Podcast (sustainable-dish-podcast): Play in new window | Download

 

It’s no secret that our food system is broken. Food production has been consolidated and corporatized, leading to the illusion of choice and abundance. The reality is a landscape of nutrient-poor, ultra-processed convenience food. As a nation, we are overfed and undernourished, and “lifestyle” diseases are compromising our health and happiness. 

On today’s show, my co-host, James Connolly, sits down for an in-depth conversation with Jennifer Stojkovic. Jennifer is a food-tech leader, founder of Vegan Women Summit (VWS), and author of The Future of Food is Female.

That’s right – Jennifer advocates for plant-based eating! 

She is also passionate about tapping into the potential of women to change the food system. Her book, The Future of Food is Female, features women who are using their expertise and wisdom to change the food industry.

Listen to this episode with an open mind. While I don’t wholeheartedly agree with everything Jennifer states during the conversation, she hits on many of the same points we’ve discussed in previous episodes. 

It’s time to see past our differences and look for common ground. 

James and Jennifer dive into a nuanced and respectful discussion around many hot-button issues plaguing the current food environment like:

• Food sovereignty 
• Consolidation in the food industry
• The fight over water rights
• The rise of ultra-processed food
• Why food choice is a privilege 
• Tech and the future of food
• The need for more women in food companies

Rather watch this episode on YouTube? Check it out here: Episode 269: Jennifer Stojkovic

 

Resources:

Nat Kelley – plant-based activist and actor

The Future of Food is Female by Jennifer Stojkovic

Vegan Women’s Summit

The Swine Republic: Struggles with the Truth about Agriculture and Water Quality by Chris Jones

Gods of Metal by Eric Schlosser

Raw Deal: Hidden Corruption, Corporate Greed, and the Fight for the Future of Meat by Chloe Sorvino

The Invention of Capitalism by Michael Perelman

 

Connect with Jennifer:

Website: Jennifer Stojkovic

LinkedIn: Jennifer Stojkovic

Instagram: Vegan Women’s Summit 

Twitter: Vegan Women’s Summit

Podcast: VWS Pathfinders Podcast

 

Episode Credits:

Thank you to all who’ve made this show possible. Our hosts are Diana Rodgers and James Connolly. Our producer is Emily Soape. And, of course, we are grateful for our sponsors, Global Food Justice Alliance members, and listeners.

If you believe in making sure that people all over the world should have access to nutritious food, please join my mission through my non-profit, the Global Food Justice Alliance. All sustaining members get free downloads and you’ll be helping get healthy protein like meat, fish, and eggs to food-insecure kids. Go to sustainabledish.com/join and check it out!

And if you’re looking for a guide to get your diet back on track so you feel your very best, plus learn more about meat’s role in a healthy, sustainable, and ethical food system, check out Sustainavore.

This is my signature course to help you eat for your health, the planet, and your values. For more information, head to Sustainavore and sign up!

 

Show support for the podcast by visiting our sponsors:

NativePath

NativePath collagen is a brand you can trust, and it’s the collagen I personally use and recommend as a dietitian. Learn seven reasons why each of us should be consuming more collagen at sustainabledish.com/restore.

I recommend NativePath because it is:

• Sourced from only pasture-raised bovine hide, 
• Made with only 1 ingredient
• Consistently formulated with 10 grams of the highest quality, grass-fed, type one and type three collagen, which makes up 90% of the collagen in your body
• Completely flavorless and blends smoothly into any liquid – hot or cold!

You can get NativePath collagen as low as 45% off plus free shipping by going to sustainabledish.com/nativepath. Jump on this deal and start restoring your health with NativePath grass-fed collagen.

 

Transcript:

Diana Rodgers, RD  

Welcome to the Sustainable Dish Podcast. I’m Diana Rodgers, a real food registered dietitian, author, and sustainability advocate. I co-host this podcast with James Connolly, who was a producer on my film Sacred Cow. I also founded the Global Food Justice Alliance, an initiative advocating for the inclusion of animal-source foods like meat, dairy, and eggs for a more nutritious, sustainable, and equitable worldwide food system. You can check it out and join me at globalfoodjustice.org. Thanks again for listening. And now, onto our show. 

Diana Rodgers, RD  (Native Path ad)

Too many of us overlook the role of collagen when it comes to having strong bones. Beyond healthy skin, nails, and hair, collagen fortifies your health in several important ways. I want you to learn more about the importance of collagen, so I’m sending my community to review an article from a brand I trust: Native Path. Learn seven reasons why each of us should be consuming more collagen at sustainabledish.com/restore, and stick around for how you can save as much as 45% off native path collagen later in this episode.

James Connolly  

Hi, this is James Connolly with Sustainable Dish’s podcast. I, scrolling on a Saturday morning, came upon a video, I decided to sort of rant. I don’t know why. It was just… so I tend not to do that unless there’s a few people online I just can’t stand. But this was like a good video -wasn’t… there wasn’t anything inherently wrong with it. And so we’d started a conversation. It was with Nat Kelley, who has a large following. And so I was trying to sort of have a conversation a little bit with her audience. And then Jenny, Jenny kind of came on to sort of like sort of push back, and we just had a very good conversation, and there’s nothing accusatory about it. We just were coming at it from very different perspectives. And so I invited her to kind of come on to Sustainable Dish to kind of just have a conversation. So Jenny… I can’t do it. It’s like just gets into my head. Say your last name for me.

Jennifer Stojkovic  

Hi, I’m Jenny Stojkovic. If you pretend the J is a Y sound, it’s much easier.

