Hi everyone at Sophia. Welcome back to Work in Progress. This is the second episode in our four part mini series Well and Good, a series of shorter episodes that focus on all things sustainability. I'm really excited to introduce you to our guest today, Alicia Kennedy. Alicia is the writer of the weekly newsletter from the Desk of Alicia Kennedy, where she expertly shines a light on food and its interconnection with culture, politics, climate change, labor, sustainability, media access, and corporations. Her essays have enlisted as notable in Best American Food Writing and Best American Travel Writing, and they've been mentioned by The New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle. In the past, Alicia was a contributing writer for The Village Voice and Nylon Magazine, among many others, and she is currently at work on a book about the cultural history of veganism. Although originally from New York, Alicia spoke with me from her current residence in Puerto Rico. We got to talk about her vegan bakery and how it started, how meat consumption has become so ingrained into so many aspects of our culture, and what we can all do to rely less on meat and more on better tasting vegan food and alternatives. Even if you're just beginning your journey into maybe eating a little bit less meat, but you're not ready to go full on vegan like Alicia, she will have tips and inspiration for you. And if after this episode you feel like you want to hear even more from Alicia, you can tune into her speaking on the revealing episode the Morality of Meat on the podcast Point of Origin. So, without further ado, let's jump into a thought provoking conversation with food writer Alicia Kennedy. Alicia, I'm so excited that you're here today to talk all things food, sustainability, the environment, food justice. You have done so many things that are so wildly impressive, from running a vegan bakery to being a writer everywhere from New York Magazine to Food and Wine to Edible Brooklyn. But before we get into what you're up to and why I have such a brain crush on you today, I want to go back. I love to kind of go to the beginning ish with my guests. I want to know how everything started for you, you know, growing up in New York, and I'm very curious who was Alicia? At eight? Were you? Were you this sort of you know, brilliant and stand up and outspoken as a kid or or did that evolve over time? Well, thank you so much for the kind words. I'm super excited to chat. Well. Well, yeah, growing up, I grew up on Long Island on the south Shore, in a town called Patchhog. I you know, at eight years old, was I don't know, a little bit of a brat maybe you know, Um, I certainly thought I was brilliant. I certainly thought I was smarter than everybody else. Um whether that was true is certainly up for debate. Um. I love to read as a kid, and so at that age, I was just like reading, reading, reading, reading, That's all I really wanted to do. I didn't really care for talking to everybody, you know. I'd go out to dinner with my family and I'd bring a book so that I would be able to entertain myself. What kind of stuff were you reading? Were you into novels? Were you into sci fi? Like? What what was the genre or was it all of them? I really loved just fiction. Um. I loved you know, those kinds of just a girl, her life, that kind of story and I still just love that kind of story. That's just a life. And yeah. So but when I was that age, I was super into books. But I was also super into eating because when I was very small. My grandmother she passed away when I was five, but before that, she watched me like every day while my parents were working, and she was a huge cook, love to just sit down and read a cookbook, and so she would make me like lobsters and lamb chops and just like food that wasn't really you know, meant for a three year old, but that was the food that she felt fed me and that I loved. So yeah, I was just always really into food. My mom was also a great cook, and she cooked some Puerto Rican food because my grandmother was Puerto Rican on my dad's side, and so I had a really interesting upbringing of you know, lots of seafood because I was on Long Island, um a lot of Italian food, and also that kind of Puerto Rican influence in what I was eating. That sounds heavenly, I'm like at three, but it's interesting because you reference the food that you grew up on, and you know, I come from a big Italian family, so that I think we share a little bit of that sort of like romance language culture where food is an expression of love. When someone cooks for you, it's because they love you. And um, I don't know about your grandma, but mine was always like are you eating enough? What's going on? Are you hungry? You're skinny? Like, you know, there was always kind of that energy, but it the foods you reference are certainly not vegan. And you are a leader in in the climate justice food space, and and you've been a vegan, uh since two thousand eleven. So how did your upbringing and your love of food and familiar relationship, how did that kind of influence your current vegan belief system. Well, you know, when I first went vegan, I really hated all the food. I like really didn't like the food. I would get a vegan restaurant, you know. I grew up on Long Island, moved to the city. I would go to a concert with my friends, and like we'd go to this place called food Swings and Williamsburg that was there for a really long time, and they would make like say tan gyros and tofu buffalo wings, and like I didn't really enjoy that food, you know, Um, I I wanted my vegan food to be as good