yonmei

05:45 pm: Heinz writes back
( and makes things worse.... )


( My draft response )

Tags: ***** this fir a kerry oan, angry queer, food politics, i watch tv, writing complaining letters

10:39 pm: Kissing Is So Gay


(If by some remote chance you've missed this particular thing, you can ketchup here and here.)

Tags: ***** this fir a kerry oan, angry queer, food politics, i watch tv, writing complaining letters

12:56 pm: Heinz homo haters
With reference to the news of last week: total signatures on the reinstate Heinz Mayo ad is now 11595.

"I'm no good at being noble, but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a tin of beans in this crazy world. Someday you'll understand that. Now, now... Here's looking at you, kid."

Heinz is one of those homespun blue-collar brands that is a staple of our national diet. Its ketchup has just been voted by consumers as the brand with the most "equity", for goodness sake, after scoring highest against measures such as familiarity and quality. So how did Heinz get it so wrong with this ad?

Having been bold enough (or naive enough ... you choose) to sign-off a script in which two men's lips meet, Heinz was careful to make the whole gay thing a "joke": it's not as though either of the men in the ad is obviously meant to be gay, they both look so straight you could draw a line with them.

But adland knows full well that any suggestion of homosexuality in ads will hit some pressure points (reason enough, you might think, to challenge prejudices). Controversy will have been fully anticipated, and this ad will have been thought through thoroughly before the play button was pushed.

Which makes it all the more astounding, and disappointing, that Heinz was so easily cowed when the inevitable complaints tumbled in. The company wasted no time in sheepishly withdrawing the commercial. Which naturally sparked another row, this time with gay groups: Stonewall and the radio station Gaydar called for a global boycott of Heinz brands in protest.

Really, Heinz couldn't have stirred up more controversy if they'd tried – and a few cynics out there think maybe they did try, that the whole gay saga that dominated marketing headlines last week was a massive PR stunt. If it was, it backfired big time.

What's certainly true is that Heinz has proved itself to be too easily swayed, spineless even. Of course, for all its careful and sensitive self-regulation, sometimes adland gets it wrong and misjudges the nation's mood; advertising that causes genuine and understandable offence should be swiftly withdrawn.

But really, Heinz had an opportunity here to take an enlightened position, to defend the inoffensiveness of a (pretty dispassionate) kiss between two men. If we believe that advertising not only reflects society and its culture but helps shape it, then there are times when advertisers have to take responsibility for the influence they wield.

Heinz may argue that in responding to the complaints and withdrawing the ad it is doing exactly that. But it doesn't seem to have thought carefully enough about the wider message its actions might have sent out: that tacit endorsement of a gay relationship is something to be embarrassed about, to regret. And that's a very dangerous position for one of the nation's favourite brands to find itself in. Claire Beale

And:

. A global brand introduced a new television commercial in which two men were seen (briefly) to kiss on screen, owing to the transformational power of mayonnaise. See, the Book of Revelation just isn't specific enough on the seven signs of the Apocalypse. If only the four horsemen weren't so easily confused with fictional characters in condiments commercials then we wouldn't be in this mess. As it is, the religious right and heathen left are locked in an utterly futile and bombastic ideological row involving countless online petitions about whether Armageddon is signified by the fact of the ad or the pulling of the ad. Which was not banned and neither will it be, if the regulator ever bothers even to look at it.

It turns out that many of the complaints were organised by religious groups in the US, where the ad has never been broadcast. Offence is now apparently a global currency and officially a unit of measurement. I blame the internet. Given that, the BBC board should be rereading the key end-of-the-world signs just to double-check that there's no paragraph suggesting that if a head of marketing shall replace a longstanding head of radio, the bells shall ring and man shall be wiped out. Janine Gibson

I know, I know; it was just an ad. An ad which American news stories have mentioned "it wasn't to be broadcast to children" without specifying that this was because Heinz Mayo contains way too much fat and sugar, not because two men kissed.

But there was something about the way Heinz pulled it so fast, so apologetically, as if they should have realised that showing two men kiss is offensive to right-minded people.

Tell Heinz. Pass it on.

