Waste not?

What I talk about when I talk about how we use farmland, an ingredient switcheroo for the NY egg and cheese sandwich and a waste problem with no easy fix.

Hey you!—it's Larissa. I'm glad you're here. This is Technically Food, my bi-weekly Substack where I ramble about how technology is changing the foods we eat. Don't forget to share this newsletter with any of your people. Sharing is caring and all those other clichés. I hope to grow my audience and it starts with you.

Today’s Technically Food is going to be formatted a little different. Hold on to your shoes.

On Air with friends — two very different conversations:

1. I recorded a new episode with Eric Schulze on his Food Truths’ podcast from The Spoon. Eric wanted to untangle the complex topic of organic food. Luckily, we were joined by Ricky Silver, the CEO of Daily Harvest. He knows his stuff. You can listen to it on Spotify or Apple.

   

   Image by ChatGPT.

2. Last summer, I interviewed Nil Zacharias about his startup, Plantega that’s dishing up vegan sandwiches at bodegas across New Yo

   rk City. I tasted two kinds when I was back east, and I think they’re wonderful examples of the classic egg and cheese sandwich. Everyone is talking about “that” sandwich right now. The chatter is about the price and availability of eggs. Bodega owners are wondering if they can sub out liquid eggs for shelled eggs. Shells are a pain but people are attached to them. (I think they’re messy.) An easier sub is Just Egg, a vegan product made from mung-beans. Unlike a lot of alt-proteins, Just Egg is selling great during this whole egg fiasco. Nil’s podcast is called “Eat for the Planet” and on it we discussed the alt-protein world, what I’m hopeful for, what I’m not, and whether the industry can reverse out of its low point. You can listen to it on Apple or Spotify.

Longer than a tidbit:

1. I’m reading We Are Eating the Earth, The Race to Fix Our Food System and Save Our Climate by Mike Grunwald. I’m far from done, but there’s definitely overlap with my book although his is wrapped up in a much tighter climate dialogue. Last week, I saw Mike in conversation at the Berkeley Food Institute during Climate Week. He appeared with Tim Bowles, a professor of agroecology, and Kim Severson, a NYTimes food correspondent. Grunwald thinks we need to stop clearing farm land while at the same time making our current farm land much more productive. This essentially means that industrial farming still needs to exist. (An opinion not relished by all, especially those promoting regenerative farming.) I think this means we ought to put more funding into growing our food better; exploring ways that are less harmful to the soil and people; and deciding if we’re growing food to feed animals (more work) or growing food to feed more humans (less work). Good stuff to discuss.

   

2. One thing we all need to do, says Grunwald, is to waste less food. In an opinion piece in Slate, he covers good ground on how consumers are losing money by over shopping, and subsequently throwing food into the landfill, which wastes a whole chain of resources from seed to inputs to labor. Plus, in the landfill it creates methane. He writes: