Moo Money

What I talk about when I talk about taxing livestock emissions, upsides of the soda tax, what's lurking in natural flavors, and the Beyond Meat & Panda Express collab.

Hello hello. Welcome to Technically Food, my bi-weekly newsletter about the food world. Special shout out to my new subscribers including Robbie, Amy, Laura, Arun, Neta, Grace, Caroline and more!

This is a paid newsletter but I’ll let y’all in on a few gems before I dig into the meat of today’s newsletter.

1. “Natural flavors” on an ingredient label often hide things we don’t consider to be flavors. For example: Van Leeuwen Ice Cream uses propylene glycol alginate (an emulsifier and thickener) in some of its ice cream and the only mention is hidden under ‘natural flavors.’

2. Panda Express brought back the Beyond Meat orange chicken due in part to a Change.org petition signed by over 7k people. (The numbers: orange chicken is Panda Express’ most popular dish, and is one-third of its sales according to The Hustle.) Beyond Meat says it’s for a limited time but not everywhere. There are 64 locations in CA. Should I try it?

3. Who is Grounded Capital? Last week they invested $22M in Lotus Foods—a regenerative rice company; this week Grounded invested “a significant equity investment” in Straus Family Creamery—a well-known Marin dairy. I love what both of these companies are doing. I wonder who’s funding Grounded?

4. Hulk Hogan launched a beer. The logo on the can is ridiculous, and you can get it in five states.

Back to today’s topic. My coverage tends to ping pong between food-tech and nutrition and health but today it’s about taxes. WTF.

The topic jumped onto my plate when I read that Denmark was going to tax farmers on carbon emissions from their cows and pigs. This livestock tax will go into place starting in 2030. (How it will be measured will be a sticky subject.) It’s yet to pass but all signs point to its successfully going into law, which will be a first for any country.