Tags: ***** this fir a kerry oan, angry queer, food politics, i watch tv, writing complaining letters

04:10 pm: Heinz means bigot
Nigel Dickie: "Heinz is a global company and we respect all universal rights. The advertisement was intended to be humorous, not designed to cause offence to anyone. Clearly it failed in its intent to amuse and that is why we took the decision to withdraw it."

You know what "respect all universal rights" means? It means not sexual orientation and not gender identity. Those aren't "universal" rights.

Last Monday, Heinz started running a new advertising campaign for Heinz Mayo. (A fat-filled, sugary product that it would take an ad this cute and funny to sell, truly.) The ad was supposed to run for five weeks.

The ad opens with a stereotype-family - a boy and a girl going to school, a father going to the office. The young boy and girl go to the kitchen to get their sandwiches, which are being prepared by a man with a New York accent, dressed in a deli serving outfit, who they refer to as "mum". When their father goes to get his sandwich he says to the man in the kitchen: "See you tonight love."

However, the man barks back "Hey, ain't you forgetting something?", at which point the two men share a kiss. The man then sends the father off with the words: "Love you. Straight home from work, sweet cheeks."

It isn't exactly a gay ad: it isn't exactly a straight ad. This isn't a same-sex couple bringing up kids together: it's a half-uneasy joke, "the concept behind the campaign is that the product tastes so good, 'It's as if you have your own New York deli man in your kitchen'."

But on Friday, Heinz pulled the ad. Apparently the advertising watchdog got over 200 "complaints" that the ad was offensive and that two men kissing were "inappropriate". (Bill O'Reilly apparently said on air on Friday "So why are they doing that? Why -- it was. It was obviously a gay thing. Now I don't know what the message is, other than gay people like mayonnaise. ... I'm confused. This whole gender blending thing. It's confusing to me. ... I just want mayonnaise. I don't want guys kissing.")

Nigel Dickie, Director of Corporate Affairs for Heinz UK, said the reason for pulling it was: “It is our policy to listen to consumers. We recognize that some consumers raised concerns over the content of the ad and this prompted our decision to withdraw it. The advertisement, part of a short-run campaign, was intended to be humorous and we apologize to anyone who felt offended.” Heinz.com

1. Sign the Re-instate the Heinz Deli Mayo TV ad.

2. Contact Nigel Dickie: 020 8848 2726, Nigel.Dickie@uk.hjheinz.com (from their press release) Tell Dickie you weren't offended. (You can view it here or here.)

3. Contact Heinz direct: www.heinz.com, click on the Contact Us link. Tell them you won't buy a Heinz product until the ad's being broadcast again.

4. If you normally buy Heinz, don't.

5. Pass it on!

I know, I know: it's just a TV ad. And however cute the ad, it's an appalling product. But Heinz's instant capitulation to homophobic bigots was so naked. Dress it up with a squirt of organic tomato ketchup and make your own baked beans.

Tags: ***** this fir a kerry oan, angry queer, food politics, i watch tv, writing complaining letters

11:30 pm: Eight Treasures rice
I bought a bagful of "Eight Treasures Rice" from the Chinese supermarket midway down Leith Walk on Saturday. (I specify, because there is another, shinier one at the foot of Leith Walk: but I think the one halfway down is better - I see more actual Chinese Edinburgers shopping there, and the goods tend to be (a) cheaper (b) more varied.) I had actually gone in to buy a bottle of mushroom soy sauce, which is delicious on potatoes. (I also bought a bagful of untoasted buckwheat, and will report results - M. F. K. Fisher describes how to make kasha from scratch, starting by toasting the buckwheat, so I'd like to try...)

Anyway, the point of buying Eight Treasures rice, even though it's a long time past New Year, was to try it for breakfast (I added mango, apricot, coconut chips, and pineapple). It smelt/tasted very good hot: it required some willpower to put it in a covered bowl in a nice glutinous mound to cool for breakfast.

By the way, though all the sundried fruits are fabulous, the sundried apricots are really extraordinary. They taste much more intense and sharp than the usual golden fruits, but they're not tough or hard - they're perfectly eatable unsoaked. They're just thoroughly delicious.