as the food I grew up eating. And I had to really dig in and do a lot of research to figure out exactly how to do that. You know, I thought I would have to eat tofu and vegan ase and like all this stuff that I found really off putting. I mean, I love tofu, but it has to be done properly. Um, And so I dug in really deeply. Um, I would say, my guide in this space has always been logusta year would. She has a chocolate shop in New Paul's, New York called Lugusta's Lushes. And I was reading her blog, you know, ten years ago, just like spending hours and hours deep diving into her blog, and she was the person I looked to to figure out that the burgeoning farm to table moment that was happening in restaurants and in the food scene at large at that moment was not something that vegans couldn't also be part of. You can make vegetables taste really good, you can make grains taste really good. You didn't have to rely so much on um on animal products to make that happen. And so that was really that really clicked for me, you know, because, as you said, I had a vegan bakery. And that happened because I had loved baking when I wasn't vegan, and then when I went vegan, I started to like just make recipes from vegan baking cookbooks straight up, and I didn't like them at all, and so I like had to figure out how to make it taste good and so and because I already had this kind of consciousness about ingredients, you know, I didn't want to use canola oil. I wanted to use coconut oil, and I didn't want to use you know, earth balance butter because it had palm oil in it. And also I just didn't like the way it felt in my mouth when I ate it. And so I kind of developed like different ways of doing things, where like I made of butter using eighty percent coconut oil and twenty coconut milk because I read that like cow butter is fat and milk solids, and and so I just kind of like figured out all this stuff to do to make it taste good. And that was how the bakery began, because I was just like really really into working on all this stuff and I would bring it to my yoga studio and people were like, oh my god, can you make a cake for my husband's birthday? Can you like do pepcakes for my event? And that sort of thing, And so it kind of just spiraled out of control. That's so cool. It's like when the thing you're meant to be doing fines uses. Now. I'm curious too, because you talk about the kinds of food that your grandma made and your mom made, and obviously then winding up becoming this sort of chemist in your own bakery. When would you say you first remember hearing about this idea of plant based diets? Was it as a kid? I mean, I I don't feel like I heard that word enter the sort of lexicon around me until I don't know, maybe I was in my twenties after college and there, and there's always been this sort of rigidity to like the vegans. You know. I think one of the things I so enjoy about speaking to you is you talk about the way you do it, but also the ways people can make these incremental changes if they're not ready to go in that direction, you know, ways we can have huge impact while we slowly figure out if a more plant based lifestyle works for us if we like it. As you said, you have to love the food. It needs to be good, it needs to be well seasoned. It's like I don't want unseasoned chicken, and I don't want unseasoned tofu. I don't want any of it. So I'm I guess I'm just wondering when when did the ideas enter the conversation around you in your life. Well, when I was a kid, I was really into Moby's album Play and while he is now canceled a little bit of movie, but uh, in the liner notes of that album, he wrote an essay about veganism, and that just kind of blew my mind. And so, you know, I knew vegetarians existed, I didn't really understand the whole thing. I was thirteen when I was reading these liner notes, and I from then on came to that kind of awakening I sort of spoke about before where I really wanted to stop eating me and I really wanted to stop eating animal products. I really had this consciousness about the idea that I didn't want to be doing that that for me, it was not ethically correct, um, you know, just in my own mind and So, yeah, I heard about it when I was pretty young what what veganism was. I didn't really understand the environmental reasons for it or the health reasons for it. I really just understood the kind of ethical reasons for it. And also, you know, I was exposed a little bit to vegetari in vegan food at different like cool cafes and that sort of thing in New York. So I was not totally kind of apart from it before I went vegan. I knew it was there. It was just like I was saying, it was. It was food that I was, you know, not sure I could commit to. I get that. So what is your relationship currently like with your family around food? Well they understand now. You know, they've joked that because I'm going to have my wedding here in Puerto Rico, that we need to have you know, a big pig roast. Um that's not going to happen. Um. They think that, you know, that should happen. It's certainly not um. And I'm going to have like a really great vegetarian wedding. But you know, they accept it now. The jokes are kind of over, especially now that I've kind of made a career out of being a food writer. I think they understand that, you know, I'm really committed and they can't just like put put some meat in my face and I'm gonna, you know, stop doing this. So yeah, it's it's gotten really great. I think I've also, while no one in my family has gone like full vegetarian or vegan, I think people's consciousness is consciousness around it has