James Connolly  

Okay. Jennifer has written a book called The Future of Food is Female. But it’s a lot of like profiles and vignettes of people who are working in food systems who have fundamentally came at it from very different perspectives – all female, lots of women of color, lots of people who their “why” was very similar, and then in very ways different. It’s a global perspective, a lot of people who kind of went in and started their own businesses came at it from very different global worldview. But a lot of them were sort of have become sort of like real champions of plant-based eating, sort of vegan alternatives to meat. And it’s sort of talking about their journeys as to the whys and wherefores. It’s a great book, it’s actually really good. It’s kind of goes into, you know, you always have that sort of like Paul on the road to Damascus moments where you’re not from your horse. A lot of people were very successful in their lives and made a fundamental change. They had all of the trappings of success in sort of Western ideas and felt unfulfilled, and so wanted to kind of work on something. And it really profiles a lot. Now, Jenny also started the Vegan Women’s Summit. It’s a global platform, and more than 40,000 Women Leaders dedicated to building a kinder, more sustainable world. She’s a contributor to Rolling Stone, public speaker. She’s written for Bloomberg, Politico, and the Washington Post. So thank you so much for coming on. I would love to go a little bit into sort of your history of the why so that we can tell our audience about that.

Jennifer Stojkovic  

Yeah, I’m happy to. So do you want the long or the short? Because interesting story of how I got involved in…

James Connolly  

You’re a fast talker. We can go with the long one.

Jennifer Stojkovic  

Okay. All right. Let’s do it. So right now, I’m here in Los Angeles. You can see from my from my background. I was not born here. I was born in a small farm town in Canada of about 2000 people. So I was… I grew up surrounded by cow fields. I was not this big city person that a lot of people, you know, see today. I really was that kind of farm kid. And what was really interesting about growing up there is I never actually thought about food at all. It was not a thing in my purview. We actually now that I’m older, I know that it was actually quite a lot of factory farms in our town, mostly egg farming. And we just kind of took for granted that like, that’s just the way that they make food, and really think about it. And then when I was 23 years old, 10 years ago, this November, my entire life changed. My husband’s best friend and our best man was murdered. And so this is why I say it’s a long story. When you go through something like that, you all of a sudden have your entire world flipped upside down. And you are faced with this decision that you’ve been given this immeasurable piece of grief. And you can either learn from it grow from it, make something bigger of yourself, or you can let it sour you can let it make you bitter and hard. And so we decided to take the road a lot less traveled and we went and forgave the murderer in prison, went through this entire murder trial, and really just started thinking about what are we you know, doing with our lives? We think are these compassionate people? We you know, go we can forgive a murderer, but are we actually doing things in our day to day life that we think is making the world the better place. So, for me, it was really clear, you know, I’m eating factory farm animals three times in the day. It’s a 90 billion creatures a year. So it was just a very obvious place to start. So we went vegan, I ended up building like, you know, a pretty big media platform for probably almost 60,000 women professionals out with VWS, almost 60% non-vegan. It’s mostly just women that want to make up just a tiny one, if a 1% change to this massive system, huge untold impact on people, planet and animals. So that was really my “why” of why I started paying attention to food, I think it has the ability to create an amazing way to heal things heal people’s bodies heal the planet, obviously. And of course, you know, it doesn’t need to come at the suffering of creatures. And yeah, that’s really how I got into it. I worked in Silicon Valley for many years, and really just kind of a few years ago thought I want to accelerate what I really believe in, I’ve gotten to jump in with both feet. So here I am working in the food system.

James Connolly  

So much dirtier than you ever would have thought too.

Jennifer Stojkovic  

Yeah, oh, my gosh, you know, working in, I’ve worked for the Godfather, Silicon Valley, and Ron Conway, so probably not a huge intersection with his audience. But anybody that’s worked in tech knows he’s literally the, you know, original angel investor. And we thought that it was really hard to make startups exist, you know, I was working on trying to make Uber and Instacart. And all the things that you use today exists. But we kind of took that same approach, I think, with some of the food technology, you know, companies that have emerged, and they’re realizing very, very quickly, this is not an app. Food is a very, very different game. Food production is a different game. Supply chains are a different game. And I actually think that’s one of the biggest missteps that really happened in the last five years is the interest in investing in food came from that mindset. And that mindsets just not applicable to this type of work.

James Connolly  

Yeah, in around 2008, my partner and I, who’s also in venture capital, as well, she primarily works with female-led, female-driven venture capital. We had started a nonprofit that primarily worked in inner city schools in New York, and it was a vegetarian nonprofit, because we’re primarily trying to see how much we can exercise a lot of the junk food that was being fed to kids in public schools. We had worked with some of the kids who in the poorest congressional districts in the country. And so we felt like if we could change that food system. We worked through gardening programs. We worked with chefs, you know, we worked with, you know, food suppliers to fundamentally change that because for us, it mattered what was sitting on your plate. We weren’t necessarily anti-meat in any sort of way. We just thought that the lowest percentage in the American diet is fresh fruits and vegetables. And so we thought we could actually make a big change on that. And we worked with Michelle Obama. And, you know, so it is really hard. I, you know, like, for me, like, Michelle is just coming out with her new… she’s got a juice company, I think it’s 25% juice, and I’m like, come on Michelle.

Jennifer Stojkovic  

She doesn’t actually meet like her own standard. She…. I know, school lunches, the public school system. I actually before I was in, in Silicon Valley, my first job in America, when I moved here was working at United Way for three years. And I oversaw I mean, more than 50% of our programs were towards food stamps, and children’s nutrition, or over some million dollars towards, you know, feeding these kids, whether it was making sure they got breakfast all the way to carrying home, you know, their backpack filled with dinner and products that we had available, and who would donate, we’re just terrible. We knew they were terrible, but it was free food. And it was what was available, and it’s what the kids were taking home.

James Connolly  

Yeah. And you know, I think, especially if you’re working in places, like agricultural hubs like California, the expectation is it’s sort of I mean, it’s literally happening outside of your door. You know, we did that for close to a decade, we worked in 20 schools for teaching about 1500 kids a week. And part of the reason why I ended up going into the documentary film space is because I couldn’t change the level of conversation around endemic poverty in America. And so every time things were cut, there were cuts of substantive programs that I thought would actually really help in terms of the educational process, but take a lot of pressure off the families. And I got more and more frustrated with that. And so we started looking into funding documentaries that were sort of like do an overall sort of big picture conversation about what the food system was. And that’s where I got more and more into agriculture for me now, I think for the rest of my life, I’ll be studying this. I think it’s one it is the thing that we think about least anymore, and it’s probably the most, like the agricultural revolution never ended. Right? We live in it… Like yeah, TikTok. Doesn’t matter if you can feed yourself, right.

