

Okay, here's Rahima.

2:33

For the last few years, I wanted my values

2:35

to match what I eat. It's

2:37

just I couldn't decide what I wanted

2:39

to be. A flexitarian,

2:42

vegan, vegan curious, plant-based,

2:45

does it even matter? I first

2:48

started thinking about these terms

2:51

early in the pandemic. A global health

2:53

emergency and a supply chain

2:55

crisis seemed like a good time

2:57

to make some changes because

2:59

it was more clear than ever that

3:02

eating meat wasn't going to be sustainable.

3:06

Lucky for me, it was a good time to make

3:08

these changes because there's so many good

3:11

options available. Around

3:13

the corner, there's a plant-based deli that sells a

3:15

delicious buffalo chicken wrap made

3:18

of seitan instead of chicken.

3:20

There's a vegan bakery

3:22

that can make croissants without butter that

3:24

are so good you can't tell. My

3:27

local grocery store now has endless

3:29

options for non-dairy yogurt. And

3:32

listen, to be fair, I do live in Brooklyn. This

3:35

would be

3:36

the place where you would find so many plant-based

3:38

options. But

3:40

even when traveling outside the city, I

3:42

noticed that there are more and more things

3:45

to eat for vegans at fast food restaurants

3:47

like Burger King, Dunkin Donuts, and

3:50

McDonald's thanks to

3:52

the rise of alternative meat companies. Having

3:55

these so readily available feels

3:57

like a good thing and better for the

3:59

planet.

3:59

planet than eating a hamburger

4:02

made of beef, right? I

4:05

think what's getting lost is that these

4:08

companies are selling themselves based on

4:10

the ease of their product and the ease

4:12

of this switch that people can make without

4:15

really interrogating those

4:18

deeper aspects of agribusiness in the

4:20

food system that are really causing

4:22

a lot of harm. That's Alicia Kennedy. She

4:25

used to be a strict vegan, but now she eats

4:27

a plant-based diet. She's

4:29

been writing

4:29

about plant-based eating in the U.S.

4:32

for a long time. And

4:34

Alicia set me straight. These are

4:36

still based on monocrop agricultural

4:38

systems. These

4:41

are still intellectual property that is

4:43

owned and profited from.

4:46

These are often companies that are still

4:50

owned by big meat companies as

4:52

well, like Tyson or Smithfield. Folks have

4:54

gotten their money into

4:57

ultra-processed plant-based

4:59

faux meat products. And

5:01

so we're kind of not seeing a deeper switch

5:04

in terms of transforming the

5:06

food system toward ecological

5:08

well-being, farm worker and labor

5:11

well-being. We're not seeing these

5:14

companies that want to be in fast

5:16

food restaurants ask these

5:18

fast food giants to also

5:20

change their practices around sourcing

5:23

other ingredients or increasing wages

5:25

for workers and that sort of thing. Conditions

5:28

for everybody aren't increasing simply

5:30

because more people are eating a plant-based

5:33

burger. So it really shows the limits

5:36

of what it means to get into the mainstream

5:39

if it doesn't really change the way the

5:42

system is working at large.

5:44

Yeah, a lot of these companies are

5:46

using the fact that or

5:49

promoting the fact that eating plant-based is better

5:51

for the planet, but they're not actually really

5:53

doing anything. I think

5:55

that's also why it's so important to interrogate

5:58

what companies when they're

6:01

saying, we're plant-based, we're gonna feed the world,

6:03

we're gonna save the world. Like, we already tried

6:05

this, and all it did was get swallowed

6:07

up and co-opted and sold back to everybody

6:10

at a very expensive price. What

6:13

is the difference between what people are saying, is

6:15

plant-based eating, like, the impossible meats, beyond

6:18

meat, and, like,

6:20

just being a vegan? It's so

6:22

interesting, because these really are...

6:25

They are synonyms in a lot of

6:27

ways, but plant-based,

6:30

because it doesn't have as strict a meaning

6:33

as vegan, has been able to be

6:35

kind of, like, squirrely

6:38

about what it really means, and what it really signifies.