shifted a lot, you know, like, um, my sister, my mom certainly eat a lot less meat at this point. I think in the rest of my family they at least have the awareness that not eating meat or animal products doesn't mean that you're gonna hate your life, and so I think that's huge. Um. Obviously my baking was a huge part of that as well of of that shift, because once you have like a cookie or a piece of cake that tastes really good even though it's vegan and has no animal products, that it kind of changes everything for you, you know. For sure. I was recently working up in Canada and I had the best cookie I've ever had, and it was fully vegan and gluten free, and I was like, this isn't possible, and they were like, and there's no, there's no sugar in it. It's this and that and the other. And I literally grilled the guy and was like, I don't think I believe you. I need more information because it was so good, and I thought, Okay, if I could learn to make this, I could do this and that That's kind of been the awakening for me. You know. I grew up in a as I was mentioning, like big Italian family, we make a lot of everything, you know, vegetables and meat and starches and pasta for days and um. For me, going from as a little kid who just weirdly had the appetite of a caveman. When I was eight, I was trying to order twenty steaks and my parents were like, what is wrong with you? You know, like I've gone from being a person who thought steak and eggs was a great breakfast to trying to readjust honestly, for ethics, for the environment, for my own health, the research around you know, heart disease being the number one killer of women, and the thing that we don't talk about, and the fact that, as we know, women's pain isn't taken us seriously in the medical field, and that only compounds with the intersection reality of women of color and their experience, you know, being both black or brown and female and not being trusted. Women's heart attacks don't present in the same way as that men's do, so they often go misdiagnosed, so they become killers of women in ways that they don't have men like. I mean, you and I can go down a rabbit hole. Clearly we both get a little obsessed with research. And all of this has has led me to say, Okay, I want to make shifts. I don't. I don't feel fully to be transparent. I don't feel fully capable or knowledgeable enough to you know, be a vegan all the way. But what's very cool is the amount of vegan food, plant based food that I've incorporated into my life over the last couple of years, where I've had such a reduction in consumption of meat, even a reduction in consumption of fish, which is usually people's easy way to start cutting down on meats to eat more fish. And I feel great, and I'm really happy about it. And I think the thing that I've you know, tried to talk to people about is even if you can't go a hundred percent of the way, if if you can make incremental change, if you can make your breakfasts plant based, that's a thirty three percent reduction in your me consumption right there, with one meal a day, and and it's better for you, it's better for your energy, all of these things. So I I'm so inspired by the work you've done and by the kindness with which you communicate with people like me. I don't know what it is I've had, Like I get the very aggressive, like yelling vegans in my comments all the time online, and I'm like, I don't like the way you're talking to me, and so I don't want to listen to anything you have to say, even though I believe in a lot of what you're saying. You know, you realize that the communication is so important. So I I love the way in which you welcome us all to this, you know, to this table, if you will, thank you. Yeah. I think it's so important to not be that kind of vegan um and it's so important to have compassion for you know, human beings as much as you have for animals. And I think that's where a lot of vegans lose people. You know, I think if you told people about how workers who are mostly you know, migrant maybe undocumented, usually of color, are working in these meat processing plants under like terrible circumstances and like not being treated well. I think that that also would you know, help, that would go a long way also to convincing people, because you know, you can say, you can talk about animal welfare and animal rights until you're blue in the face, but when you talk about the ways these industries really impact people, I think that that's where you can really convince those who are skeptical. Absolutely, and I mean even for me, and I'm aware that what I'm about to say, you know, is also a signal of the fact that I live in a place where I have the privilege of access to quality. You know, I live in California. The local farmers markets here are abundant. They're multiple times a week, and and I made a commitment to myself, um as best I can, and I really try to stick to this too, only when I'm buying meat to buy it from my local farmers so that it reduces you know, transportation emissions. And also I know these you know, if I'm buying chickens from him, for example, to do like a family roast or whatever, I know that they've lived outside, I know what they were fed. I know that there wasn't you know, some group of people who were being harmed by having to work at this place. And I think when we start thinking about the supply chain of our food um as being something that really impacts our community and our community members, it can make those sorts of changes feel very easy and and very uplifting, you know, as as we all kind of grow and and learn to be better with you