Jennifer Stojkovic  

Yeah, I think well, the pandemic showed that right. So you know, you’ve had these Countries like say Singapore, right. Singapore is an island nation that during the pandemic, they were importing 95% of their food. And they had severe, severe, like societal collapse level shortages that happened in that country. And so they looked at themselves, and they want you to 30 by 30, which I’m not sure if you know, that’s Singapore, 30 by 30. And they plan to produce 30% of their own food by 2030. Because they never want to have that volatility happen again. And you know, you’re saying similar in Israel, like all of these countries that don’t have they don’t have the embarrassment of riches when it comes to land and crops and everything that we have here in the United States, like I grew up in Canada and living here, you just assume that you can grow food. But if you’re an island nation, if you’re a desert nation, you don’t have that ability. And so, yeah, it’s been very interesting to see nations take it very seriously. And then I would have, you know, I would say, the United States is doing the opposite, putting money in all the wrong places when it comes to what they want to see in food. I think like the Inflation Reduction Act was a great example of that. I think there was an opportunity to actually invest in sustainable durable food solutions for the future of this country. And it mostly just turned into handouts to the same usual folks that have most of the handouts, right.

James Connolly  

Yeah. And that was, you know, I remember seeing that. It was Michael Pollan had written an op-ed for the New York Times, as Michelle Obama was launching her Let’s Move program. She was standing up there with a lot of multinationals, PepsiCo and, you know, companies like that you had on that same day, Barack Obama was signing away the farm bill. And so that is probably one of the largest, you know, corporate giveaway, so you could possibly ever imagine. And it’s been like that for a really long time. I’ve been doing a lot of research into the commodities markets, specifically ADM, Bungie, Cargill, and Dreyfus. And one of the things I actually kind of want to ask your wisdom on this, because it’s a quote that I thought is really interesting. Dwayne Andreas was the CEO of ADM, from the 1970s, up until about 1995. And he has this sort of quote, he said, something to the effect of the customer is our enemy. Right? So the customer is our enemy, the competitors are our friends. And it starts off there, he said, and I want to, like go into the quote a little bit here, were the biggest food and agriculture company in the world. This is a little bit it was about a decade ago, how is the government going to run without people like us? We make 35% of the bread in this country and that much of the margarine and cooking oil and all the other things. And so his argument was, this is a socialist country, what we do is we take enormous amounts of taxpayer wealth, and we fund it into these programs that are sort of parasitical to the agricultural system that pull all of this wealth away from the farms and then process them make them into these foods that are shelf stable, that are low input low cost foods, that then we can then like essentially just throw it all over the world. And so, the process the ultra-processed food revolution was essentially that we excise the taxpayer wealth that was associated with all of this agricultural productivity and they just dumped the world with a ton of ultra-processed foods you know, and the long-term cost of that is what you know, you and I are kind of dealing with right we have the pharmaceuticals that are dealing with some of the aspects of that, then we also have all of the downstream effects the environmental damage, that the also the taxpayer has to pay for. And then all of the other things are kind of associated with that that are downstream effects like you know, the medical like health system that has to deal with what are considered like lifestyle diseases, right? Which I hate the term lifestyle diseases like if you have a choice when you walk through the supermarket.

Jennifer Stojkovic  

I could… there’s like 1000 points you just said…. Bayer and Monsanto are the same company, okay, like let’s start there, right? Most of the antibiotics produced in the United States are for livestock. So to assume that the pharmaceutical industry and you know, concentration and CAFOs and the top four meat giants in this country are not all together in cahoots is just absurd. They are and they have been for a very long time. It’s actually a topic that I think is not covered a lot is you know, 1971 when we decoupled the dollar from the gold standard, Nixon’s decision, we really actually saw a massive escalation in subsidies towards factory farming and intensification which of course, is also related to you know, the corn and and all the other types of what would become processed foods right. And so, can you look you actually can see that they firmly believe that moving towards that process, that ultra process industrialized food system you can see like some of the leaders in government in the early 70s said, this is how we’re going to feed America. This was by intention and on purpose. This isn’t a oh, you know, the US government, you know, thought it same with the UK. They’re one of the first countries that also started subsidizing, industrialized, intensive farming. It didn’t happen to them, it happened with them. And so now we’re in a system where you’ve got 85% of like meat is being processed by four giant corporation, then they signed deals with these small, you know, pork pig and beef ranchers that are making almost nothing. I think the average beef rancher is now upside down. I don’t I think the actual average is literally in the negative price and reported the pork producers are in negative margins two quarters ago, and they’re stuck in the system, because that meat processor puts them in debt, millions and millions and millions of dollars, because you have to buy the choice and approved or the you know, Hormel approved, entire setup. And then you’re working that off for decades, right? So you have no way to actually get out of that, you know, way, means of production, you have no way to really find your way out of that hole. And I think that’s the piece that most people that don’t want to, you know, both the vegan plant-based side, the regenerative side really are missing out on is there is this perverse financial model that has trapped so many of these farmers and like, what are they going to do, right? And we’ve got the beef ranchers who, on average are a decade older than a pork or chicken producer. They’re all 65-70 now, and they’ve got a sinking asset, and their kids don’t want it now. Why would they?

