Close Ad

The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

misinformation

Sigh. It Looks Like Misinformation is Coming For Food Waste Technology Too

A couple weeks ago, I wrote about how misinformation has real potential to harm the nascent cultivated meat industry. As it turns out, meat grown in bioreactors is not the only food tech-related misinformation floating around nowadays.

Over the last couple of weeks, viral media posts have circulated about the fresh produce life extension coating made by Apeel. These tweets and posts often reference Bill Gates’ investment in the company and present a mix of conspiracy theories ranging from claims that the Apeel coating will make users sick, cause skin or eye damage, or increase the population’s reliance on the pharmaceutical industry.

Some of the early posts pointed to a fact sheet which, according to a fact check by the USA Today, was about an industrial cleaner – also called Apeel – instead of the food coating. But even after it became clear that the warnings in the fact sheet were about a product meant for cleaning floors and not for the Apeel food coating, it didn’t seem to deter some on social media from suggesting the ingredients in the Apeel product were harmful or a part of some weird food control plot by Bill Gates.

The primary active ingredient in the Apeel coating mentioned in the posts is mono- and diglycerides. While there is a legitimate conversation to be had about whether excess mono- and diglycerides in our diets can be harmful, the posts suggest that Apeel’s coating is a danger to all those who consume it, despite the fact the company received a ‘no questions’ GRAS notification from the FDA that the additives are safe for their intended use. The posts also largely ignore that mono- and diglycerides are commonly added to various foods, such as bread, peanut butter, and ice cream, and for products with peels like avocados or bananas, the Apeel coating won’t actually be consumed (unless someone chooses to eat the peels for some reason).

Although this recent surge in misinformation does not seem to have the same potential impact as those surrounding cultivated meat, there is no doubt that it has been a concerning development for Apeel. Food misinformation is widespread today, sometimes due to deliberate efforts by organizations with vested interests in a product, and other times simply because self-proclaimed health or food experts raise the alarm based on something they have seen or read.

Bottom line: as new technologies for food become more commonplace, so will bad information about them. The companies behind these products need to work to educate customers and proactively address the flare-ups in the wild before they start burning out of control.

The Right’s War on Alt-Meat is Intensifying. Here’s What the Food-Tech Industry Should Do About It

In a new video posted online, far-right firebrand Marjorie Taylor Greene claims that the government wants to surveil every aspect of our lives, including what we eat.

“They want to know if you’re eating a cheeseburger, which is very bad because Bill Gates wants you to eat his fake meat that grows in a peach tree dish,” Greene said. “So you’ll probably get a little zap inside your body and that’s saying ‘no, don’t eat a real cheeseburger. You need to eat the fake burger, the fake meat from Bill Gates.'”

Greene’s video is the latest example of the right’s effort to politicize meat alternatives as a way to agitate its base into voting for them and against those who allegedly are scheming to take away their Big Macs. Since the vast majority of these claims are easily disprovable and make us all a little dumber for just hearing them (peach tree dish?), we should ignore them, right?

Wrong. The problem is, as dumb as these statements are, the more they’re repeated, the more likely they take hold in the collective consciousness of consumers and risk becoming widely accepted folk wisdom.

So what should the food tech industry do about it? The most important thing is not to be complacent and be clear in its messaging about its industry and its product, so misinformation doesn’t fill the void.

What exactly should be the message? Here are a few ideas:

No one is taking anyone’s animal meat away. Let’s face it: There’s really nothing more ‘American’ than eating a big slab of red meat, and if Americans think they will be forced to do anything (or have something they like taken away from them), many will reflexively react negatively. The alternative meat industry needs to be clear that its goal is to make plant-based and cultivated meat good enough that consumers choose it over the alternatives. And those who want to continue to pay ever-higher prices for traditional factory-farmed meat will always have that option. Speaking of higher prices…

Real meat has lots of problems, including a rising price tag. One of the reasons red-meat Americans might actually consider an alternative is that real meat has lots of issues, including being a vector for viruses, it’s cruel and often unhealthy. But perhaps the most significant negative for everyday Americans when it comes to meat is it’s getting a lot more expensive. Alternatives to industrialized meat might not only taste just as good and be healthier but there’s a good chance they will also be more affordable in the future.

There are a lot of options when it comes to meat alternatives. Not every meat alternative is built the same. There are plant-based alternatives that rely heavily on science to taste like the real thing, there’s real meat grown in bioreactors instead of animals, and there are meat alternatives that don’t pretend to be meat at all. There are many options for different preferences, and the industry should try to be clear if one doesn’t fit your needs, another might.

Stop using terms like ‘synthetic meat’. I’m looking at you, Bill Gates. Gates used the term in an interview with MIT Technology Review, despite the fact the type of meat he’s invested in with Upside Foods (formerly Memphis Meats) isn’t synthetic at all. It’s real meat, only instead of being grown on an animal, it’s grown in a bioreactor. While this might seem like nitpicking, terms like ‘synthetic’ and ‘lab-grown’ – while often wrongly applied – really turn consumers off and are easily weaponized by culture warrior-minded politicians looking for their next grievance to make hay with on social media.

The reality is the politicization of meat is only going to intensify, and if the alt-protein industry wants to avoid becoming a casualty of the political culture wars, they need to get their messaging straight and do it soon.