I like buying Fairtrade products, where available/affordable/sensible: it is especially neat to be able to buy a Fairtrade version of something that I actually buy for practical nourishment, as opposed to Fairtrade coffee/tea/chocolate.

In other news (this has been a very foody post) no, I have no other news, mostly. At least, none to post in an un-flocked post.

Tags: eating some delicious food, food politics

11:56 pm: One of 4000
On 25th April, 2004, 4000 babies died because they were not being breastfed. (To quote Baby Milk Action, that's not conjecture: it's UNICEF fact.)

We can be fairly sure that most of the parents of those 4000 babies (1.5M infant deaths per year) were not prosecuted because the mother not-breastfeeding was the cause of their baby's death. Not breastfeeding is a social norm.

In April last year, Six Apart decided that breastfeeding is obscene and that anyone who wanted to keep their livejournal active had to refrain from using pics of breastfeeding babies as default icons. When I changed my icon on LJ to a default icon showing a baby breastfeeding (made for me by cangetmad) I got a lot of comments from people who were evidently completely phobic about breastfeeding. Although most of them seemed to live in the US, and there is no state in the US where breastfeeding in public is illegal (and many where breastfeeding in public is legally protected) many of them argued, obscenely and angrily, that a woman breastfeeding was a disgusting sight, and women who wanted to breastfeed ought to do so in private only: that if they breastfed in public, they were committing an antisocial act as disgusting as if they defecated in public. As I knew from talking to and reading accounts of women who breastfed, requiring that women not breastfeed their children in public is effectively a means of ensuring that women do not breastfeed, or do not breastfeed for long. The vast majority of livejournallers complied with Six Apart's rule that breastfeeding is obscene; the vast majority of women in the US* comply with various pressures, commercial, social, financial, or legal, not to breastfeed.

And babies die as a result. But that isn't headline news.

Unless, of course, the parents are freaks. One of the babies who died on 25th April 2004 because he wasn't breastfed, also died because his parents did not have systematic support and advice in how to feed their baby: did not know that commercial soy milk/apple juice will not provide the nutrients a baby needs: did not realise, until too late, that their baby was starving to death. I don't know a thing about this couple, aside from what an op-ed in the New York Times told me (an op-ed by a meat-and-dairy-are-good-for-babies writer with the inflammatory headline "Death by Veganism").

The baby didn't die of veganism.

He died because his mother didn't breastfeed him.

He died because he and his mother didn't have access to basic health care: pre-natal classes, breastfeeding support, post-natal health checks.

He died because his parents didn't do the basic research to find out what they needed to know to keep their baby alive.

He didn't die because his parents were vegans. His parents could have been whipping up their own baby formula with liquidised burgers and fries, full of meat protein, and feeding that to him, and he would still have died.

But it's much easier to blame the parents for being freaks than it is to blame a culture that is so furiously anti-breastfeeding, or to blame the extreme lack of maternal support and health care in the US: and while it's acceptable to blame the parents for being idiots (the prosecution did just that, and they were) calling parents murderers because they don't do the background research seems... wrong. You cannot require people to make smart decisions, or do research, and prosecute them for murder if they don't. I think the parents are to blame - but prosecuting them for murder and sentencing them to life in jail? Every year, babies die of being forgotten in the baby seat in the back of a car: the state does not normally then prosecute those parents for murder. The NYT does not run op-eds that say "Death by Car" and which argue that responsible, caring parents should know better than ever to put babies into cars: responsible, caring parents should avoid that risk of death by always going by public transport or walking everywhere. Nor should they: just as most babies with vegan parents grow up into healthy, normal adults, so most babies whose parents drove them places survive the dreaded babyseat. The exceptional cases are regarded, rightly, as exceptions: horrible, tragic accidents.

Vegetarianism is becoming more normal: veganism is still unusual. But I still, sporadically, get people reacting to my dietary preferences as if the absence of meat in my diet was a personal criticism of the presence of meat in theirs. Vegans, I think, get this in a more intense form - and of course sometimes from vegetarians doing to vegans what carnivores do to us. The eager hostility towards these parents, the readiness to blame their baby's death on their being vegans rather than where it rightly belongs, is an obscene manifestation of that hostility.