James Connolly  

Right? Yeah. And what we saw post-2008 was the new markets for a lot of college endowments for insurance agencies for a lot of financial capital was to go past the fence post. So these farms to essentially take them over. And you’ve taken a lot of these farmers and now you’ve made them essentially tenant farmers, they no longer own the land, the inputs are decided for them. And this is this is across the entire market. I think if you look at California agriculture, if you look at even just the almonds, coconuts, the sort of global enterprise palm oil production. We can actually see it in cattle farming in Sudan, where you have these Harvard got in trouble because they were involved in Brazilian deforestation. So you have these, like $42 billion dollar endowments that are very small, very nimble, maybe five or six people make these decisions. And they’re willing to go into these new venture markets, because it’ll, you can actually access a tremendous amount of wealth. And so 2008 was really a fundamental change. I think in our agricultural system, we’re seeing the end tail result of that, which is pesticide companies. It’s about four in the world right now, fertilizer companies about four in the world, we see the total consolidation of every single aspect of this market. And I think that that that to me, was the sort of bugbear that kind of like threw me off, like, got me a little bit riled up about the video that was centered around the consumer freedom and consumer choice. And I think when I, when I hear that, and this is like, whenever I’m interviewed, or I’m talking about some of this stuff, like Iowa pig farmers do not want this type of pig farming, the farmer is downstream of these plants. Nobody wants this, and they can’t get out. And so I think I was reading Swine Republic recently. And they said, that was close to like, 20 years ago, you had 280,000, farmers involved in pig and egg laying production, but also soy, corn, you know, essentially, whatever grows in Iowa, these integrated systems were down at about 85,000. So you’ve produced enormous amount of product productivity, but you’ve essentially bankrupted small towns, small communities, you know, you’ve essentially like, enhanced them, and unmoored them from all of the different civic responsibilities associated with the money that would have come in from this farming. And so the downstream cost of that is essentially paid for by everybody else, right? The Mississippi Delta and the dead, you know, streams that we’re seeing the phosphate fertilizers that are sort of running off and leaching into that environment that we also have to pay for. Right. So now we’ve all watched groups that are kind of part of that. They’re trying to reduce nitrate and phosphate production. And they’re like, What are we going to do? Like, you know, it’s since they’ve instituted these policies, it’s even it’s gone up even since then. You know, and so we’re stuck. Like, that’s the problem, we’re stuck. We’re stuck in the system and the consumer is the end result of that. They are given the illusion that they have like when they walk through the supermarket, that they have this sort of like bounty that’s sitting in front of them, but really, it’s about like, 10 companies that own 80% of the foods that are sitting in there, you know.

Jennifer Stojkovic  

I totally agree. I think that you know, we’ve got both the domestic consolidation that’s happened certainly in the meat, you know, dairy and egg industry, particularly in chicken and pork, right. But we also got the foreign influence, too, that’s been happening in the United States. And when you get into the fact that Arizona had to hold construction in two Western Phoenix neighborhoods because one Devonte, a Saudi Arabian dairy company had pulled so much water from the water table to grow their alfalfa, that American citizen are going with that water, right? Like I did an entire essay on this a few months ago, and I filmed actually a documentary with some folks a few months ago on the water shortage, and Americans have no idea that not only have we sold your water to be essentially, livestock is typically alfalfa. But we’ve sold it to cows in China and Saudi Arabia, in Japan, it’s not even cattle in the United States. And then when you think about water rights, you think about these farmers have these water rights 100 year plus, you know, legislation, it’s very Byzantine and complex. And we are, we’re only just diving into it for the first time this year, because the Colorado is going to deadpool in two different spots, right? Because for those that are not familiar, you’ve got almost eight different states that are that are using the Colorado River. It’s an arterial water system in the United States, obviously, the big one being California got it. 4 million Americans. So that’s one in eight, you know, people that are using this water system that 70% of its going to alfalfa production, two thirds of all of Utah’s entire water footprint, like including commercial, residential, everything is alfalfa, they pull that stuff out of the ground, pack it up, put it on a ship, and then it goes to China. How has there not been some you know, like, how is there not a basic right that Americans should have a right to water before a foreign entity does?

James Connolly  

Yeah. And that that the financialization of farmland post 2008 was really I think, where it galvanized a lot of that. I mean, the US does this everywhere, you know. You’ve posted about this as well, right? That US Supreme Court case involving Cargill, Mars, Hershey and Nestle, you know, utilizing child slavery and chocolate production in Western Africa. We see this across the board and coffee production. And we see this across the board. The Saudis actually did find an aquifer that they tried to tap to grow their own alfalfa, and it was dead within 10 years. And so they they tried to find some degree of like, you know, the sustainability on their own front, and they just drained a 10,000 year aquifer in Saudi Arabia.

Jennifer Stojkovic  

I tell this to people all the time. Saudi Arabia is drying up in Arizona, because in 2018, they banned alfalfa farming in their own country. How much more do you need? And I think that even now we’re seeing this onshore, this isn’t even offshore. You know, the processing giants we just had this week, Department of Labor announced an investigation of both Tyson and Perdue for using her 18 year old undocumented children in you know, slaughterhouses. We had JBF implicated three months ago, we are facing such dire consequences of cheap meat. And there are only a few people winning people like Donnie King the CEO of Tyson Foods that made $12 million last year. He’s winning. But you know, Marcus Souza who lost an arm and a Tyson factory. 13 years old should have been in eighth grade that day. He’s not like what is at what point is the human cost of this level of food consolidation and processing too much for us? Right?

James Connolly  

Yeah, and you know, that has been I was recently reading. So like I was saying before, I’ve moved away from a lot of the some of the arguments that were that were put forth in Sacred Cow. And one of the things I’ve become obsessed with was the sort of demonization of psychedelics and an 1970s drug culture. So, one of my favorite writers is a guy by the name of Eric Schlosser. And he wrote, he writes amazing small, short book, it’s called Gods of Metal. And it’s about these, these nuns and priests who break into military that the top secret military facilities that are housing like nuclear weapons, and they just… they’re seventy years old, and they walk onto these things and they protest. And it’s a really great it’s like a short book, but he wrote a book called Reefer Madness. And it’s a weird book because it goes through three. Yeah, he goes through three specific, like aspects of American culture. One is the obviously the drug culture, the anti-psychedelics, the anti-LSD, all of that stuff, but also marijuana production. So as you saw farmers start to lose more and more market share. A lot of moved into the illegal trade, their farms were seized, because they had no ability to make any money anymore. And they would get these like 24-25 year sentences mandatory seizures. Police Departments started to go after them because they get million dollar properties by just finding a marijuana plant or a few marijuana plants like growing fine there. But the second every part of it was he goes into this long form conversation about strawberry production. And it is the one of the most I read the worst things that humans can do to each other. It is the one of the worst things I have ever read in my adult life, the strawberry production in California is just so devastating. And so I think that there are so many sort of aspects of it that I think, you know, JBS… we did a whole sort of podcast – Chloe Sorvino’s book, Raw Deal, JBS, like the fact that they’re even in this country, considering what they did in terms of bribery and scandals, in terms of production, right?

