If I had come out here by myself, I honestly don’t think there’s any way I could have pulled it off. At least John grew up around cattle and driving big machinery; he had some baseline level of knowledge. I think about this a lot, like if you just loved gardening and had some romantic visions of farming and decided to try it out full-time, how could you ever pull it off? 

The learning curve is extreme, with every aspect of this work. There are a million practical considerations at all times. What kind of forage should the cattle be eating to finish them on grass? How do you deal with flies if you’re not spraying? Feels like there’s some kind of technical thing that you need to know all the time, not to mention marketing, building a website, and finding people to buy your products.

“Ultimately this is a business”

I talk a lot in the book about the agrarian myth, this dream that you’re going to get your hands in the dirt, you’re going to live a simple life, that farmers are virtuous and are stewards of the planet, all while needing to nourish the community with healthy, fresh food. A lot of people end up saying things like, ‘I don’t want to sell these products for a high cost, because then only the affluent people in my community can eat this food. And there’s this sense of obligation to save the planet above making your farm a financially viable place to be. That is a lot of weight to put on farmers, especially those just starting out!

I think a lot about what “sustainable farming” really means. Even if you are trying to farm in environmentally responsible ways, if what you’re doing doesn’t cover the cost of production, and you’re not going to be able to make this work for longer than two or three years, then what is it actually accomplishing in the long run? 

And even if you can swing not making any money for a certain period of time, how viable is it for future generations if you have improved the fertility of the land, but haven’t built an enduring business? If I had a restaurant or if I made widgets, I’d want the brand to have value that I could actually sell or transfer after I’m done. But with farming, all too often people are just thinking about the health of the land or growing as much as they can, and not so much about their business.

I get that. It’s so challenging, especially at the beginning farmer level, just to get up and running and to accomplish the chores of the day. We’re also talking about a demographic of people who prefer to be outside, to work with their bodies. Very often, the marketing and building the business side of things feels like, ‘Oh, that’s the stuff that I’ll do later.’ But there’s a price that’s paid when that side of things is neglected.

Safety nets

In 2019 the median income for farmers was literally $300. Yes, it’s really great to work your butt off for an entire year for less than $300. A million farms made less than $300, and I’d say that was the impetus for my book. Like wait a minute, how are people doing this? And how have they done this for generations, what’s the history?

I learned a lot from the stories I wrote for The Counter on farm transition a few years ago. I saw that it was extremely difficult for many farm families. I went to Michigan, for example, and interviewed people who had transitioned the farm quite abruptly after a family member died. I was just sitting there with this young couple, and the guy had tears in his eyes; they were dairy farmers, with hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. Frankly, I would be very surprised if they still have that farm. 

So many of my memories of Korean food involve meat. My uncle manning the grill, my dad pounding the short ribs, my mom marinating it, my grandma painstakingly taking all the bones out of the fish or the crab meat out of the crab for me and my brother. I have so many memories because, you know, meat to my family represented survival. Eating meat felt like, ‘Oh my god we made it.’ 

I started the Korean Vegan, ironically at Anthony’s suggestion. After I started veganizing Korean food and pastas and chocolate cake, he was so impressed. He was like, ‘You should start a YouTube channel.’ Literally that night, I came up with an Instagram and YouTube account and just started posting shit like, I made this kimchi pizza or I made this plant thing that reminds me of bulgogi.

Before that, my social media experience had mostly been a Tumblr account where I wrote poetry. This was new–when you post something and it gets 15 likes, that rush is very addictive. It’s one of the cool and also dangerous things about social media. Through Snapchat I soon met a couple of big food bloggers, and they helped me propel the Korean Vegan to a moderate following. In April of that same year, I decided to launch Koreanvegan.com. It was the first time in my life where I started to even have a tiny little inkling that I could do something other than be a lawyer.

I don’t think Korean people wanted anything to do with my account at first. It was the same negative reaction that I had when my boyfriend was like ‘Hey, do you want to go vegan?’ But I think there were a lot of white people who wanted to try Korean food and this one happened to be vegan.

