Eat This Newsletter 285: Antsy
Hello
The new EAT-Lancet report “allows two servings of animal-source foods per day—drawn from fish, yogurt, milk, cheese, or meat”. What if the yoghurt contains ants? One serving, or two? With a pinch of salt, of course.
EAT-Lancet 2.0
My friend Jessica Fanzo was one of the commissioners for the second EAT-Lancet report (as she was for the first). I very much appreciated the blog post outlining the report she wrote with her colleague Bianca Carducci. It is good to note that the Commission has not backtracked despite well-funded and highly-organised attacks on the primary recommendation of the 2019 report, to eat less red meat.
At the heart of the Commission is the reaffirmation of the Planetary Health Diet: a largely plant-based diet rich in whole grains, fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts, and seeds; complemented by modest amounts of fish, poultry, dairy, and eggs; and low in red meat (one serving a week), added sugars, and saturated fats. Overall, the Diet allows two servings of animal-source foods per day—drawn from fish, yogurt, milk, cheese, or meat.
Updated evidence shows adherence to this diet reduces all-cause mortality by 28 percent in large cohort studies—equivalent to 15 million deaths averted annually—while lowering incidence of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, obesity, and several cancers. It also appears to protect against cognitive decline and unhealthy aging.
Fanzo and Carducci single out food justice as “the most distinctive advance” of EAT-Lancet 2.0.
Food systems are not just failing the planet; they are failing billions of people. Nearly half the world cannot afford a healthy diet. Food system workers often face low wages, unsafe conditions, and little representation, while marginalized groups — women, children, Indigenous peoples, and low-income communities — bear disproportionate burdens.
The Commission defines a just food system as one that ensures: equitable access to affordable, healthy diets; supportive food environments; the right to a clean environment and stable climate; decent work with fair wages and safe conditions; and genuine representation in decision-making. Healthy diets, it concludes, are both a human right and a shared responsibility.
The original EAT-Lancet report did change policies and behaviour. The latest report piles up the data and the policy prescriptions. It ought to be implemented in full, which is why it probably won’t be.
Salt People
Almost by chance, I saw historian Ken Albala’s link to the Chhé’ee Fókaa Band of Northeastern Pomo in California. I was, of course, primed to notice it by Naomi Duguid telling me all about her book The Miracle of Salt, because the Chhé’ee Fókaa people “controlled a valuable salt deposit just outside of the modern town of Stonyford, hence their self designation as Chhé’ee ‘salt’ Fókaa ‘people’”.
There’s not a lot of information about the early salt trade at their site, but I did locate a document from Ben King, whose family has farmed in the area since 1860, that quotes from a 1908 ethnography. King also mentions the Crystal Salt Company which, by 1892, had taken over salt production from any remaining Chhé’ee Fókaa. I was disappointed to learn that this company has nothing to do with Diamond Crystal Salt. It would be very cool if an enterprising Salt Person were to market their salt for people who would like to contribute to their mission.
Birth, Death, and Funding for School Meals
Come November, Colorado will vote on a strangely complicated proposition. The detailed ins and outs of Proposition LL are hard to understand, but here’s what I gleaned from an explainer in The Colorado Sun. In 2022, Proposition FF allowed the state to increase taxes on people earning more than $300,000 a year, earmarking the extra to provide breakfast and lunch for all school students in Colorado. The tax raised almost $12 million more than had been expected, but the state cannot simply keep the excess and use it. Proposition LL will allow the state to spend the extra and all the money raised via Proposition FF in future on free school meals for all.
Sounds like a plan, but there’s a tiny problem. Even with the $12 million, Proposition FF didn’t raise enough to fund free school meals completely. Enter Proposition MM, designed to raise taxes on those people earning more than $300,000 a little more. And if there’s any money left over after funding school meals, Proposition MM lets the state top up food stamps.
Seems like an awfully complicated way to fund the proper development of future generations.
Insect Pain
Maybe I need to reset my priors. This time last year, when Dustin Crummett explained his misgivings about raising insects for food, the argument I found least compelling was the one about numbers and welfare. If people start replacing mammals and birds in their diet with insects, there are going to be billions and billions of insects slaughtered. If they have even a smidgen of consciousness and sensitivity to pain, that adds up to a whole lot of animal welfare to consider. Science magazine interviewed two researchers, a philosopher and an entomologist, about their huge literature survey that sought to uncover “how scientists currently think about insect welfare, and what guidelines they think are necessary in the future”. Will that have any effect on insect welfare outside the laboratory? Probably not; my priors are staying where they are.
Anty-yoghurt
Do the chefs at Restaurant Alchemist in Copenhagen give any thought to the welfare of the ants that are “a commonly used ingredient in high-end gastronomy”? Did Linda Geddes, as she crushed ants to make yoghurt? “I spent a good hour fretting over the ethics, but curiosity won out,” she admits in her detailed report in The Guardian.
Geddes was stimulated by a scientific investigation, prompted by Restaurant Alchemist, into a traditional yoghurt of Bulgaria and Turkey that is produced by adding live ants to warm milk and burying the container in an ant mound. Apparently ants contain microbes that help to turn milk into yoghurt, along with enzymes that influence its texture. But the ants have to be alive.
As Geddes relates, the four ants she crushed into 30ml of milk resulted in “a gelatinous yoghurt, with a surprisingly creamy taste. I did not detect any lemony notes, just a mild bitterness. It was actually rather nice”.
In the wider picture, it’s possible that ants and other traditional materials will be harnessed to provide different kinds of yoghurt cultures “for the discerning”.
Take care
