Midrange Weekly July 19
YOUR WEEKLY ROUND UP ON WHAT’S GOT THE MIDRANGE STAFF’S ATTENTION
Midrange Staff @midrangeyvr
Hello friends and welcome back to Midrange Weekly. It’s been a busy week for the team here but we all collectively agreed if we don’t make deadline, no one gets to go the beach on our day off, and Mickey has a new sun hat he wants to show off. Congratulations are in order for us here in Canada as we recently surpassed America in percentage of population to be fully vaccinated. One may argue that it is petty and counter productive to turn a public health initiative into a egotistical competition, and yes that’s true; we only bring it up because we are winning. Of course we are absolutely rooting for increased vax rates for our southern neighbours if only because Tristan wants to go to Star Wars land in Florida one day. In the mean time, we have some thoughts on some things and you better believe we’d like you to read them.
The Dilemma Of Mixing Science And Food — Is What’s Best For Our Health Lost In The Process?
Scientists have been messing with our food for decades as they’ve looked to modify, alter and create new creations all the time. Think of margarine as a notable example. Or high fructose corn syrup as another. I’m not a fan of either of these inventions, but they’re presence within our way of life cannot be ignored. High fructose corn syrup is seriously in everything. We’ve essentially broken down the basic components of corn and made it into a completely different product. Yeah science!
However, in doing so, we’ve opened ourselves up to a Matrix style red pill versus blue pill dilemma of where this type of technology might one day take, or should I say, has already taken us. And if I can quote the ever affable Ian Malcolm from Jurassic Park, “just because we can do something, doesn’t mean we should.”
I’d like you to hold that thought.
With this in mind, a few publications popped up on my radar this week which square themselves with this ethos and the proposed dilemma we’re bound to one day face as their technology races to catch up to our palettes. In case you’re still wondering, I’m referring to plant and cell based meat alternatives and the growing appreciation, and apprehension, which surrounds both markets.
From The New York Times:
Investors Bet on Foie Gras Grown From Cells in a Lab
Gourmey, a start-up based in Paris, received an additional $10 million in seed funding this week. The company hopes to find a market in the United States amid growing concerns about animal cruelty.
“There is a clear and huge market use for an alternative, essentially, that goes way beyond the vegans and the vegetarians,” said Mr. Morin-Forest, who grew up eating foie gras each year at Christmas dinner and on New Year’s Eve, as is tradition in France. “Plenty of people are not vegan or vegetarian, but are still not comfortable eating foie gras because of the way it’s produced.”
Unlike plant-based meat substitutes, like the burgers from Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat, cell-cultivated meat is grown from animal cells in a lab. Gourmey engineers faux meat by taking cells out of a freshly laid duck egg and placing them into a cultivator. The cells are then fed with proteins, amino acids and sugar, similar to the nutrients a duck would get from a diet of oats, corn and grass. The cells are then harvested and transformed into foie gras in a process that uses significantly less land and water than traditional methods.
From Vox:
It’s hard to make chickenless chicken delicious. Has Beyond Meat cracked the code?
The new Beyond Chicken tenders taste almost identical to the real thing.
Now, Beyond Meat is ready to try again with a new product: Beyond Chicken tenders. Hundreds of restaurants across the US — mostly small regional chains — launched the product on their menus starting July 8 (you can go to this locator to see if it’s available near you). And this time, the company may have finally cracked the code.
Their team of 200 scientists examined different plant candidates — soy beans, peas, mung beans, fava beans, and so on — to figure out which would be the best plant to supply the protein in their tenders. They found that when they isolated protein from fava beans, they could use heating, cooling, and pressure to reshape it into a structure that mimics chicken muscle.
Plus, when you opt for chickenless chicken, you know that you’re reducing the demand for chickens raised in horrible conditions on factory farms. Those giant, industrialized farms also damage the environment and ratchet up the risk of emerging pandemics and antibiotic resistance — so you can feel good knowing you’re not supporting that system.
“We call it hedonistic altruism,” Ethan Brown, the founder and CEO of Beyond Meat, told me. “If we can provide a delicious sensory experience for the consumer and they can also feel really great about what they’re doing for the Earth — it’s a win.”
From Inverse:
SCIENCE DEBUNKS THE BIGGEST MYTH ABOUT PLANT-BASED MEAT
Although many of these products claim to be made primarily from plants, they aren’t all that different from other ultra-processed food products. They often contain many similar ingredients — including protein isolates, emulsifiers, binders, and other additives — and are made using industrial processing methods, so can be considered an ultra-processed food product.
Plenty of evidence links ultra-processed foods to obesity, type-2 diabetes, cancer, and other chronic diseases. This is probably due to a combination of their poor nutritional content, synthetic additives, and lack of fiber, which is important for giving a feeling of fullness.
The Skinny:
It’s simple. Plant and cell based meat alternatives are on the rise and we’re slowly building out what we’re capable of producing. First it was beef burgers. Now it’s chicken tenders and foie gras. In ten years? You name it. The science of replicating our meat to taste almost as good as the real thing is here and just like that damn iPhone you can never put down, it’s only going to get better.