Jennifer Stojkovic  

… prison.

James Connolly  

I think one did go to prison, right?

Jennifer Stojkovic  

No, oh, the two owners in a jail cell in Brazil, as we cut bailout checks to them during the pandemic. It is on track to list on on the stock exchange this year in the United States.

James Connolly  

Yeah. And yeah, I mean, you talk about factory production, chicken production, JBS, where people who are working there can’t even afford the chickens that they’re processing, like the timing on all of this stuff. The mechanization of that entire process means that people are really, but that is like every single aspect of our food now is ladened with pesticide exposure, you know, birth defects associated with that, you know, 2A visas exploitation throughout the entire system. And every time we demonize immigration, we move and legislate towards more prisons for non-violent criminals, so that we can farm them out for agricultural production. So you see this sort of like duality that happens within our agricultural system, where we’re always just looking for the most marginalized people that people would, you know, like, and then utilizing them and essentially creating, like an underclass of invisible people that we can continuously exploit. And, you know, the suicide rates among migrant agricultural workers in both meat production and agricultural production is one of the highest in the United States. So you’re putting people into this enormous amount of penury, where they can’t ever really get out. They have to pay in order to get to these coyotes. And then they essentially spend their entire life trying to pay off all of the debt that they’ve accrued, trying to get here. And so this whole system, like I agree with these systems, like just so broken, so many different ways.

Jennifer Stojkovic  

Because it’s like, okay, so we have now exploited almost every aspect, all these ingredients are eating are either been synthesized in a lab or been probably gone through, you know, essentially human trafficking hands, right. And they get to you at the grocery store, and you’re a mom, and it’s, you know, 5:35, and you got to pick up something quick to eat because you got three kids at home. And you go to the frozen pizza aisle, which is an invention of America, might I add, we know other grocery stores in the world have an entire normal, okay, so like, just FYI, anybody listening, and you take it home, and you feed your kids that same crap because it’s what’s cheap and what’s available. And before you know it, your 12-year-old needs Ozempic. And then the entire cycle, you know, is beginning because we have a diabetes epidemic. We know diabetes, you say lifestyle disease, it’s a terrible name, because it’s basically, for most people like food disease. It’s a crappy rating, you’re eating sugary, ultra-processed foods that are filled with a bunch of red meat and dairy, all that combines together and you end up with 20% of teenagers in the United States being eligible for a serious pharmaceutical weight loss drug, like we’re starting to get these numbers in now. They have now estimated that 70% – 7 0 % of Americans qualify for Ozempic. And this is an entire topic that we went through years of a pandemic. And we literally never talked about this, which is the second most prevalent comorbidity aside from age was obesity and weight. And we have an inability to actually like discuss this meaningfully as a society we just decided to create more pharmaceuticals like Harvard Medical School found that they think that ozempic alone could increase US healthcare costs by 50%. And how you know, and this gets into the broader picture of these are the foods that are available to people these are the foods that are making them sick of making them sick earlier and earlier in life. And now we’re going to foot the bill for a lifetime of illnesses, new generations, you know, Gen Z is some of the worst you know, early signs of diabetes and, and weight issues and things like that, like they were going to sit on the system their entire life because of this and it all starts with the food we know it all starts with the food. We refuse to take it on as a public health issue. Why is that?

Diana Rodgers, RD  (Native Path ad)

I’m picking up where I left off earlier about collagen. Native path collagen is a brand that you can trust, and it’s the collagen that I personally use, and I recommend as a dietitian. I’ve noticed a big improvement in my hair, skin, and nails since I’ve started using this collagen supplement, and I’ve noticed that my joints feel a lot better, too. Sourced from only pasture-raised bovine hide, Native Path has only one ingredient, and it’s 100% hydrolyzed. Every scoop of native path grass-fed collagen is consistently formulated with 10 grams of the highest quality, grass-fed, type one and type three collagen, which make up 90% of the collagen in your body. Native Path collagen is completely flavorless and blends smooth into any liquid, hot or cold. Get Native Path collagen as low as 45% off, plus free shipping. Just head to sustainabledish.com/nativepath to get this deal and to start restoring your health with Native Path grass-fed collagen.

James Connolly  

You know, because I think we turned into a corporatocracy? Corporate… corporatocracy…  And you know, I mean, I think I think when you hear Vilsack who was the head of the USDA, or this sort of revolving door between a lot of the agricultural sort of products and the USDA, you hear him talking. He was on Sustainvore podcast that is Tamar Haspel was writer for Washington Post. And Michael Grunewald. And so, they have an interview with him, and he says, Listen, we’re gonna let the markets decide what is viable? And that is his answer for everything. The markets, they seem, in his mind have this their agenda list, right? Because essentially, it’s, it’s considered with the best, you know, the best competition, the best product wins. And I’m just like, you don’t understand how much of the finger is on the scale of people who just made all of this money for years off of that, right. And so like, for me, the farmers are the like you said before the farmers are the end result of a product that they didn’t, they have to sign contracts that put them into this place where even if they complain about it, they will get worse chickens. They’ll get downgraded chickens. They will… their slaughter dates will get moved. So they… the pork processors, the meat processors essentially hijacked every part of this agenda. And a lot of these farmers are older, they can’t pass on the land to their children anymore, because they can’t have two income households in the same place. So the children are forced to leave. And so we have an entire generation of people who are retiring out of this business. And then we don’t really have a younger generation. You know, I interview them all the time, there are people who kind of came at like regenerative agriculture or some other form of agriculture outside of the system, and have tried to sort of work through that system outside of that system, either direct to consumer, or you leveraging existing relationships in order to excise themselves from all of that. But the meatpacking still is the biggest problem I’m begging give a billion dollars billion dollars needs absolutely nothing for small regional slaughterhouses. And you know, who like has the best lawyers and best bankers? Who could possibly get that get that money in some sort of weird, like, you know, fashion through an LLC, it’d be JBS it’ll be Cargill, it’d be the same companies. You know.