November 2016 was one of the most traumatizing experiences of my life. If you remember the beginning after Trump was elected, a lot of polarization was around the wall, keeping out all those immigrants. I wanted to humanize the immigration story so that maybe people who were at least on the fence about some of this stuff could remember there are humans behind this policy. In 2017 I wrote my first caption that wasn’t just, ‘Here’s the recipe for my raw blueberry tart.’ It was a story about my mom or dad about me growing up being Korean; it wasn’t dealing with food issues or anything. I think that’s when I think people started seeing the Korean Vegan as more than just a recipe Instagram.

My book deal came in 2018. I had maybe 37,000 followers at that time. Then, in July of 2020, I started using TikTok because I wanted to be more politically engaged. I was going to post like, smarmy, rage-infested posts about Donald Trump. Then I started seeing some food content, and I thought, I could do that! It was honestly really ugly at first. I literally propped my phone up against the wall while I was chopping potatoes. My husband’s giving a piano lesson in the background; you can hear his voice and the piano. I don’t have any voice in there; I’m just throwing some potatoes in the pan. All of a sudden I’m getting a million views on a disgusting potato video that had horrible lighting and no composition. I was like, ‘Oh my god you’ve got to do this every single day.’

TikTok is definitely my main gig now, there’s no question. But there are certain things that I do not compromise. I don’t compromise my job with the law and I don’t compromise my running. Those things are absolutely non-negotiable. They take up the first parts of my day; whatever time I have left over I devote to social media. Luckily my husband understands my hierarchy of priorities. 

I don’t think most of my co-workers know about my second life as Korean Vegan. They’re all very busy professionals doing their own thing. My close friends at work, they all know and are super-proud, but the overwhelming majority of people don’t really know much about it. I got an email the other day from a partner who’d seen my CNBC interview and she said, ‘Dude you should just quit this law thing and just go straight to Hollywood. I was like, ‘I don’t think that’s how it works.’

It’s crazy though, how fast my life has changed. Patricia Arquette tweeted me; she is one of my favorite actresses. Chrissy Teigan, too. Even just the fact that there are 2.3 million people on TikTok who follow me is insane. I started that account less than a year ago. I was walking my dog the other day, and somebody was like, ‘Excuse me, excuse me: Are you the Korean Vegan?’

I am very loyal to my law firm, because they’ve done such an amazing job of nurturing me and investing in me. But I also love what I do with the Korean Vegan. There will come a time where I feel like I can’t do both. I don’t know when, but it probably will happen. So it’s certainly something to think about. I will say in the past seven months, this has turned into something that I never dreamed or imagined. My life now is unbelievable.

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To be honest with you, liquor is this drug for some people. What I always thought about a liquor store, especially during pandemic, it is just like a pharmacy without prescriptions. When I open my store in morning, sometimes people are waiting for me. They are shaking with their hands and they need something, at least one shot.

Sometimes I tell people “Please don’t buy alcohol, drink water, you will get so sick.” But then other customers I am telling “Oh for steak you want this good wine, have a glass of wine with your family.” It is strange, this business.

Another thing is, how can I say this? I had some customers at the beginning, they seemed like a relaxed person, nice people. Maybe I saw them in a suit for work. Now these people, some of them just seem down. Maybe they don’t have their job now, I see their clothes, they don’t take care of themselves. They are not smiling, not so relaxed. It makes me sad to see this.

I have only one worker, he is part-time. He is from Ethiopia, a runner, he came to U.S. to run. His English, it is not so good, but he learns. Sometimes it is hard, if I go out to buy soup or use bathroom, he is the only one here and maybe does not understand customers. He is good with cash, transactions are good. But a customer says “What cognac is good?” and he does not understand. It takes time, I know this. I took 9 years and am still learning English.

When I am working alone, I think customers do not know this, which is good. They think someone is in the back or in the basement. I have an alarm, I have a taser. A lot of people say I should apply for a gun. In New York you can have a gun if you own a business, so I think about this. Sometimes I feel ready to do that, you know? It’s good to have. Don’t use it, but it’s here. Just like, protection. If somebody comes to kill you, you’re going to do that. If you take it out, they could just run. 