know, our consumption. For we're sort of in this space between you know, uh, you making these changes as a kid, and then also you talk about how you accidentally wound up starting this vegan bakery. What what was happening in that in that time between you know, I know that you started working at fifteen, What were you doing were you were you consuming a lot of food media? Then? Like what what was that sort of moment? Because that feels like an inflection point for sure. Yeah. When I was a teenager, I was reading food and Wine and travel and Leisure because I think my dad had an American Express and then those magazines just came to the house and so I was reading those magazines. I was watching the Food Network I like loved Food Network as a kid, loved the Barefoot Contestant of course, you know, and so you know, food just was always super important to me. I wasn't always cooking, though I was very, very spoiled. My mom was always cooking, you know, if we were eating out, we were like we had we were really lucky to have a good Japanese restaurant around, so eating sushi, you know, in middle school, and then always really good Chinese food. Um, living in New York, like just having access to everything simply because of where I grew up. I was really really lucky in that. And so I've eaten everything a person could eat, and and even as a kid, was was really trying to eat as much as I could. That was different to me. So that's why when I wanted to kind of get into the food world, it was really important for me that the vegan food I was making and later as a writer, the vegan food I was talking about was you know, really actually good and that everyone would really love it. But I didn't really work in the food industry until you know, college, I worked at Starbucks and then running the bakery and that sort of thing, so I didn't have that kind of kitchen experience that a lot of people have in this industry. Um, I got it sort of like by doing it. That's super interesting though, because you found your way into this industry and you are a freelancer. You write about food, you write about environmental justice, all of these things. How does that writing trajector happen? And especially I think about, you know, writing about veganism for food and wine. You know that signals a moment sort of in in our cultural trajectory too, So how do you wind up writing for those magazines and and then moving the popularity of your writing into your newsletter? By the way, listeners, it's called from the Desk of Alicia Kennedy. You should subscribe to it. It's awesome. Well, I was an English major in college. I thought I'd be a literary critic and write novels. Eventually, Um, food obviously gotten the way. But yeah, my first media job out of college was as a copy editor at New York Magazine, and so I sort of unintentionally became like an infiltrator of media before I decided to try and convert, try and like bring different vegan stuff into food media. Um, so yeah, I was a copy editor. There After, I decided not to keep going with the bakery. In twenty thirteen, I I decided to try and start writing about food and I decided to start writing about the other vegan small businesses that I knew of, that I had learned about by you know, being in that world so deeply, and so I left New York Magazine in ten. I went to Food and Wine. I was also a copy editor there, which was how I got to infiltrate that space. That's that's how I did it. And then I, you know, I wrote a piece at the start of sixteen called like this is the Year for Vegan Cheese, and I it got it was so popular, Like you would who would have imagined that Food and Wine. At Food and Wine a piece on vegan cheese would have been really popular. But it was kind of about how this boom was starting in nut cheeses, you know, cheeses that weren't based on soy or other things like really cultured, really good vegan nut cheeses like meal Goes, which is Who's based in California or tree Line based in New York and all those sorts of things. And so the success of that piece really helped me to see that the time was already there, you know, for people to start talking about these things, not just because of vegans and not just because of the environment, but because you know, people are lacked too, as intolerant people don't want to eat dairy at certain times. There is this space for that kind of conversation, and I realized it could be a conversation that wasn't all or nothing, you know, it could be a conversation about people making small changes and adjustments to how they eat. So from there, you know, I went to Edible Brooklyn Edible Manhattan, which is a local food magazine in New York. They're super focused on local farming and everything being super environmentally friendly and supporting small business, and so that was really a great place for me to be, and I was there for a few years. I had, also, of course, during all this time, been writing as much as possible for other outlets. I've written quite a few features for eater Um and that sort of thing. I've written a lot about spirits, and I write about about spirit, sustainability and spirits. Then the time kind of came where in the beginning of the pandemic last year, I was like, I don't know where my life is going to go from here. You know, we don't know what the industry is going to look like when we come out of this, the food not just the food media industry, but media industry at large. And so that's when I started my newsletter and it's been like wildly successful, beyond my beyond any of my dreams, writing about the things that really matter to me in a voice