6:40

There are items at the supermarket

6:42

in the freezer aisle you could pick up, and they'll

6:44

say they're plant-based, but they'll have an egg in them, or they'll

6:46

have milk fat, or something like that. So,

6:49

for me, I've always thought of plant-based

6:51

as something that kind of just bridges the gap between

6:54

vegetarian and vegan. And,

6:56

you know, vegan also has had this bad

6:59

cultural connotation. And so, going

7:01

back to the 90s, folks have used plant-based

7:04

in certain organizations to differentiate

7:06

themselves

7:07

from that kind of vegan baggage. And

7:10

we've seen that it kind of works. Like,

7:12

I would call it

7:14

a bit of greenwashing to

7:16

use the phrase plant-based on

7:19

things like Impossible Burgers or Beyond Meat, because,

7:21

you know, they're not being very

7:23

clear about their sourcing and what's going

7:25

on. That's where I get, like, kind of conflicted,

7:28

too, about, like, an Impossible Burger being available

7:30

at, like, a fast food restaurant, because,

7:33

like, now my dad knows what an Impossible

7:35

Burger is, and it's, like, something he would try because

7:38

it's at a place that is in front of him. Legend.

7:40

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. How do we negotiate

7:43

that or balance that?

7:44

Yeah, it's one of those things where

7:46

it's not really up to the individual

7:48

to fix. It's, I

7:51

do think that, you know, having the Burger

7:53

King Impossible Burger accessible,

7:55

legible to a huge amount of

7:57

people, is 100% a... good

8:00

thing, especially if we

8:03

were doing things that would ensure

8:05

that these impossible burgers were made,

8:08

you know, in line with some good ecological

8:10

principles, some good labor principles. Like,

8:13

there was transparency on that level. But

8:16

at the same time, yeah, it's very

8:18

difficult to say what the

8:20

future of this kind of eating

8:23

could be, because we're

8:25

in a kind of liminal space in terms

8:27

of where we are, where we've been and where we're

8:29

going, because we have seen the stock and

8:32

the availability and the plummet of

8:34

impossible and beyond. And we're seeing

8:36

people eating more meat again. And, you

8:38

know, that's kind of not how to go

8:41

forward. And so in

8:43

terms of climate change, and so we're at a real precipice

8:45

in terms of how do we change people's behavior

8:48

around meat. But the

8:50

problem doesn't lie with individual

8:52

choices. You know, individual choices

8:54

have a role to play insofar as they influence

8:56

the collective. But

8:59

it's about subsidies for meat and dairy

9:02

and industrial animal agriculture. It's about, you

9:04

know, how little the government cares

9:07

about breaking up agribusiness and meat process,

9:09

how much leeway we give these massive

9:12

companies and allow them to take advantage

9:14

and be still the cheap

9:17

option in the supermarket, you know, and

9:19

even when there are smaller companies making food

9:22

and getting on the shelves in the supermarket, eventually

9:24

you're going to see a big company undercut that and,

9:27

you know, get themselves out there

9:28

for cheaper. And so it's

9:31

not the individual struggle. It's a political struggle.

