Welcome to FERN’s Friday Feed (#FFF), where we share the stories from this week that made us stop and think.
Coke’s broken sustainability promises
The Verge
Coca-Cola set several sustainability goals in the mid-2000s, including an intention to become “water neutral” by 2020 by replacing all the water it uses in production of its beverages. Since then, “Coke has spent tens of millions of dollars on water efficiency and access projects in partnerships with groups ranging from the UN Development Program to the US Agency for International Development, making it a darling of the organizations that track corporate citizenship,” writes Christine MacDonald. But a year-long investigation reveals that “the company is grossly exaggerating its water record.”
Addressing a legacy of racism at land grant universities
Civil Eats
Members of the Inter-Institutional Network for Food, Agriculture, and Sustainability are pushing land grant universities to address their legacies of racism and exclusion, and to prioritize racial equity and justice in their academic and community work. Addressing those harms “means acknowledging the systemic racism that has powered America’s astounding agricultural productivity, and educated a workforce to make that possible,” writes Nancy Matsumoto. “But that system also left—and still leaves—large swaths of the population out when it comes to reaping the benefits of the bounty.” Conversations around equity at land grants “might sound symbolic, but it has the potential to impact the way hundreds of thousands of students are educated every year.”
Taking a catering firm to the next level
Wired
In the Bronx, an elite group of chefs is fashioning a high-end catering firm that has become a vehicle for cultural exploration and political expression. “Launched half a decade ago, Ghetto Gastro has become a micro-revolution in food and art,” writes Jason Parham. “Conjuring dishes that have a strong sense of narrative, the four-man collective’s pan-culturalist approach to dining works on a much grander scale. Through their food, borders collapse.”
In The Americans, Soviet spies get a bittersweet taste of home
Eater
As the Cold-War thriller hurtles through its sixth and final season, the show’s writers are using classic Russian dishes, such as zharkoye, a stew of meat and potatoes stew, to delineate a range of complex ideas—from the disintegration of the relationship between the main characters, the spies Elizabeth and Philip, to the ways that want and abundance at mealtime have shaped, respectively, Russians and Americans. The appearance of Russian food, taboo in the spies’ home, signals both a nostalgia for the motherland and the coming collapse of the Soviet Union.
How milk overcame the haters
Atlas Obscura
For centuries, in many parts of the world, people who drank milk and ate butter were considered barbarians, derided as “butter eaters” and “butter stinkers.” At a time when most developed cultures were southerly (Rome, Greece), “[c]limate … determined the poor status of butter and milk,” writes Mark Kurlansky. “Because they spoiled quickly in the climate of southern Europe and kept far better in northern Europe, northerners used far more milk.” Cheese was mostly excluded from this indictment, as it fared well in warmer weather. It took the rise the dairy-crazy Dutch to global prominence, as an economic and cultural power, to rehabilitate milk’s image.