I had one customer, he’s homeless, he told me: “I need it, I really need it, you have to give me something, give me something.” I’ve got a stick. And, like this, I just take it out, the stick, I hit the counter. (boom) I just have to make him scared. Boom. Then he went outside. At least so far so good. 

I’m lucky to have the other businesses near me. The Puerto Rican restaurant closes at 4 o’clock so at night it’s me and the pizza shop. The guy who owns the pizza place, John, we watch for each other. If I tell him there’s a scary guy or something, he’ll come in and say “Everybody out we have to clean the store!” Maybe he calls police. We can help be safe.

I think last year, I saw so many angry people. My store is small; people stand close to each other. So much yelling sometimes! I won’t say it’s hate, but we have lost some love. That is the worst thing.

I put up a sign for masks on the first day, but some customers, they didn’t want to do this. I used to say, well, you have to put your mask on. And the people get mad at me. They don’t understand. Maybe they don’t believe that there is a virus outside. This is less of a problem now; most people are aware. But I still have to ask sometimes, and it’s uncomfortable if they don’t want to do this. 

“You walk in with a rough idea of what you want or need, maybe some pasta or beans to fill a gap at home, but as soon as you get in there it’s a free-for-all,” says Ashley Chaifetz, a USDA research analyst who researched surplus grocery stores while completing her Ph.D. in public policy. 

The exterior reads like a standard NYC dollar store: torn yellow awning bearing words like “Deals,” “Steals,” “Better Priced,” and “Happy”. The windows are thick with grime, mostly papered over with old Goya boxes. I never would have discovered it at all, were it not for the stream of heavy foot traffic, and the unmarked refrigerated trucks perpetually unloading in front. I peeked in one fateful day and my eyes went wide like a cartoon wolf.

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Before the pandemic, I considered this store a novel treat, a whimsical outlet to supplement Manhattan’s mediocre grocery chains. My partner Abby and I would pop in randomly, grab some zany snacks and desserts, maybe a few frozen enchiladas for lazy weeknight dinners. Before we started working from home, I’d bring in oversized nacho Goldfish and off-brand Fig Newtons to The Counter office for my colleagues to hork down on deadline. 

Now? It has become the primary food source for my household, as we are lucky enough to live on the same block. In that odd pandemic calculus we all make, we’ve concluded that the less we stray from our apartment’s immediate vicinity, the less ambient Covid germs will drift into our orbit (this is not science). But if I’m totally honest, it’s not just the proximity. Truth is, subjecting ourselves to this grocer’s random lottery—never knowing what treasures our fridge and freezer and pantry will be filled with—is quite possibly my top source of joy and wonder during an objectively terrible year (honorable mention to Abby and our dog).

It’s a communal store, precariously so. The aisles are narrow and jammed up with food, not necessarily in a way that makes sense. (Yesterday I informed a man who couldn’t find black pepper that they keep it behind the counter alongside the dental floss and the Godiva chocolate.) This physical closeness forces camaraderie, and also friction! I’ve bonded with at least 30 strangers this year: when we find something weird like gingerbread hummus or fermented pomegranate juice, or when a song comes on that we all like, or when we just want to marvel in our good fortune. Masks are mandatory, but spottily enforced (if you need one, they sell zebra print and hot rod masks from China). I’ve also seen several unexplainable shouting matches that nearly resulted in fistfights. 

Do you remember the Frito Bandito? Perhaps not. In the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, he was the mascot for Fritos brand corn chips. Watch this old commercial to figure out the schtick, quick: Speaking in broken English, this Mexican thief may show up at your house to shoot you for your precious snack. Always be ready to appease the bandito by keeping extra bags on hand.

After outrage and public pressure from civil rights organizations, the Frito corporation made small concessions, removing his beard and gold tooth. After Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1968, the bandito no longer brandished pistols. And finally, after some T.V. stations refused to air the ads in 1969, the company eventually phased out the bandito altogether.