9:36

Plant based eating as a political

9:38

act actually goes back decades. Hippies,

9:42

activists, punks, typically

9:45

on the fringe, typically reject

9:47

the status quo, including what

9:50

they eat. So in the middle of the

9:52

20th century, people started to have

9:54

more of a consciousness about a lot of

9:57

things. I mean, we saw Silent Spring

9:59

from

9:59

Rachel Carson in 1964, which

10:02

was really ringing alarm bells

10:04

around environmental crises. You

10:06

have the Vietnam War that's causing

10:09

huge demonstrations, a huge youth movement

10:11

against the draft and against war

10:14

in general. And then you have

10:16

things like the population bomb coming

10:18

out, saying that one day there's going

10:21

to be too many people on the planet to feed. You

10:23

have the civil rights movement, where there was

10:26

a strong pull toward vegetarian

10:28

and vegan food as a way of sort

10:30

of controlling one's own nutrition, controlling what

10:33

goes in one's own body. And

10:35

all of these things were happening and these

10:38

seeds were being planted. And

10:41

then in 1971, we see Francis

10:43

Morlepay publish the book,

10:45

Diet for a Small Planet, which it

10:48

talked about the world's food system

10:50

as a protein factory in reverse, and

10:53

this is still true. We use 80%

10:56

of farmable land to produce

10:59

food for livestock that provides

11:01

only 18% of calories. And

11:04

this was a big deal because she was making

11:07

it about hunger. She was making it about how

11:10

actually there will not be

11:12

an overpopulation problem on the planet

11:15

and there won't be hunger if we were

11:17

growing food in a different way, producing

11:19

food in a different way, and distributing

11:21

it in a different way, in a way that prioritized

11:24

everyone actually being fed. And so that was

11:26

a very revolutionary moment. It was

11:28

also that year when Stephen

11:31

Gaskin and Ina Mae Gaskin formed

11:33

the Farm Commune in summertown Tennessee. So

11:36

it was all this kind of interest

11:38

in the counterculture and in

11:41

how people should live and this kind of rejection

11:44

of that 50s Americana

11:46

American dream notion really

11:49

fomented in this 1970s

11:52

sort of hippie countercultural

11:55

rejection of the ways in which the American

11:57

food system had been built. And

12:00

so these folks were the ones who kind

12:02

of made it mainstream eventually

12:05

to eat brown rice, to make

12:07

tempeh, to eat tofu

12:09

and all of these things. And they brought

12:12

them into the white American mainstream.

12:16

And now we see, and this is

12:18

a common refrain, right? That the boomers

12:20

who were hippies are now like the CEOs with

12:23

yachts. And so

12:26

the same thing happened to the food. The food

12:29

was really successful and really

12:31

important for its ability to feed

12:33

the world cheaply without

12:35

a huge ecological impact. And

12:38

then it becomes something you have to go to Erewhon

12:40

to get. Erewhon itself started out as

12:42

a natural food store and now it's where you go get

12:44

a $25 smoothie. And

12:46

so all of these things- Adaptogen City. Exactly.

12:49

So like all of these ideas that really

12:51

came about because of a desire to

12:54

make life better for folks are

12:56

luxury items now. And

12:58

it's a really big

12:59

switch. So what can the future be if we

13:02

continue doing things that way?

13:07

Let's put a pin in the future for

13:09

just a moment. When we come back,

13:12

more on the history of plant-based eating

13:14

and the people who helped shape it.

13:31

Hi, my name is Regina and

13:33

I'm a producer with the show. You may remember

13:36

that last year we started the Notes from

13:38

America summer playlist. We

13:40

collected submissions from you and curated

13:42

a playlist that everyone could enjoy. While

13:45

summer is here again, and I'm happy

13:47

to announce we're launching our second

13:49

summer playlist. A couple

13:51

weeks ago, I had a conversation with

13:54

a guys from a band called Wake Island.

13:56

They talked about how music has become

13:58

such a powerful outlet. for identity,

14:01

filling a need as they search for their place

14:04

in the Arab American diaspora. So

14:06

now it's your turn. What's a song

14:09

that represents your personal diaspora

14:11

story? Here's how to send us your

14:13

response. Go to notesfromamerica.org

14:17

and look for the record button to leave us a message.

14:20

Start with your name and where you're recording from.

14:22

Then tell us the name of that song,

14:25

the artist, and a short story that

14:27

goes along with it. Feel free

14:29

to include a little bit about your background as well.

14:32

Make it your own. And please make

14:34

sure that your recording is at least a minute

14:36

long. We'll gather all of the songs

14:38

and your stories in Spotify playlists

14:41

that will drop regularly all summer

14:43

long. All right, I think that's

14:45

everything. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk. And

14:48

I can't wait to hear from you.

14:52

The national parks might

14:55

seem like iconic landscapes frozen

14:57

in time, but really

15:00

they're living, breathing places.

15:02

I'm

15:09

Lillian Cunningham of The Washington Post.

15:12

Join me on a journey through the messy past

15:14

and uncertain future of America's

15:17

national parks.

15:18

Find Field Trip wherever you listen.

15:21

It's Notes From America, and I'm not chyrite.

15:24

I'm Rahima Nassa, one of the producers

15:27

on the show. Alicia Kennedy takes us

15:29

on a trip back in time in her

15:31

new book, No Meat Required, to help

15:33

us better understand the history of

15:35

our planet. She's a biologist, a scientist,

15:38

and a writer who's been working on the planet

15:40

for over a decade. She's also a writer who's

15:42

been working on the planet for

15:44

over a decade. She's a writer who's been

15:46

working on the planet for over a decade. To

15:50

help us better understand what the plant-based

15:52

movement in the US stood for when

15:55

it first started.