that's really authentic to me, and getting to feature lots of different people who don't really get big play in food media necessarily, you know, people working in food justice like DaVita Davison in at Food Lab Detroit, or people like Mark Byrne who like has a vodka that he makes from you know, coffee fruit. So it's like things something that would go to waste but actually become something great. And so yeah, that I love, and I also love obviously to focus on the problems with food ways here in Puerto Rico and make people aware of that about how some policies from the United States over the last hundred years or so of made the archipelago import of its food. Local agriculture is a really really small part of the economy here, and of the life here, and so it's really important to me to you know, have that space to talk about all these things that matter to me. UM. And it's been wonderful that people are actually receptive to it for sure. Well, and that's something I want to really veer into with you, is is the conversation around food justice. You know, when you mentioned populations that are at risk, the workers in these factories, UM, folks who live in areas that are so resourced depleted, which you know, as we talked about the importance of language, we've heard them referred to as food deserts. But you educate people so well on the fact that it's actually food apartheid a desert. You you made this point that I thought was so brilliant that a desert is a naturally occurring phenomena and and a quote food desert is not natural whatsoever. It's systemic, it's chosen, it's it's intentional, because that is a zone that has had resources withheld um to the detriment of the health of its population. So it is in fact food apartheid when we think about that as a large issue, and the fact that for so many people now because of the way the system has been designed, the meat in their diet is often the cheapest thing that they're buying. Meat is now cheaper than vegetables, when forever there was the inverse. Why is that? Why are we looking at food apartheid? Why are we looking at the decrease in the cost of meat? What? What are the systemic issues happening around diet that should be important to all of us, regardless if we're fully vegan or still eating some animal products, or just beginning to learn about the food system in general. What why? Why is all of this happening? Yeah, it's because, I mean, in the United States, at least, you know, thirty eight billion dollars every year is going to subsidize the industrialized meat and dairy industries. They have very very good lobbyists. Vegetables don't have those great lobbyists. I think califlower had a good publicity campaign, but you know, it's not an ongoing thing that that vegetables are supported in that way. There's been a lot of talk in the media to about almond milk being unsustainable because it uses so much water, and we're not talking enough about how like a gallon of dairy milk requires twice that amount of milk. It requires two thousand gallons of water, you know, and so we like, yes, you know, it's about how we talk about things like this, you know. That's why I'm a journalist, I suppose, is to try and like make people aware that you know, these aren't natural occurrences. That like, not only is food apartheid not natural, but like the price that we pay for meat in the grocery store isn't natural. You know, that's about subsidies, it's about lobbyists, it's about yeah, it's just about money. And so people really think about it that way that like, oh, I have to eat meat because it's cheaper and more accessible. But it's like, but that's not a natural occurrence. That's that's manufactured. And so it's it's difficult to talk about these things without bringing class into it. But I think that it's really important to constantly remind people of of the role of the government and the role policy plays here, because if meat really cost what it's supposed to, you know, if you went to the supermarket and the price the sticker on the steak accounted for its impact on the environment, it accounted for paying a living wage to the person, like everyone in the chain that that process that meat. If it accounted for the carbon impact of the packaging and the and getting to the supermarket, that would cost astronomically higher than it does. It's so important to talk about the artificial aspect of these costs, for sure. And when we talk about you know, you and I were discussing it. If you do eat meat, it's so much better to purchase it from local purveyors, local farms. You can really remove the you know, some of the harm to the environment that is done in the sort of supply chain of that processing. So we're discussing moving away from centralized production of meat, and we're talking about it, seems um as a society about the dangers of corporate meat production. Do you see actual movement away from it or or are we mostly just talking about it now? I think we're mostly just talking about it. You know, even the politicians who are aware of these issues will never go on record saying anything that's going to make people think that they're not allowed to eat a burger every single day. Even when Corey Booker was running for president, on the debate stage, he's vegan and he was not going to say any thing about the destruction that meet reeks on the environment. And so I think we're really still very far away from being able to talk about this in a real way because people are afraid of of saying anything that's that's going to suggest that this isn't the most natural way of eating. You know, eating meat three