In her most recent iteration, Aunt Jemima, a smiling caricature of a Black woman, has been around since 1989. Much like the Bandito losing his gold tooth, the late-’80s rebranding was a slow evolution from Jemima’s original form, a crude depiction of the “Mammy” stereotype. The logo’s original inspiration was a minstrel show around the turn of the 19th century, with a popular song called “Old Aunt Jemima” being sung by a white man dressed as a black woman. After attending the show, two grain-company magnates decided Aunt Jemima would make an ideal brand ambassador.

“I was looking at Twitter yesterday, and it was interesting to see people sincerely asking, ‘What’s wrong with Aunt Jemima, she just looks like some Black lady from the ‘80s!’” says Brian Behnken, a historian at Iowa State University who focuses on race and civil rights. “When you go back to the very beginning, it’s so clear that she was a product of white supremacy. Even her honorific ‘Aunt’ came from the tradition of not calling Black people ‘Mrs’ or ‘Mister’.” (Also see: Uncle Ben.)

Aunt Jemima’s old ads often included slogans in broken English. Her product was a sponsor for mid-century variety shows on radio and television; for awhile there was a Disneyland restaurant called Aunt Jemima’s Pancake House, replete with a costumed hostess. Behnken says her products were depicted being used by white families to give the sense that convenient kitchen items were a replacement for having Black help—essentially “a nanny in a box.”

The removal of a couple of iffy, outdated logos might seem like a long-overdue response at worst and at best, well, small pancakes. But Behnken, who co-authored the book “Racism in American Popular Media: From Aunt Jemima to the Frito Bandito”, says it reflects a fairly profound culture shift.

“I don’t like to say ‘History repeats itself’ but I do think history rhymes,” he says. “It’s not difficult to see parallels between this moment and the civil rights movement—multiple civil rights movements, really—of the late ‘60s and ‘70s.” The Frito Bandito’s disappearance, for example, came after significant pressure from Mexican-American activists. Behnken says that corporations which have long been resistant to change are finally making concessions, in the wake of weeks of protests and upheaval surrounding police brutality and racial inequality in the United States.

Gregory Smithers, history professor at Virginia Commonwealth University and co-author of “Racism in American Popular Media”, thinks these decisions are driven by profit. Essentially, these companies have made a calculated decision that their bottom line will suffer unless they step forward and do something. “The calls for change are so broad-based that corporate executives can see significant losses in profits if they don’t respond,” Smithers wrote in an e-mail. He notes that corporate reform in the 1960s were often the result of effective boycotts.

It’s one thing to change a logo, though, and another to tackle entrenched racism. Behnken notes that Quaker Oats’ senior management and board of directors is still predominantly white—”It’s odd for a white-owned company to use a black person as a mascot, no?”—and that it’s difficult to predict whether Quaker or Mars will embrace meaningful, long-term reform.

“This is the advertising version of statues tumbling down,” says Behnken.

Smithers believes that these corporate decisions auger more change to come: “This is one of those moments in American history when broad based coalitions are formed and the cross-section of issues—wealth inequality, institutional racism, gender discrimination—become so great that if they’re not effectively addressed the republic is imperiled.”

Pepsico has not indicated what new branded products, if any, will replace Aunt Jemima on supermarket shelves. Representatives from Pepsico and Mars did not respond to a request for comment.

The post Aunt Jemima is out, and Uncle Ben is rebranding appeared first on The Counter.

Reiley was referring to the decision made by New Orleans restaurant critic Brett Anderson to stop reviewing restaurants in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Anderson made a now-famous pivot from criticism to straight reportage, as he homed in on efforts to rebuild the city’s critically wounded food and drink scene. “If I started back pontificating about whether the panéed rabbit was up to snuff,” Anderson told the New York Times, “I would have been missing the bigger story, which was about recovery.”

Hillary Dixler Canavan, Eater’s national restaurant editor, thinks it’s appropriate to step in with solutions; she says that her outlet isn’t shy about calls to action. Her boss, Amanda Kludt, wrote this column entreating readers to patronize New York City’s Chinatown restaurants, hit hard by coronavirus fears. Canavan, who spent years working in restaurants before becoming a journalist, sees no reason to soft pedal or self-censor in times of crisis. 