Jennifer Stojkovic  

And that’s, that’s, you know, at the end of the day of what I dedicate a lot of my career and time to is, if we want to move away from industrialized meat production and we do not think that people are going to precipitously dropped their meat consumption, which we are now off the, you know, we’re eating more and more meat every single day, we find new and new, there’s new ways to put me into food all of the time, right? If you see the like four cheese, like taco, like Guadalupe, or whatever kind of thing, that’s the Dairy Council had them release it. We know for a fact that, like releases are based upon excess demand that you have the National Dairy Council or the Beef Council gets involved, and pushes them to actually release new products, right. So we know that people are eating a lot, a lot, a lot of meat. And we’ve got China is a great example of when you have a rapid industrialization of a nation, they start eating a more Western diet, which means more meat, we know that China does the same with India could be on the same track. And of course, Africa, as you mentioned, like that’s kind of the last frontier, so to speak, and why there’s such a huge land grab happening there. So if we want to move away from that system, I believe, fundamentally, that you need to have a large-scale production of protein that has different inputs. And that’s why we focus on, you know, what could large scale like plant-based protein with, you know, if you depend on plant-based protein for the 30% of time you’re eating processed meat, or more, depending on which American you are, and then you’ve got a steak or whatever, you know, piece of chicken that’s locally farmed for Sunday night, there has to be some sort of balance, in my opinion, because the numbers aren’t going to work out for either one, unless they are brought together to address the way that factory farming is currently working.

James Connolly  

Uh, yeah, I you know, I think about that a lot. One of the things that Diana and I have argued about incessantly is like, what is the end result of a massive reduction in meat? It is usually the first thing that’s taken off the table in schools, it’s usually the first thing that is you’re going to look for, with people who are already already living in food deserts, are already struggling to make ends meet. Most Americans could not put together $400 if they had an emergency, or we live off of our city… we live off of paycheck to paycheck. And so from my perspective, it’s always really difficult to see what would happen with that if prices rose. If those those things became choices the people who have the ability to afford that will obviously get that, you know, I consider the benefits of meat consumption to outweigh the costs. In terms of health. I think a lot of meat is in… we don’t really eat like meat anymore. We essentially eat muscle. I don’t eat that way. So I tried to eat whole animal I’ve tried as much as possible excise myself from the entire system, like food system as much as you possibly can. I think that there’s…

Jennifer Stojkovic  

That’s a privilege.

James Connolly  

 100%. Yeah.

Jennifer Stojkovic  

The fact that you and I get to choose our diets,

James Connolly  

Yeah. But I like the organics movement. I remember Michael Pollan talks about it. He said, the original organics movement, the average annual paycheck that people were bringing home was was under $27,000. There were people who were making choices to eat organic, that really didn’t factor into the larger scale. This was an important factor for them. And so for me, like, you know, it’s where you choose to sort of pay into that can sometimes make a big difference. You know, I think, like, when I look at social justice issues, like the Black Panthers, which was a vegetarian organization, that fed kids in the inner city, because they realized education was useless if kids were hungry in the classroom, you know, like, there are so many sort of aspects of this that are like, we can’t… I don’t know. It’s sort of hard to go through the social justice issues. And you know, in the time that we have that are kind of associated with like, what do we eat? Like, what is what is a moral diet? What is the you know, like, what is a diet that could possibly excise yourself from this entire system? Especially if you’re not given choice, right. Public Schools, you’re not really given that much choice?

Jennifer Stojkovic  

Yeah, you’re given a Tyson nugget. Right. But that is what it served in most US public schools, right. And so I think that the health aspects of meat that you’re thinking about, are not present in the majority of meat products that are consumed in the United States. Most meat products, the top-selling meat product in the US is Tyson nuggets. So you look at the top five selling meat products in the US only one is actually an unprocessed meat, and it’s a chicken breast. The other four are all the processed meats. So from a health perspective, if we can replace those items with either a plant-based protein and alternative protein, more fruits and vegetables, That one seems like a tall order because less than 10% of Americans eat the recommended fruits and vegetables, and we can replace that piece. And then they keep and they have a you know, reduce meat consumption of healthier meat. That’s great. I think that’s the best chance we’ve actually got for us to create a healthier, more robust, sustainable food system. But I don’t see Americans suddenly turning away from factory farm processed meat at the prices that they’re at, to only eat a small amount of regenerative healthy meat. It just, we’ve never done that. We’ve never seen consumer ever reduce in mass, this type of thing, right?

James Connolly  

Yeah. When I think about this stuff, I always say to myself, well, like what is the larger keystone issue that matters to me most, which is we’ve seen CEO pay go up, right. So we have seen probably the largest wealth gap in 70 years, happening right now. We saw the total like 2.3, the $3 trillion of wealth essentially transferred to billionaires. And so I don’t know. I think one of the harder parts that I have with a lot of this stuff is, and this happens a lot with podcasts about health is the consumer is given limited choice because of all of the other extrinsic factors that aren’t associated with what they’re sitting down to a meal with. And so I don’t necessarily know what to do with that, because that is just as insurmountable as changing the agricultural system. But also, like, don’t want to necessarily blame the consumer, like if you’re not given the choice, if you live within the system. So sorry, like a small analogy to this. There’s a book called The Invention of Capitalism. And it’s one of the stories it’s told in that was about the sort of movement of people into the industrialized… into industrialization had to work to get them to work in factories. None of them wanted this. They hunted when they want. They gardened. They had to pay their produce tax, and pay their taxes to the nobleman, but for the most part, they were semi left alone, except in times of crisis. But in order to get people to do a job that had no intrinsic value to them, where they’d work 60-70 hours a week, you had to essentially excise them from everything that would allow them to kind of like eat and live on their own. And so a lot of our educational system, a lot of our sort of like corporate industrial system is to excise you from your ability to kind of take make those choices in and of yourself. And so it worked, right. It worked for industrialization. It worked for capital development in the industrialized West, made a lot of money for a very small percentage of people. But the cost of that was that we now have very little relationship to where our food is coming from. And I consider some of that to be intentional, right? So a lot of our knee-jerk reactions associated with this is the end result of a larger system that was never really meant to either one give us long-term health, to give us like access and mobility and happiness, solace, peace of mind, all these other things…