times a day every day isn't the best thing environmentally or the best thing nutritionally. I hope that we get there, but and I think that's why it's so important to constantly talk about because it has to change culturally as well as on a policy level, you know it. We have to you know, have these conversations amongst ourselves and really talk about the reality of of climate change in the food system so that those policy changes can become possible. Because if politicians are too afraid to say that beef has a detrial mental impact on the environment, we're never going to get anywhere. So we need the constituency to be in a place where they're comfortable saying, you know, I'm willing to cut back on my meat consumption. I know it has a bad impact on the environment. Yeah, well, and a bad impact on my health, you know, Raising rates of everything from heart disease to cholesterol, to kidney failure to diabetes, all all of these issues that we're facing, the writing is on the wall in terms of how we change them. And again, we don't have to go a hundred percent there. If you're not a person who thinks you can do that, you can make healthy changes. I mean, I'm I'm doing it. And again, like I grew up eating steak and eggs, like I kind of feel like if I can do it, anybody can do it. But something that I find so interesting is that it's almost like we as a society have an aversion to data that proves how we can do better. And I think that's true with diet, it seems to be true obviously with the environment as a whole, and how to manage and slow climate change in more extreme devastating arena's. It's it's true with the gun control debate. We know, based on what's happened in other countries, how we could change the mass shooting crisis we have in America, and people just don't want to do it. And and I think what you said is so insightful. People are afraid to say the truth that is proven out loud, and I I don't know why that is, but I do think it's something that we each have to examine and and you know that starts at home. You examine with yourself first to figure out how to be more truthful, how to be more honest. And it really strikes me that the importance of language is crucial here. You you made a point that really kind of pullue my brain wide open, that we use terminology around me. We say beef instead of cow, we say pork instead of pig, and that that plays a role in the sort of detachment in the food processing chain, the detachment that enables our consumerism. And I think about it. You know, my dog's been running in and out of the room all day, and we've not ever called our dogs anything other than dogs, but we call pigs pork when they're in packages. And and it really it I'm struggling to find the words because it really turns my brain around to think about it. Do you know where that started? I have this fear that it began because of some focus group that was paid for by some you know, giant industry titan like Tyson or something. And I don't know if it's that nefarious. But but do you know the origins of the linguistic change. I don't, I wish I I you know, honestly, I think about this all the time. The writer Carol J. Adams, author of The Sexual Politics of Meat, calls this the absent referrent, where we don't talk about yeah, cows as cows, we talk about them as beef. We talk about their parts. I haven't looked up the etymology of how why we do this? Um, I do think, of course it has to do with creating that distance so that we can consume it. It's about that kind of you know, getting rid of the nasty, emotional part of of eating meat. And yeah, it's a very interesting thing because it really does make it seem endless. You know, if you called you know, a stake something else that allowed you to understand that an animal was part of that process, would you eat as much of it if you were if you really saw the reality of how many animals had to be borne in order to be slaughtered so that there is this much meat in the grocery store, you know, like, how would that change the perception? It's really fascinating because that that language is so important. UM and how we talk about it is so important, and I think in terms of discussing food apartheid and and the fact that people in America go hungry, but we also experience for food based One of the big Aha moments for me, as a person who you know has eaten meat my whole life is exactly what you're referring to, the overproduction. Knowing that you know, two years ago we had too I think it was two billion pounds of pork that we couldn't offload to other countries. Something interrupted the United States pork supply chain, whatever it is. I'm clearly not giving you the best rundown of it because it was it was a few years ago, but that we had billions of pounds of meat in storage essentially, And I'm thinking, but people here are starving. You know, there has to be a change. Why Why do we have to have every cut of meat available in the store at all times? And I as I started looking into that, one of the things I think is really interesting is that people who are reducing meat consumption but continuing to eat it. Uh. There it seemed to be getting more popular now that you will pre reserve a portion of an animal at the beginning of the year and then that's your meat for the year, and you have all different you know whatever cuts. I don't know what the terminology is for this. I'm realizing this is where I'm lacking the language. But but that that you have essentially um all of the things you get and that's what you get. You know, you can't have a filet every day. It doesn't work like that. And I'm curious