“We’ve got Chinese restaurants literally closing because racist, inaccurate fears are keeping people away,” she says. “So yeah, you can write a news story talking about how these restaurants are suffering, and show that the reasons people aren’t eating there are dumb. But I have no trouble at all with explicitly telling readers: ‘Don’t be racist! Eat Chinese food!’”

The range of reactions is due, in part, to the range of media, from legacy media to influencer blogs; there are simply more ways to write about food than there used to be. Addie Broyles, food columnist for the Austin American Statesman, sees herself as serving all of Austin’s readers, many of whom work in the food industry. This means she’s comfortable trying to drum up business on social media. As she tweeted Friday, “No one person could spend enough money to mitigate this, but there’s a lot of disposable income in Austin and visitors who will come here anyway. Tip generously. Buy a cupcake. Take your friend out for a beer or a kombucha.”

To Broyles, the tweet qualifies as a bit of service journalism, like encouraging readers to shop at a particularly tasty farmers’ market booth, or warning them to avoid leafy greens during E. coli outbreaks. “My mandate is to advise my readers, and be responsible about it,” she says. “There is a place for me to be human, and to advise my readers in a way that benefits my overall community.”

For his part, Wells has not mentioned coronavirus in a review, and doesn’t know if he’s going to. “Coronavirus has hurt restaurants, sure. But so have a lot of things—times are tough! I’m not sure it’s my job to stump for the industry at large.” 

Wells’ West Coast counterpart, Los Angeles Times critic Bill Addison, agrees with the basic sentiment—but when he noticed that an exceptional Sichuan restaurant was nearly deserted, over the course of several visits, he decided to highlight three noteworthy Chinese restaurants in the San Gabriel Valley. He pointed out that they were emptier than they should be, something he chalked up to misplaced coronavirus fears. “Over the last month, I’ve seen a clear drop in traffic in restaurants and shopping centers in the SGV,” he wrote. “Fear is the cause … Now would be an excellent time to visit your favorite restaurants in the SGV.” 

Addison did not set out to find and help restaurants in trouble; he says the food came first. “My initial goal was to highlight some of the great things happening with Sichuan cuisine in the SGV,” he says. “That review was mostly intended to tell my readers, ‘Hey these places deserve your attention!’ But certainly, if the food wasn’t excellent, I wouldn’t have written the review.”

No one’s clear on what professional decision they’ll have to make in the weeks ahead. Broyles has held off on suggesting her readers start hoarding groceries, but she’s not ruling it out. And Wells floats his own potential scenario: “It may be that we shouldn’t have been telling you to eat out at restaurants at all! For all I know, I might end up telling readers to start cooking at home again.”

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post misspelled the name of Hillary Dixler Canavan.

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Romaine surpassed iceberg years ago as America’s most popular lettuce; Marler believes its ubiquity is largely why it keeps popping up in E. coli outbreaks. “There’s more of it to contaminate,” he says. This, combined with its large surface area to absorb bacteria, nooks and crannies that defy washing, and the fact that—unlike E. coli-tainted meat—lettuce is rarely cooked, makes romaine a particularly challenging conduit for foodborne pathogens.

Investigators say it is too soon to know what the specific root of this outbreak is, and have yet to pinpoint a common supplier or region in Salinas (one voluntary bagged salad recall was issued, though Whitlock says that particular product was not consumed by many of the victims). If the recent past is any indicator, water contaminated by livestock could be the likely culprit here.

After last fall’s E. coli outbreak, the industry groups United Fresh Produce Association and the Produce Marketing Association created a task force to identify root causes of the ongoing contamination. Improved water quality management and testing was the very first recommendation from their final report, as well as a suggestion that the proximity between lettuce farms and concentrated animal feeding operations—commonly called CAFOs—is strongly indicated as a risk factor. 

The task force also pushed for improved origin labeling on lettuce packaging, so consumers and retailers can more readily identify if a particular item falls under an official product warning. Of course, this method only works if the consumer goes shopping armed with the knowledge that this outbreak started in Salinas, unlike the last one. 