Jennifer Stojkovic  

We’re not solving for happiness, that’s for sure, right. We’re solving for economies of scale. That is what our entire food system is. And I think the issue that we’re now facing is we’re reaching very real long-term effects in American society and in Western society of what this system has done to us, I think it took a while to get here. And honestly, we weren’t eating this… we weren’t eating this way. You know, several decades ago, this is a fairly modern advancement in the American diet or advancement used loosely, we’ve got the ability to now have that hindsight. And we see other nations that have much larger populations, fast-tracking to what we’re doing. And that, to me is the most concerning part, you know, there’s a reason why China owns a large amount of in Russia now, increasingly of Africa, that continent, because that’s where the next economic boom is going to be. You looked at places like Logos, you know, there’s massive, massive changes that are happening, that people have no idea on a global scale. And if that adoption of that diet is going to happen in these places, as well, we’ve got really serious sustainability concerns. We’ve gotten some very serious health concerns. There’s this is a point I believe, you know, I don’t know when we hit a point of no return. But for a lot of us, I think the… what’s happened in China was really like, whoa, rice fields and skyscrapers and only a few decades. And if that is going to happen in India next, and that’s going to happen across the continent of Africa next, how do we make sure that we’re doing that sustainably? How do we stop that? How do we tell other nations to not do what we’re doing? Right? Like? How is that going to work? Like, it’s what is the moral implication of that? What is the moral implication that we could be using more renewable energy, but we don’t, and then we chastise India for using coal. And like, well, we need to provide energy for our coasts, you know, you guys have the ability or a few 100 years ahead, you guys could be using better energy sources, you can’t tell us what to do. And that’s going to keep happening more and more. And I feel like we have an obligation in Western society and American society to make the changes that we can, because we know that there are developing nations that could near this, that will have disproportionate effects on the planet.

James Connolly  

Yeah, but like, for me, a lot of that is predicated upon the idea that we just said, like, just business as usual, that we continue to produce, like everything, just for its own sake. You know, the original sort of promise that like Keynesian economics, we kind of talked about, he said that, by the end of the century, people would work about 15 hours a week, we would have most….

Jennifer Stojkovic  

[garbled] gonna get us out of work soon with these AI issues.

James Connolly  

Yeah, but it’s only replaced art, right? It’s only to replace, like, you know, screenwriters and artists and everything like that. It just took away all the poetry.

Jennifer Stojkovic  

I told you, I’ve got a I know Sam Altman. And I know what’s going on over at open AI. And if the public knew this stuff they’re working on. Oh, boy. Yes, it’s much, much deeper. The other I mean, that’s the irony of the whole thing. It’s that you know, as we modernize, we theoretically should be working less and having more value. We are improving things and everything improves the quality of life of people. And I think that is really that’s the break in AI. We don’t have capitalism when it comes to the overarching food system because we have such insane subsidizing from the government. Like we have an oligopoly. We have an oligopoly that controls the way that we eat that, you know, you’re trying to break through we’re trying to break through and the concern is that if that breakthrough doesn’t happen, and business as usual does continue. There could be a pretty scary future you know, I think about what I see what’s happening with kids in the school system with their feeding, like the illnesses they’re getting earlier and earlier what you see, you know, happening with these communities that are outside of Smithfield that you know, they successfully sued for the insane pollution that was causing respiratory ailments, cancers, things like that, and almost feels like we’re heading for a WALL-E type situation. And you’ve seen WALL-E?

James Connolly  

Of course, yeah.

Jennifer Stojkovic  

It feels the same. If we course, correct, that’s where we’d be going just consumerist planet where we’ve all been tuned it out completely.

James Connolly  

Yeah, I think I think one of my lowest moments, we were having a conversation with the US military, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and they looked at obesity rates and army recruitment. And so people really couldn’t fit into tanks anymore. And so they looked at the problem, they looked at the problem in the United States, and they were like, okay, robotics and drones. We’re just gonna play video games now. Right? And it’s absurd. Yeah, but that was the only way that they can look around what the system was… and so you have national security. They called it a national security issue. But then they had absolutely no idea how to push back against that stuff, you know.

Jennifer Stojkovic  

And that’s emblematic, I think of where we are right now in society is that we are just doing workarounds to core fundamental broken pieces. It’s all harm mitigation. That’s happening right now. Because the actual, real fundamental issues that we’re facing, you know, with the inequality of, you know, there’s, there’s just so much that needs to be unpacked layer by layer, that throwing these simple solutions on top and until it finally you know, the dam breaks and too much, that’s the way that we’re gonna keep heading. And I think that it’s wrong, I think that we folks that are listening, you know, folks, like you and I, we call it out, we say it like it is, but to get people that inertia to combat that status quo is it’s very, very difficult. And I don’t know, we’ve had small groups that have created big waves before, but generally speaking, every social justice movement is underpinned by some sort of technological revolution as well, that does make you know, whatever it is obsolete, we’ve seen this countless times before. So that’s what I believe, you know, working in what I do is that technological revolution that can underpin what I think is one of the biggest, it’s vital, you know, reforms we need to do will hopefully accelerate it and make it a reality.

James Connolly  

So Buckminster Fuller said the quote, you can’t change society by fighting the current paradigm, you have to create a new way.