as to why we've we've sort of unconsciously come to expect that as a society. It's it's certainly something I'm investigating for myself as I'm eating less meat. And I'm curious because now we're seeing substitutes, We're seeing things like impossible burgers and beyond meat and all of these things are are they better? Is that a good bridge to reducing meat consumption? As as an expert, is that something that you recommend or or is there some hit an issue with with quote tech meat as well? Well? There is an issue in that it's still not as good as a veggie burger made with beans. To me, it's still not as delicious as a veggie burger beat with beans. Um, it's it's still better than beef. By a long shot, you know, And it's a great bridge for people to start understanding why it is. You know, Americans consumed two pounds of meat every year, you know, like thinking, we're consciously about the meat that we eat, I think, and and using that plant based meat as a as a replacement for some of that I think that, of course is only going to be good, but it is still only kind of a bridge toward fully remaking the food system because impossible burgers are based on genetically modified soy, which is usually grown in a mono crop system agriculturally, which isn't great for biodiversity, especially not the same way in which you know, other kinds of beans and legumes are. You know, beyond meat is made with P protein, which is which is better are in terms of water usage and the impact it has on the soil than than impossible burghers for sure. And so yeah, it's a really good measure to start to think about those things, because it's true, like you were saying, the idea that people can have a file at every single day, that's not a naturally occurring phenomenon. A really great book on this is Red Meat Republic by Josh spect He wrote about how five meat packers in Chicago in the nineteenth century kind of created the meat industrial lize system that we know today, and about how like all these cultural aspects have made us really dependent on meat and especially beef in the United States. It's connected to being masculine and being strong and being rugged and and that kind of cowboy archetype. It's connected to wealth. Having abundant meat means that we are wealthy as a nation. I think we saw that when President Trump, at the beginning of the pandemic may meat processing in essential industry in the United States before he made the creation of personal protective equipment an essential aspect of business in the United States. Meat and keeping supermarkets full of meat is essential to American identity, and I think that's why we have so much trouble also talking about it's how destructive it is on the planet, because it's just it's really bound up in being a wealthy nation and in being like a strong nation. But something that's really interesting to me about that when you say that it's bound up in this idea of wealth and which you know is class and and also gender. The irony that is not lost on me here is that prior to meet being industrialized, it was a sign of success because you could afford it. And now it's everywhere, it's subsidized, it's unbelievably cheap. It actually is almost valueless. And and so we attach an idea and iconography of SESSED to the thing that's actually the cheapest in the grocery store. So the identity of it is fascinating to me, that it has an identity that is no longer based in reality. And let me tell you what. You're blowing my brain open again because I had never considered that meat was tied into gender. But here we are. What what an interesting idea? And I would wager that so many people who are listening to us talk right now are thinking similarly, are thinking, Wow, these are things I've never considered in connections and intersections that are fascinating. What would you say to those people who are feeling very blown open right now but don't necessarily know where to begin. What is the best way to encourage people to begin walking on that road of eating less meat? Um, whether or not they eventually become vegan. Where where do we start? Well? I always recommend cookbooks specifically to people. I think that it's not about starting with like the theory like I recently I mentioned sexual politics of meat and red meat Republic like that can come later. You don't have to start with the big ideas. I think it's important to start with just knowing how to cook in a way that minimizes meat consumption. You know, I love Cool Beans by Joe Yonan, which gives you so many amazing ways to cook beans, whether it's from a can or from a bag. You know, it's not about just making beans from dry which is sometimes considered like the way to cook beans. UM. I would say Issa Chandra moscow Wits has written a ton of books on vegan cooking that are so accessible and so like just simply and really straightforwardly written. And she was the first person I whose recipes I went to when I was starting to cook vegan food. You know, there's veghanomicon, which is just a huge tone that really can be helpful. I love Nigel Slater, who is a British writer who is really focused on vegetables. Um. I love the Superiority Burger Cookbook. It's my favorite restaurant in New York and it's cookbook is amazing for really satisfying and really interesting salads and sandwiches, you know, from using tofu, using keen wan beans and that sort of thing. So it's it's really you know, there's a wealth of information out there to make it easy, to make it fun, to make it delicious if you're a person who likes cooking, and I'm always just trying to make it very very easy for