But hey, you already know all of this. So what’s the problem?
Well we’re on the verge of being able to replicate every type of meat and seafood we can dream of. The power this type of technology can bring is staggering, not only economically but also environmentally as it will help usher in a new form of agriculture, one no longer centred on animal welfare and suffering. I’m all for the elimination of how we produce and treat our animals for food consumption as we do it horribly, however, as we gain a foothold with science in this field, have we invariably lost sight of what truly matters here? Our health.
A beyond burger is not healthy for me to eat. It’s high in sodium and has plenty of chemical binding agents my body has trouble processing. Cell based options may eliminate some of these problems, but that answer remains to be seen. In the meantime, we’ve become a society hell bent on replicating select foods for a good reason, all the while ignoring the main objective of why it is we eat in the first place. To nourish our bodies with optimal proteins, vitamins and minerals. That’s it.
I can buy a beyond burger versus a beef burger for the sole reason of not wanting to support the beef industry and it’s treatment of cows. This is a fine goal. However, a beyond burger doesn’t give my body the best source of nutrients I should select for. In an effort to fix our food industrial complex, should we not be teaching everyone to eat healthier and not differently?
Substituting one for another doesn’t help us in the long run. In essence, have we lost sight of what’s best for our health in the process of learning what we can achieve?
Just because we can do something, doesn’t mean we should.
I’ve said this numerous times before and I’ll say it again, education is the key to our growth as a society. The more we teach and understand what is best for us with regards to our diets, the happier and healthier we’ll become. There’s ethical and environmental arguments at play here regarding plant based meat alternatives, but building a new way to eat meat, one less or not at all centred on eating dead animals just for this reason alone doesn’t negate what we’re eating instead. Plant based meat is still bad for you. There’s no way to sugar coat that. So unless our governments want to educate and support healthier lifestyles for all, all we’re doing here is solving one issue while creating another. Either way, in the end, we still lose. We’re still unhealthy.
Try and keep that in mind the next time you shop for food.
Finally, there’s this interesting saying you learn when in wine school, “95% of people drink wine while the other 5% are the one’s who actually taste it.” I have a feeling this can be applied to most of our eating habits. It’s why heart disease is our number one killer here in the West. We often eat without thinking. Maybe we ought to solve this issue before we start fixing one problem while creating another?
Anyways, food for thought. - Jamie
What Does Loki Want To Say About Loki?
SPOILER WARNER FOR THE LOKI SEASON FINALE
We’re now three seasons deep into Marvel TV shows on Disney+ and with Loki we finally have one that more or less stuck the landing on its climatic finale. Whereas WandaVison eschewed its atypically unique and kaleidoscopic meta taxonomy for a flying punch out and The Falcon And The Winter Solider was unable to muster much more that clichéd pantomime when confronting race relations in America in their respective finales, Loki really went for it. An audaciously direct episode that had the editorial confidence to center its big reveal around an expository and manic dialogue driven scene instead of something excessively flashy (although the iridescent setting at the end of all time and space was fittingly stunning, even for Marvel) was no less thrilling because of its subtle minimalism. Seizing the uniquely uncommon opportunity to introduce Kang the Conqueror via his far less tyrannical and far more mercurial variant yields a rare and memorable kind of first impression- one that bellies the narrative opportunities the multiversal Phase 4 of the Marvel continuum potentially holds.
Already much has been made of those new narrative pathways, even to the point of chagrin in the show’s- all Marvel properties really- over reliance on setting up the next thing instead of focusing on the story at hand. The season finale sets the stage not only for Loki’s next season, but also several of the next mainline and big ticket films. Meme generators across all provinces of the internet have already collectively agreed that Phase 4 is going to be an absolute time for Dr Strange, and he has Loki to thank for it. While the pseudo reveal of Kang, or whatever pretentious sobriquet he chose to go by, and the deterioration of any and all temporal safe guards that protect reality makes for some wildly speculative theorizing, it’s Loki’s internalization of these developments and their consequences that strike me as more worthy of consideration and interpretation. After all the show’s greatest strength across its run has been extrapolating the emotional arc of one confused character onto the larger ontological realities of the Marvel Cinematic Universe- errr, multiverse. By exploring the nature of Loki’s existence and saying something about him, so too did the show do the same about our world and beyond.
So then what exactly does the finale say to us about Loki? While his actions in the finale are somewhat passive compared to the loquacious Kang Variant or Sylvie’s pugnacious insolence, his development is by no means inert. However neither is it exactly the linear pathway towards redemption and heroism the show has explicitly mapped out for him. Indeed it would be naïve to expect his developmental arc to proceed exactly as envisioned when his pathos is consistently refracted and reflected through various versions of himself. What’s striking though is the cyclical nature of his ideological evolutions even as his empathetic potential has been nurtured and grown. Consider the beginning of the season, and even the end of the first Avengers, when Loki was not just hell bent on conquering the earth but spouting rarefied and oratorical nonsense about the myth of free will and the blissful efficacy that comes with autocracy.