Jennifer Stojkovic  

Yeah, I think that we’ve got the data to see, the cultural shift is important. The Cultural Revolution is key, of course, right? But there has to be an economic driver underneath it, or has to be. And until we have both pieces together, we’re spinning our wheels, you can’t do just the economic, technological innovation and not have the cultural piece. I think that’s something that the work that I do has done very unsuccessfully, to be completely honest, I think we haven’t built enough cultural support for the type of food technology we’re trying to build. And vice versa. You know, there’s so many farmers that are they know what’s wrong, they do these documentaries. They’re out there in front of, you know, the hill every five years. And they just keep getting steamrolled. They just keep getting it. So how do we pair the two together?

James Connolly  

Yeah, I, it’s two o’clock. I don’t necessarily want to keep you for too long. But I did have one question that I wanted your wisdom on. One of the things I’ve been thinking a lot about lately is the sense that we have, I think the original organics movement, either coming out of Berkeley or sort of like working with indigenous wisdom, to work on agricultural practices would have been considered to be some harkening back to a different time. One of the things I found sort of fascinating about some of the technological aspects of the sort of novel foods movement, was that I don’t necessarily understand why technology then became the major driver for that it never really made that much sense to me, because it seems to, you know, it’s it. For me, it seems like a laboratory and a factory, very akin to the problems that we’re trying to address. And maybe it’s a longer form conversation, because we actually didn’t even get into lab grown meat or any of that. So maybe, it’s like, but it’s so interesting to me, because I think working on some of these issues, I don’t necessarily understand why tech then became the answer to some of these fundamental questions.

Jennifer Stojkovic  

Yeah, so there’s, I think there’s a couple of things. And I could talk for another hour about this. I talk about the ethics of these things all the time. But so from a pure protein production scale, if we assume that people want to continue to consume in the way that they do, the only real solution is going to be a technological underpinning. Right. So that’s the thesis around it is assuming meat consumption continues going up to either stay the same or go up, which is what is happening, it’s going up globally by almost 2%. Then we need to slot in a new scalable system that will work so that is the reason behind that. Now, the cultural piece of it and why are we talking about So technology and labs and things like that when it comes to food, I think that’s a different conversation. Because I think that there is a severe disconnect from the people that are working on the science and understanding the food and the consumer and the tradition around the way that we eat. I think that’s a misstep that’s been taken by this industry, because there’s just not enough conversation with the consumer to make them comfortable with these products. I think that it’s something I’ve talked about a lot, it’s a big piece of the Future of Food is female 93% of consumer food purchases are made by women, yet every single one of these modern a novel food companies is almost essentially always led by a male leader. And you can see it, you can see it in the dialog that’s emerged, you can see it in the way this industry has unfolded. And I think it’s a mistake, it’s a mistake, I think there needs to be more moms, there needs to be more women. You see, when you go to the grocery store, you see husbands that are FaceTiming, their wives like figuring out which foods to buy, women control the grocery carts of this world. And I think our approach to explaining these food technologies and the why and talking to those that make these purchasing decisions would be much more effective. So the answer your question, that’s why technology. And that’s how we screwed it up, in my opinion, and he’s very short few years, we’ve kind of lost the mark for controlling the narrative in a way that consumers feel comfortable. And I hope to correct that. And I hope that conversations like this hope to correct that’s you understand where it’s coming from. Nobody’s here to take your meat. We’re actually just trying to give you more protein options, that you have diversity, because you don’t have diversity. And you don’t have choice right now. And we believe that we can make consumer choice, ultimately.

James Connolly  

Thank you. That was very succinct.

Jennifer Stojkovic  

We can crack open a whole new conversation another day.

James Connolly  

Oh, god. Yeah, I think we should do it again. Okay. Well, thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate it. And taking the time out of your busy schedule to have this conversation.

Jennifer Stojkovic  

I appreciate it. I’m happy to join anytime. And if you’ve ever got… if folks have questions about any of these novel food technologies, please know that I am a resource. I talked to the press every day and provide this kind of expertise, because there’s not a lot of people that know what they’re talking about. And there’s a lot of misinformation that’s going on out there. So please consult real reliable resources before forming opinions on some of these new approaches. Because I promise you, there’s no scary stuff going on. We just have done a bad job explaining what we’re trying to do.

James Connolly  

All right. Well, thank you so much.

Diana Rodgers, RD  (Sustainavore Ad)

If you’re looking for a guide to help you get your diet back on track to help you feel your very best, and to learn more about meat’s role in a healthy and sustainable, and ethical food system, then I highly recommend you take my Sustainavore course. I’ve condensed all of my knowledge in human nutrition and agriculture and have made it accessible to everyone in eight easy modules. There are quizzes, tips, and motivational emails to keep you on your journey. It also comes with a free cookbook and other great bonuses. So, eat for your health, the planet, and your values. Head to sustainavore.com today and check it out.

Diana Rodgers, RD 

Hey everyone, Diana here, I wanted to let you know that after many years and over 1 million downloads of the Sustainable Dish podcast, I’ve decided it’s time to direct my attention to other projects, including the Global Food Justice Alliance. It’s been a true honor to interview so many important leaders in the health and agricultural fields. And I’ve loved every minute of it. So, October 31, 2023, will be the last episode. Thank you so much for all of my dedicated listeners out there for your attention, your time. Thank you to Emily, my podcast editor, and to James Connolly, my co-host. Be sure to follow me at Global Food Justice and also at Sustainable Dish. You can get my newsletters, help contribute to the mission that I’m working on to make sure that all people have access to nutrient-dense, animal-sourced foods. Thank you.

Diana Rodgers, RD 

Thanks so much for listening today and for following my work. If you believe in making sure that people all over the world should have access to nutritious food, please join my mission through my non-profit, the Global Food Justice Alliance. Visit sustainabledish.com/join and become a sustaining member today. All sustaining members get free downloads and you’ll be helping get healthy protein like meat, fish, and eggs to food-insecure kids. That’s sustainabledish.com/join. And thank you.