people to like, just get those cookbooks, start researching, start seeing what kind of things you want to make, and going from there, because as I said before, I think it has to start with really good food or else you're never gonna, you know, give it up. Absolutely I feel that. And and if we do start with good food, if we do start from that place of experimenting in our own kitchen, that that feels like that small opportunity, you know, me, as one of one I can do something differently. What what are some of the larger changes that you would like to see in the near future, changes that either you desire or or changes that you think are are coming. Well. I think I talk a lot about policy, because you know, everything ultimately is up to how how we are collectively having our tax dollars spent. And I think thinking about it that way is really useful. Thinking about our tax money and how that's being spent as our collective impact, and how we can influence that in a deeper and more direct way. I think that's super important. Um. But I also I just want to see personally, food media at large talk about these things differently, um, you know, report on climate change issues, report on how different foods have an impact on the environment, how people can make those changes. I think that will be a really big moment for us as a culture when we start to see the magazines and the newspapers that we go to for our food news and for our recipes really change their approach to the food system's role in climate change. Very cool, Very cool. And you know you you mentioned earlier that you have a book that you're working on, which I'm so excited about. I know that we can't order that yet. But what can we do to be more in touch with you as as a listener group? Where can we follow you? Where can we get your newsletter? Give give all the listeners at home the dates. Sure, I'm on Instagram, Alicia D. Kennedy, And my newsletter is you actually have to type the www dot. I can fix that. But www. Dot Alicia Kennedy dot news is my newsletter and I update with a new essay every Monday, a new interview every Friday for pant subscribers. And this summer I'm going to start adding some recipes, all vegan recipes, which will be fun. I love that, love that. What would you say are a few good thoughts or ideas for us to keep in mind when we are buying food for the week, You know, what are what are the things I need to remind myself of when I'm at a grocery store or when I'm when I'm at a farmer's market. If I'm lucky enough to live in a city that has one, What do we need? What do we need to be thinking about as we're consuming? I think the best thing is to have your staple ingredients that you always have in your pantry, that you can kind of shop for maybe once a month, every couple of months, you know, maybe a couple of weeks if you have a big family. What are those staple ingredients? What are the things you cook with all the time? You know? Is it olive oil? Is it tomato paste? Is it can tomatoes? Is it rice? Like what's your favorite grain, what's your favorite pasta? Like what do you want to have easily available that you cook with all the time. For me, that's like, you know, having lots of canned tomatoes, lots of tomato paste so I can make pasta sauce at any point, like I put tomato paste and everything. I love to have, coconut milk, make a curry. That sort of thing, like figure out what are your base ingredients and just make sure you have them, and then build that out with fresh vegetables and fruit or you know, whatever is available whether you're going to the supermarket or you're going to the farmer's market. You know, mushrooms, eggplant, those sort of things like how what do you want to build on top of your base with? And I think when you think about shop food shopping that way instead of thinking about it as maybe recipe specific or your torto, certain meat or anything like that, you know, I think thinking about it in terms of those based ingredients and how you want to and using fresh food to build on top of that. I think that's a really easy way to think about how to make more conscious consumption choices. Very cool, And this is my favorite thing to ask everyone who comes on the show, as it is called work in progress, what do you think, whether it's personal or professional or somewhere in between, what do you think is a work in progress in your life right now? My my focus, I think I am really I'm really pulled by, you know, doing things like working on my newsletter, working on my book, like doing recipes for a cookbook that I'm I'm contributing to, and like doing stuff like this which I love to do, like doing interviews and talking to people. I'm really really not the greatest to balancing all of that at once, and so I'd really like to kind of get my workflow in gear. That's that's what I'm working on right now. Oh my god, you and me both. I feel very seen. I'm a little attacked and all. And I'm like, yep, yep, that too, Yep, I got it. I have so many time management apps that I've downloaded into do lists I've made, and I'm like, okay, and now I just have all this stuff that's telling you what I'm not figuring out how to do better for sure. Ye Well, here here's the focus. Thank you so much for joining us today, for teaching us today. You've given us such excellent things to think about, and I can't wait for the episode to come out. We will, dear listeners, of course, link um the books mentioned and the newsletter and Alicia's Instagram and everything that you need to continue to learn on our Instagram page. And thanks for being here. Thanks so much for having me