15:56

And the counterculture of the 60s

15:59

played a big role. Never

16:01

before have the young set the pace as they

16:03

do now. Rock music is a basic

16:05

ingredient of the hippie life. So

16:07

too are drugs. I don't want to be settled

16:09

out, but I wanted to sort of try things out. I think that

16:12

sex is just much groupier when there's love. But

16:14

there's nothing wrong with just sex for sex. As

16:17

revolutionary fervor grew, the student

16:19

leaders called the country's whole way of life

16:22

into question.

16:24

Among these hippies was Stephen

16:27

Gaskin, a charismatic, new

16:29

age, philosopher of sorts.

16:33

In the 60s, he held classes on Monday

16:35

nights at San Francisco State. These

16:38

classes got so popular that he

16:40

eventually had to move to a bigger venue. It's

16:43

very cultish in its beginnings. I

16:46

mean, yeah, communes somehow

16:49

always end up like that. Yes, but

16:51

there were a lot of communes in this

16:53

time,

16:54

and so they all got on some school buses. They

16:58

traveled from California and found land

17:00

that they could buy for cheap in summertown

17:03

Tennessee. This is where they established

17:06

the Farm Commune. They

17:08

still exist. There's still folks there. They

17:10

still have a Tempe lab. They're still publishing books. They

17:12

still are doing their counterculture

17:15

work. What

17:18

was countercultural cuisine?

17:21

How would you describe it? Counterculture

17:23

cuisine, I would best define it

17:25

by looking at something like the farm vegetarian

17:28

cookbook that they put out in the mid-70s

17:30

through their own publishing house. It

17:33

was a book that was revolutionary

17:36

for its time. We would look back on it now and be

17:38

like, ugh. But they

17:40

were eating rice. They were eating a ton of

17:42

soy. They were growing soy. They were making coffee from

17:44

soy. They were making whipped cream

17:47

from soy, from tofu.

17:49

They were just using

17:52

soybeans for whatever

17:54

they could possibly get out of them. And

17:57

this was a big thing for the counterculture,

17:59

was... soy and its potential.

18:01

But this was a global kind of interest,

18:04

because soybeans have been discussed since

18:06

the 60s, since the 70s, as

18:08

the crop that can feed the world and

18:10

can feed the world protein. But

18:13

they were also eating bread. They were making

18:15

their own bread. It was also

18:17

about getting back to whole wheat flour

18:20

versus white flour. It

18:22

was about this idea that the processing

18:25

of foods had removed

18:27

something essential, and that by

18:29

putting it back in, we would kind

18:32

of restore ourselves as well

18:34

to some sort of better state of being

18:36

and living.

18:40

Meanwhile, black activists made

18:42

the connection between plant-based eating and

18:45

the fight for racial justice.

18:48

There was also, within the civil rights ideology,

18:51

toward a plant-based diet a desire

18:53

to break away from the sort

18:57

of the US diet, but for different reasons,

18:59

because this was a diet

19:02

built upon enslavement,

19:05

on enslaved cooks too, and on

19:07

their wherewithal, on their talent.

19:09

And so there was this desire

19:11

to break away from a

19:14

way of eating, a style of eating, that

19:16

had so much of that legacy

19:19

tethered to it. And so there was a rejection

19:21

of pork and a rejection. As

19:23

well, Malcolm X gave a speech where

19:26

he said that he would see

19:28

growing up how much joy white

19:31

people around him would take in the hunt, and

19:33

that it was to see folks

19:35

who took a lot of joy in killing, he made that

19:38

connection between slavery, between Jim

19:40

Crow, and between

19:42

eating meat.

19:47

Other civil rights leaders embraced plant-based

19:50

eating as a natural extension of

19:52

a commitment to nonviolence. Coretta

19:55

Scott King, who had been inspired

19:57

by her son Dexter,

19:59

had been inspired by another activist,

20:02

Dick Gregory, a comedian. He

20:05

used his platform to speak up about social

20:08

issues like segregation, the

20:10

Vietnam War.