Wrong. It’s a big, controversial deal. While it’s within the board’s purview to gradually delist certain agricultural ingredients from the roster of acceptable additives in USDA-certified organic foods—see the big kerfuffle over carrageenan—advocacy groups are urgently pushing for celery powder’s removal. And both Consumer Reports (where I was previously employed as a food editor) and Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) are petitioning USDA to revise its labeling laws around the ingredient, which they say are “actively misleading” to consumers.

Celery powder stands distinct from other plant-based seasonings, largely for its use in curing meats (deli turkey and sausage, for instance). But unlike synthetic nitrates and nitrites, which accomplish similar processing objectives—more on this below—celery powder is allowable as an organic ingredient. At issue is the fact that a significant amount of processing goes into producing celery powder for use in cured meats, and that the celery itself does not have to be organic. 

Additionally, unlimited quantities of this powder are also allowed in meats which are labeled “uncured” or “nitrate-free.” Consumer Reports and CSPI would like broad changes to processed meat labels, so brands like Niman Ranch and Applegate cannot call their celery-enhanced products uncured.

Even the most dedicated celery enthusiast⁠—a juice cleanser, for instance, or an ants-on-a-log nostalgist⁠—probably doesn’t spend much time thinking about celery powder. But the humble ingredient, made by dehydrating, concentrating, and grinding down the green-stalked veggie, also has a powerful ability to season, color, preserve, and disinfect cured meats. 

It does this job so well, in fact, that Applegate and Niman Ranch, which bill themselves as more conscientious meat purveyors than the ubiquitous Big Four, use celery powder as a greener-seeming, healthier-sounding alternative to the man-made additive sodium nitrite, which is used in conventionally cured hot dogs, ham, and bacon. 

And therein lies the rub. 

“There is little evidence that preserving meats using celery … is any healthier than other added nitrites,” says Dariush Mozaffarian, dean of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science & Policy at Tufts University. “Until industry provides strong evidence that nitrites in celery juice have different biologic effects than nitrites from other sources, it’s very misleading to label these [products] as ‘nitrite free’ or to consider such processed meats as being healthier.”

Though technically distinct, the terms nitrates and nitrites are often lumped together on food labels, and in discussions of their effects. Examples of these chemical compounds include potassium nitrate and sodium nitrite, which have been industrially produced for many decades to suppress harmful bacteria in processed meats, most notably the toxin that causes botulism. They also perform some extracurricular functions along the way, like providing a pinkish hue (baloney would be a flat gray without them), extending shelf life, and adding a singular but hard-to-define flavor profile.

“There’s a flavor we come to expect in cured meats that is unique and hard to quite put your finger on,” says Joseph Sebranek, Morrison Endowed Chair of meat science at Iowa State University. “Imagine the difference between ham and roast pork: Certainly there are stronger notes of salt and smoke in the ham, but it’s more than that. There is a unique flavor that only comes from curing.”

Forty or 50 years ago, manufacturers who wanted to process meats without man-made preservatives were largely out of luck. And those who’ve tried to sell truly uncured meats have ended up producing gray products with odd textures and flavors.

“I’m not trying to dumb it down too much here,” says Jeffrey Sindelar, professor of meat science at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, “but a truly uncured hot dog is just loose ground meat in a casing.”

USDA labeling requirements for meats containing nitrates have long offered producers and processors a binary choice: Traditional cured meats, with added nitrates and nitrites noted on the ingredient label, and “uncured” meats, aka everything else. And until about the 1990s, that seemed to work fine. 

Sebranek says that four decades ago⁠—an era he describes as the “salad days” of nitrates⁠—a few manufacturers attempted to sell uncured bacon and other meats, with limited success. At the time, the uncured label helped indicate to shoppers that the antibacterial powers of nitrates were not present in a meat product. 

But over time, consumer demands shifted. Fears of botulism and bacteria morphed into concerns over unhealthy, potentially carcinogenic preservatives. Finally, in the 1990s, food scientists discovered that naturally occurring nitrites in vegetables were a perfect stand-in for a lab-produced analog. Trouble was, most veggies changed the flavor and color of meat.

“I did a little experiment a while back, using nitrites from beets and radishes to cure meats at home,” says Sindelar. “The problem is, I got hot dogs that tasted like radishes and were bright red like beets!”