Gah. I did start the food_politics community on GJ, but then I couldn't be bothered at the time to sit down and turn it into something formatted into a readable style. Must do that.

*And the UK. But this is an American story.

Tags: food politics

01:49 pm: Food politics?
I completed my How much food do you throw away? post. Would anyone else be interested in a "food politics" community?

To discuss how, where, and why we buy food, what we throw away, organic vegetable boxes versus bags of frozen veg from supermarkets, how and why we cook food, what we eat in restaurants? (I may even rant about why the Guardian's diet website is owned/operated by Tesco.) Possibly even recipes.

My first thought is based at GJ and twinned at IJ, but depending on reaction it could be the other way round?

Tags: food politics

05:00 pm: How much food do you throw away?

Some 30 to 40 per cent of food is wasted in the UK, and that figure has risen by 15 per cent in the last decade. Government figures show that in 2005 about 17 million tonnes of food, worth up to £20bn, was put into landfill, even though approximately 25 per cent of it could have been eaten by people or animals, or turned into compost and energy. (No such thing as a free lunch?)

I'm fairly sure that I don't throw away even 10% of the food I buy.

My project for this week (Monday to Sunday): I'm going to record everything I buy to eat or drink, and everything I throw away because I didn't eat it/drink it. I'd be interested to see other people's records of this week: comment here with a link.

Monday: Bought: 1 double-shot latte. 1 tub of lime-coriander hummus. Thrown away: a tub of plain hummus, still about a third full, with a use-by date of 29th July. (I looked at the lid to see if I should use up the old before starting the new, and realised, no, I shouldn't.)

Tuesday: Bought: 1/2 litre whole milk (had a friend coming round for coffee, which she takes very milky). 1 litre Tropicana orange juice, reduced, 23rd August use-buy date, and 4 ageing Granny Smith apples for 25p for soup. From the fruit'n'veg co-op: a big bag of purple grapes, a hand of seven greenish bananas, 2 peaches, 3 kiwi fruit, 4 Royal Gala apples, 3 plump Conference pears, 6 Victoria plums, 2 sweet potatoes, 2 red salad onions. Also, 3 Scotch Bonnet chillis and a Discovery apple - from Tattie Shaws.

Wednesday: Thrown away: One potato from the organic veg box last week, which was quite rotten in one part (I mean, I found it was rotten when my fingers squelched in it when I picked it up, and I sorted through the other potatoes in the bag muttering to myself to make sure the others weren't flecked with wet bits of rot). Six or seven grapes from the big bunch which had detached and seemed to have fermented slightly. Two chocolate Rich Tea biscuits, bought by the friend who came round for coffee yesterday - I'd forgetfully left them out on the plate for 24 hours.

Thursday: Bought: A half-litre of skim milk (sell-by date tomorrow, reduced by 33%); a date-walnut loaf cake, hoping to meet up with incommunicado friend tomorrow; and two cobs of corn, for sale 2-for-1. I was thinking (a) fresh corn-on-cob good, and also (b) husks can be used to make tamale pie, yes.

Friday: Thrown away: Most of a packet of cat food (I'm counting this, because I was an idiot - I put it out for Bob as a reward for being nice to Wolf, and of course Bob - wrong time of day for it - just nibbled a few bits and walked away. I do throw out bits and scraps of uneaten catfood, but not usually most of a whole packet). Half a sweet potato, one of those bought Tuesday, because it had gone quite black inside in places. Also, could not be arsed to make tamale pie and wrap it properly in husks, so threw out the corn husks, too.

Saturday: Bought: From the supermarket: a litre of semi-skimmed organic milk, a litre of Fair Trade orange juice. From the farmer's market: 1/2 dozen free range organic eggs, 750ml bottle Finnish raspberry juice, 1 kilo "royal kidney" potatoes, 250g smoked Arran cheddar.

Sunday:: Thrown away: The top layer of a jar of "prickly pear marmalade" that was lurking in the back of the fridge. I thought at first it had gone mouldy, but I realised when taking a closer look at it, that the top layer had somehow oxidised and gone clear - it looked as if the sugar in the jelly had crystalised.

Tags: food politics