20:11

When he got to that little section that said occupation,

20:14

I would just write murderer. That

20:17

sounds funny, but you know, we would never be permitted

20:19

by law to draft a murderer into the army to

20:21

send him to Vietnam to kill Viet Cong.

20:23

And even the American diet.

20:26

Yeah, a lot of people hope the beef like drug

20:28

addicts whoop the dope. Yes,

20:30

beef addicts.

20:32

So in 1973, Dick Gregory's natural diet

20:37

for folks who eat, cooking

20:39

with mother nature came out and it's

20:41

recently been reissued as well, which

20:43

I think shows the trajectory

20:46

of plant-based thinking kind of understanding

20:48

its roots in a deeper way. And

20:51

this was also, this was a vegan cookbook and it had

20:53

its, it grounded its ideology in

20:55

the civil rights movement, in black liberation.

20:58

And this was not uncommon. I

21:01

interviewed Bryant Terry, who is a cookbook

21:03

author. He wrote Afro Vegan. He edited

21:06

the book, Black Food. And

21:08

he told me that, you know, he's had

21:11

so many mentors in the food

21:13

movement like Alice Waters or,

21:15

you know, Michael Pollan or Francis Morlepay.

21:18

But what was, has always been more

21:20

influential to him was that when he was

21:23

growing up in Tennessee, the folks around

21:25

him who were drinking green juice and who were growing

21:27

their own food were his

21:30

relatives and his neighbors. And

21:32

this was never to him a white

21:35

ideology to eat well and to

21:37

eat from the land. And also

21:40

we saw, you know, a lot of this overlap

21:42

with the civil rights movement because it's

21:45

this realization that the way the

21:48

kind of patriarchal global

21:50

structure treats the land and treats animals

21:53

has commonalities in terms of how

21:55

white supremacy functions, in terms of how patriarchy

21:58

functions. And...

21:59

And

22:01

so these things were kind of swept under

22:03

the rug. And even in a lot

22:05

of texts or documents

22:09

on counterculture cuisine or on hippie food,

22:12

it's kind of swept away that

22:14

a lot of the folks who were adherence to counterculture

22:17

were white. And the folks who were

22:19

protesting the Vietnam War, a lot of them were

22:22

white. And this is swept

22:24

under the rug and not really discussed. And

22:26

I did want to name the reasons

22:29

why this happened. And a lot of it

22:31

was that folks who

22:33

are marginalized are already politicized. They

22:36

didn't need a grand movement to get themselves

22:38

involved. Also, the counterculture was

22:41

predominantly made up of people who kind

22:44

of came from privilege and were able to

22:47

and wanted to break from their families in

22:49

a way and needed to do that in

22:51

order to live a different life, live

22:54

an alternative life. Whereas folks who were already

22:56

marginalized, they were part of their families, they

22:58

were part of their communities, and they

23:00

were able to kind of be counterculture

23:03

within their own lives. They

23:05

didn't need to kind of go to the commune necessarily

23:07

in order to do that. And

23:10

they also had to work and they had to sustain their families

23:12

in a real way that a lot of the

23:15

hippies did not. They

23:17

were able to go be barefoot and make

23:19

tofu smoothies. So it was a different

23:22

kind of life that folks were living. And

23:25

despite all of this, why

23:27

do you think that

23:29

eating plant-based or eating,

23:31

quote unquote, like hippie food is still seen

23:34

as like something for white people?

23:36

Or what gets lost around this narrative around

23:38

hippie food? I think it's

23:40

interesting because throughout history, the

23:43

vegetarian has been thought of as humorless.

23:45

So when we come to this sort

23:48

of secular point for

23:51

vegetarianism and veganism, which I would

23:53

say is 1970, 1971, you know, when Died for a Small Planet comes out

23:55

and The

24:00

Civil Rights Movement has these attachments to this

24:02

diet. There's communes. It's coming

24:04

from a place that's not religious all

24:07

the time. I think that that's

24:09

when we see this narrative

24:11

kind of break apart into factions.

