US-Appointed Egg Lobby Paid Food Blogs and Targeted Chef To Crush Vegan Startup

An anonymous reader writes: The American Egg Board targeted publications, popular food bloggers, and a celebrity chef as part of an effort to combat a perceived threat from Hampton Creek, an egg-replacement startup backed by some of Silicon Valley's biggest names, according to internal emails. The Gaurdian reports: A detailed review of emails, sent from inside the AEB and obtained by the Guardian, shows that the lobbyist's anti-Hampton Creek campaign sought to:

• Pay food bloggers as much as $2,500 a post to write online recipes and stories about the virtue of eggs that repeated the egg lobby group's "key messages."
• Confront Andrew Zimmern, who had featured Hampton Creek on his popular Travel Channel show Bizarre Foods and praised the company in a blog post characterized by top egg board executives as a "love letter."
• Target publications including Forbes and Buzzfeed that had written broadly positive articles about a Silicon Valley darling.
• Unsuccessfully tried to recruit both the animal rights and autism activist Temple Grandin and the bestselling author and blogger Ree Drummond to publicly support the egg industry.
• Buy Google advertisements to show AEB-sponsored content when people searched for Hampton Creek or its founder Josh Tetrick.

Comments

Re:Are we supposed to believe *everything* they sa

[dave420]

The fact you think "The Left" is some monolithic entity with a single goal speaks volumes for how abjectly childish and oversimplified your view of the world is. Seriously. It's embarrassing to read someone launch such a poorly thought-out tirade against half of the political spectrum as if it is one entity. You really need to read more.

Re:Well, yea...

[AthanasiusKircher]

That sounds more like incompetence than malice, or excessive cautiousness...

Vegans won't eat eggs, and will avoid products which contain them.

A lot of products are advertised as "may contain traces of nuts" when they usually dont, the companies are over cautious incase there is a trace of nuts and someone has a severe reaction.

While that's a nice story, that's NOT what GP was talking about. As detailed in a previous Guardian article, the company calls its product "Just Mayo" and has a picture of an egg on the label. The FDA has (rightly) accused them of false advertising, because they (1) imply their product is mayonnaise with their name, but doesn't contain necessary ingredients for the normal definition of mayo, (2) include ingredients that are not allowed in products claiming to be mayonnaise, (3) show a picture of an egg and plant on the label, leading to an impression that the product contains eggs and is likely a "natural" version of mayo, and (4) also implies on the label that their product is "heart-healthy" while not meeting the FDA standard for such labeling.

We have food definitions for a reason. It prevents you from going to the store and buying a thing labeled "ground beef" and getting a bunch of ground-up cat mixed with oats and tofu. There are definitions for mayonnaise, too.

I have no problem if this company wants to sell a vegan product similar to mayonnaise -- that's great. Maybe it's tasty or healthier -- great. But they should either choose a name that clearly indicates it is NOT traditional mayonnaise and/or have an explanation on the label indicating explicitly how it differs from traditional mayo.

Instead, this company wants to try to mislead customers into thinking they are buying a "more natural" and "pure" version of actual mayonnaise ("Just Mayo") by using a deceptive label.

This is definitely not "incompetence." It's clearly deliberate.

Re:No surprise...

[sackvillian]

I've read hundreds of the best and biggest nutritional studies, and here's my quick and dirty what nutritional "science" has actually proven beyond doubt (mostly from country-country comparisons and massive epidemiological studies):

• --Trans fats are poison, there's no good amount.
• --Processed sugar is bad, there's no good amount.
• --Rapidly digested processed carbs are nearly as bad as sugar.
• --Red meat is either bad or neutral, but processed red meat is definitely bad -- avoid.
• --Complex carbs are ho-hum, don't overdo it.
• --Saturated fats are ho-hum, not bad but better replaced by good unsaturated fats.
• --Most unsaturated fats (especially in nuts/olives/fish) are great, eat as much as possible.
• --Fresh fruits/vegetables are great, eat as much and as many different types as possible.

The ideal diet as we currently know it from available evidence is essentially the Mediterranean diet, which is the only intervention that is consistently and clearly linked to longer and healthier lives. Note that an American-Vegan diet with adequate protein intake is closer to it that the typical fast-food, red-meat, fruit/vegetable-free, processed-sugar heavy disaster that most Americans consume.

My point is that I agree mostly with your summary, but it's not as simple as blaming carbs -- many countries that do better nutritionally eat more carbs than the US (though they're typically complex) -- and there's no reason to villainize vegans and worship bacon from a nutritional stand-point like so many in the geek culture do. Except to be instantly modded up to +5, that is.