It’s no surprise in retrospect that Loki was so quickly broken, psychologically speaking, and admitted he never really truly believed in his glorious purpose but rather desperately needed to feel that he had any purpose. As the god of mischief and chaos Loki should be naturally anathematized to the idea of complete control, even if he is the one exerting it. That he sought such a power nevertheless is indicative more of traumatic parental issues with his adoptive father than a true expression of his id. That’s why it’s so effective when the aperture is widened on his place in the universe and he becomes cognizant of the futility of his very essence. In a reality where all of reality is managed by the dogmatic and oppressively bureaucratic Time Variance Authority, of what value- what purpose, glorious or otherwise- is a being that is supposed to be chaos incarnate? As we peel back the delphic layers of obfuscation within the TVA however, we discover the fallacy and mendacity behind the house of cards. TVA employees are variants, the time lords are a mere illusory construct, and these institutions are not as immutable and indestructible as their brutalist architecture would imply.
Around the time Loki and Sylvie are fighting TVA guards amidst the severed head of a Time Keeper puppet rolling around the floor in EP4 it becomes gloriously apparent that Loki, and those like him are far from redundancies in a universe that has no need for their picayune hijinks. It’s the exact opposite really, as the universe is literally begging for people specifically like Loki to exert their chaotic influence and break reality free from the constrictive sacraments of the TVA that dictate how things are supposedly supposed to go. As the show makes this fairly uncontroversial statement as it pertains to autonomy and free will, it ties the notion into the intrinsic value in a singular character, which is an impressive narrative feat. What’s striking, and perhaps a little ethically thorny, is that by the end Loki has circled back into being in favour of omniscient control, whether it’s he or He Who Remains being the one who wields it. Whereas Sylvie fills in for the aspect of his psyche that relishes in wanton chaos, now projected from his psyche onto her making it strictly textual, Loki is right back to wondering if blissful ignorance in regards to an oppressive ruler is the way to go. His rational is coloured by empathy and altruism this time, but it once again steers him away embracing his true self.
Unless one instead wishes to argue that what really defines Loki is his fear of being alone, and how he has metabolized years of emotional isolation into a routine designed to alienate those closest to him. Following this angle, one could surmise that his recalcitrance to kill the Kang Variant stems not from this philosophical debate about free will that has been incubating within him and the narrative framework of the show. Rather it relates to the notion that with Sylvie he has finally found someone that can give him a semblance of stability and companionship, which would carry an acute sense of meaning for him from this perspective. To kill the variant would upend his chance not only at pursing that stability but to confront the defining characteristic in his life- his loneliness- and rewrite his story. This is of course delightfully paradoxical within the show’s admittedly capricious parameters. Every time he tries to pursue a life of genuine companionship, The TVA prunes the vestigial Loki variant and nullifies the offending nexus event. For Loki to truly redefine himself in this regard it would actually require the Kang Variant being killed, or at least the functional destruction of the TVA.
If this all seems a touch convoluted for a character arc, that’s exactly why I enjoy it so much. In a show that borrows heavily from Dr Who and Terry Gilliam, whose timey wimey escapades have expanded into multiversal chaos, I like the indirect and multiplex rendering of what makes Loki Loki. Just as existence itself in the Marvel continuity is about to get a lot more complicated, so too has the depiction of character meant to be synonymous and synchronous with that chaos. Just as importantly he is also tied to the messy and challenging ideal of writing your own story. I can’t wait to see that story in the next season. -Tristan
Things From The Internet We Liked
Vice Drops A Fantastic New Video On The Emerging Ghost Kitchen Industry
This latest video from Vice is rather illuminating in that it shows just how far ghost kitchens have come since their inception five years ago. With some brick and mortar restaurants now operating up to 15 separate ghost kitchens on various third-party delivery apps, finding new ways to generate revenue has definitely hit an all time high.
Some view this as a diversion for the hospitality industry, but with so many of us being wrapped up with work from home as well as living in large cities, the convenience of delivery and what it can bring you is understandably tempting. This is no longer a fad and those restaurateurs who have select killer menu items should look to take advantage of this new market or possibly one day realize they may have missed the boat. Interesting times indeed for operators that’s for sure. Few jumped into this industry to do take away. But again, business is business no matter how you slice it. There’s most certainly an opportunity here.
Here’s The Coolest Editing You’ll See All Week
It remains to be determined what black magic or witchcraft twitter user Kevin Parry tapped into to make this video, but this is some impressively transformative stuff. We man that literally- dude turned into a pumpkin what the fuck!
A collection of me turning into random objects. pic.twitter.com/ValPdPNJIj
— Kevin Parry (@kevinbparry) July 13, 2021
The Trailer For Sebastian Maniscalco’s New Foodie Show Well Done Is Now Out And It Looks Great
Show drops on August 12th on Discovery. Look for it. Also, if you’ve never seen his comedy, do yourself a favour and look him up. You won’t be disappointed.