24:14

Because one, it's just easier to write

24:16

nice little New York Times stories about middle-class

24:20

white families who give up meat and are inspired

24:22

by diet for a small planet and that

24:24

sort of thing. Of course, that's going to be the

24:26

visible narrative that takes root in

24:29

U.S. culture. It also

24:31

makes it easy to continue that narrative

24:33

of these are the humorless people. These are

24:35

people you can't relate to. If you

24:37

establish vegetarianism and plant-based

24:40

diet as very far away from acceptability

24:42

or as

24:48

a weird thing that's a luxury, then

24:52

it's interesting because it has so many layers

24:55

to why it is this

24:57

narrative. It's easier to

24:59

maintain that sort of humorless sense and

25:02

that sort of like sense of alienation

25:04

that comes with giving up meat if

25:06

you say, oh, it's just for those people who are

25:08

weird. And then it's also

25:11

because that narrative

25:13

serves agribusiness. It's

25:15

like because to keep

25:18

the idea that vegetarian or vegan

25:20

eating is extremely elitist means

25:24

that folks who don't want to be seen as elitist

25:26

will not pursue that. You're

25:29

taking out a lot of folks who might already

25:31

be interested in eating a plant-based

25:33

diet because they are

25:36

being kind of hidden from the intersections

25:39

in terms of labor, in terms of

25:41

ecology and that sort of thing. There are so many

25:43

progressives

25:44

that I know who

25:46

still would eat Tyson

25:48

chicken nuggets even though they would

25:51

supposedly care about labor rights. It's

25:53

a very multifaceted

25:55

problem.

25:59

But that has changed so much in just

26:02

the last like

26:02

half decade.

26:06

Another big milestone in the

26:08

movement happens in the 70s with

26:11

a group of feminists who cared deeply

26:13

about the environment, the Bloodroot Collective.

26:17

So the Bloodroot Collective is

26:19

a restaurant in Bridgeport, Connecticut

26:21

that still exists today. And it is still

26:23

run by two of the same people who founded it. And

26:27

it was founded as a feminist restaurant,

26:29

explicitly a feminist restaurant, a women's

26:31

space, a space for consciousness raising

26:33

where they also sold books and had events

26:35

and

26:36

had different gatherings there in order

26:38

to get

26:41

women together in a time when

26:43

that was a really cool thing

26:45

to do in the 1970s. And

26:48

these were folks who were

26:52

leaving their husbands. They were choosing political

26:54

lesbianism. And they

26:57

were finding out that when

27:00

they were digging into a feminist ideology

27:03

that there was also a

27:05

notion very strong within what's called

27:07

ecofeminism toward giving

27:09

up animal meat. And so

27:11

ecofeminism is a philosophy

27:14

that suggests the oppression

27:16

faced by women is similar to

27:19

the ways in which we have oppressed

27:21

the earth and its animals in numerous

27:23

ways. And so the Bloodroot

27:25

Collective has taken up that

27:27

sort of philosophy in their approach to

27:30

food. And so they are,

27:32

you know, they have always been a vegetarian

27:34

space. But they have always

27:36

also been kind of against fat

27:39

phobia in their space. They

27:42

have really tried to make

27:44

vegan food over the years. Their

27:46

first couple of cookbooks were called The Political

27:49

Palette and The Second Seasonal Political

27:51

Palette. So they also really wanted to serve

27:53

seasonal and local food as well.

27:55

And they also always wanted to bring in

27:57

the foods of the cultures of the women who

28:00

who entered their space. So their cookbooks are

28:02

quite diverse and really reference

28:04

their community. And so that

28:06

was a really interesting thing that they were able to do

28:09

with their cookbooks. And

28:11

so it's a fascinating space for the

28:13

fact that it still exists. It's one of the few

28:15

feminist restaurants that still exists in the United States. And

28:19

with the Bloodroot Collective,

28:21

there are obviously a group of women who are

28:24

keenly aware of the

28:27

trauma

28:28

around disordered

28:30

eating. Or how do they respond to

28:32

that kind of thinking when it came to people

28:35

coming to their restaurant or

28:37

just even asking them about it? Well,

28:40

they have a really great sign over their register

28:42

that says, out of respect

28:44

for women of size, do not comment on

28:46

the richness of the food or the size

28:48

of anyone's body and that sort of thing. And for

28:50

me, when I first went there in 2015, that

28:53

was a real eye-opening moment

28:55

for me because I was like, oh, wow, this

28:57

is a feminist space.