Celery powder came into favor because of its particularly high concentrate of nitrites, as well as a mild flavor that didn’t much impact the meat’s taste. But it was treated by regulators solely as a flavoring agent. Thus, a package of “uncured” bacon from Whole Foods could still include celery powder, typically only drawing attention with a tiny asterisk next to “no nitrites or nitrates added”: *except for those naturally occurring nitrates and nitrites in celery powder

Perhaps you’re wondering why the distinction matters at all. Loosely explained, in certain conditions—high heat, or bonding with a protein—nitrites convert to nitrosamines, compounds that have been linked to cancer. These links first came to light in the 1970s, after lab studies on rats and other animals showed a likely carcinogenic connection. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) considered banning sodium nitrite, but ultimately declined. 

Though the World Health Organization has defined processed meat as a known carcinogen, it’s yet to be proven whether nitrites and nitrates are the only cause. Still, there is a somewhat broad consensus that whether those nitrites are man-made or come from celery or other vegetables, they are virtually indistinguishable to the human body. “There is absolutely no difference in the way we process nitrites,” says Sebranek. “It makes no sense how these products are labeled differently.”

Ironically, traditionally cured meats are subject to clearly defined nitrate and nitrite limits, while “uncured” meats containing celery powder⁠—which every source I spoke with agreed are generally misclassified—aren’t subject to any limits. Tamar Haspel, a columnist for The Washington Post, noted this quirk in an April piece titled, “The Uncured Bacon Illusion.” She wrote: “When the nitrite comes from sodium (or potassium) nitrite, it’s regulated (allowable levels vary by product). There are no limits for nitrite from celery powder.”

In the letter submitted by Consumer Reports and CSPI to USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), the senders demand the agency “require a front-of-package declaration and clear ingredient labeling whenever nitrates or nitrites are used in meats, regardless of the source.” The petition cites widespread consumer confusion over “uncured” labels, as evidenced by a survey conducted by Consumer Reports, and points to the evidence that nitrites may be carcinogenic.

“When consumers see that uncured label, they assume they aren’t getting the same health impacts as with other cured meats. This is basically a form of ‘health-washing,’” says Sarah Sorscher, deputy director of regulatory affairs at CSPI. “A variety of groups like the American Heart Association and the American Cancer Society have weighed in on the dangers of processed meats, none of which are reduced with the use of celery powder.”

OrganicEye, a self-proclaimed organic industry watchdog (and an offshoot of the advocacy group Beyond Pesticides), has sent a petition to NOSB, which states that the “continuance of celery powder on the National List, violates the trust of consumers who seek out organic food as a safe haven from what is conventionally offered in the supermarket and all too often contains dangerous and risky ingredients.”

Thursday’s organic vote will determine if celery powder stays on the list of allowable organic ingredients for five more years. It comes on the heels of a lengthy discussion of the matter at an April NSOB meeting, including the convening of “a celery powder expert panel.” In minutes from that meeting, it was noted: “Non-organic celery is used to produce celery powder, with concomitant use of allowed conventional pesticides and fertilizers. These materials may pose risks to workers, consumers and the environment.” (In another bit of dark irony, an extensive Environmental Working Group study found that, among vegetables, non-organic celery absorbs the highest level of pesticides and other chemicals.)

Additionally, the minutes stated that, “In terms of human health risks from nitrates/nitrites in food, there is no difference between celery or other plant-based nitrate sources versus synthetic nitrates and nitrites used on non-organic meats.” Nonetheless, due to factors that included a lack of organic celery producers, or of adequate alternatives for curing organic meats, a subcommittee voted to keep celery powder on the list. That vote will be considered by the full board in making this week’s decision.

When asked to comment in advance of Thursday’s vote, a USDA spokesperson wrote, “The Department does not take positions on National List topics until after the Board makes a recommendation.” 

UPDATE 10/25/2019 7:35 a.m.: The National Organic Standards Board voted 11 to 1 to keep celery powder on the list of acceptable organic ingredients. It will be up for consideration again in five years.

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