29:02

There's almost always tension

29:04

when putting radical feminism in the same

29:06

space with anything diet related

29:09

because American diet culture is

29:11

anything but radical or feminist.

29:14

A listener named Dawn in Philadelphia feels

29:17

this deeply. I have been

29:19

a vegetarian for 14 years now. I

29:22

started when I was 13, and it completely

29:24

started from a terribly

29:27

unhealthy place. I

29:31

had

29:32

ingested all of the beauty standards

29:34

of the culture at the time. Born

29:37

in the mid-90s, grew

29:39

up with, oh, be skinny, low-rise

29:42

jeans, et cetera, et cetera. So

29:44

I was like, oh, being a vegetarian

29:46

is the easiest way to restrict. But now I'm

29:50

a vegetarian because it's better

29:53

for the planet. I

29:57

grew up seeing many young people try

29:59

out vegan. to make their body smaller,

30:02

which is a huge departure from

30:04

veganism's radical roots.

30:06

How did it even get there? I

30:09

think that fatphobia, diet culture,

30:11

these are deep strains in

30:14

US culture, and they have to be rooted

30:16

out in various ways. But

30:19

plant-based eating has kind of glommed onto

30:22

fatphobia and wellness culture in

30:24

ways that have been really damaging

30:27

and really off-putting. And we

30:29

saw, especially with the

30:31

raw foods movement, a real attachment

30:34

to this idea that you could glow or

30:36

that you could detoxify yourself in

30:38

some way by eating raw foods. And then

30:40

you see books like Skinny Bitch. And that was really,

30:43

really explicitly like, you go vegan

30:45

because it'll make you skinny. There are a lot

30:48

of vegans out there who have

30:50

really tried to shift this narrative, who have really

30:52

tried to be visible

30:54

in being fat and being vegan

30:57

and saying these things are not mutually

30:59

exclusive.

31:04

This rejection of the status quo

31:07

is what made plant-based eating so attractive

31:09

to counterculture hippies, civil

31:12

rights activists, and even

31:14

anarchist punks. To

31:17

reject meat was to take a stand

31:19

against a fundamental element of this

31:21

country's national identity. Because

31:24

meat is really symbolic

31:26

of what it means to buy into individualism,

31:31

to buy into the taking

31:33

of land, taking

31:34

advantage of a workforce and

31:36

that sort of thing. Like, if you ask me,

31:38

these are really tied up

31:41

in our national ideology. It's

31:43

growth, it's take,

31:46

it's use until it can't

31:48

be used anymore. And that's

31:50

all really tied up with the meat industry. It's

31:53

about getting out into the West and

31:55

then building the railroad

31:57

and using, and that's how we kind of made

31:59

meat. this staple

32:01

of folks' diets, beef especially.

32:04

["The

32:17

World is a World"]

32:18

If we did things in a way

32:20

that was in line with what the planet

32:23

can handle, in line with what labor

32:25

can handle, in line with not

32:27

cruelly containing animals

32:30

in factory farms, if we changed

32:32

those things and put

32:34

more resources into

32:37

a diverse array of legumes,

32:39

grains, vegetables, fruits in

32:41

a way that supported really significant

32:45

regional biodiversity in

32:47

the United States,

32:48

there would be less meat.

32:50

That's it. There would

32:53

be less meat to eat. We're going to have to change no matter what. But

32:55

also, the thing is, is that are we going

32:57

to see that change happen on that grand scale

33:00

unless people also start to say, hey,

33:02

I don't want to be a part of a system

33:04

that is so exploitative and so destructive?

33:07

Probably not.

33:09

So if we want the big cultural shifts

33:11

and the big political shifts, I think we

33:13

also have to make the decision

33:16

to

33:17

see the power of what

33:19

we can do collectively.

33:25

That was producer Rahima Nasser talking with

33:27

food writer Alicia Kennedy about the

33:29

history of the plant-based eating movement. Her

33:32

new book is called No Meat Required,

33:35

the Cultural History and Culinary Future

33:37

of Plant-Based Eating. Notes

33:39

from America is a production of WNYC

33:42

Studios. Follow us wherever you get

33:44

your podcast and on Instagram at noteswithkai.

33:47

I'm Kai Wright. Thanks for listening, and I will talk

33:49

to you next week. you