Tag Archives: memphis

Hold on to your buns, because fake burgers are going wild

The company that saw the most successful first day in U.S. IPO listings since the 2008 financial crisis? Fake meat. Last Thursday, when Beyond Meat hit the stock market, shares increased an incredible 163 percent in value to $65.75 by closing. The company’s skyrocketing success definitely made for some happy plant-based steakholders.

The company, which makes vegan beef and sausage substitutes, sold over 9.6 million shares and made $241 million on the first day alone. Although analysts expect shares to stabilize lower eventually, today, shares are still valued at around $72.

It’s a big year for meat substitutes. With celebrities like Katy Perry dressing as a vegan burger for the Met Gala, and Patriots star Tom Brady sustaining his Superbowl-winning athleticism on a mostly plant-based diet, it seems that meat is out, and fake meat is in. Although veganism and vegetarianism rates tend to stay steady, it seems more Americans are willing to put down the beef; younger generations in particular are more interested in plant-based diets.

Beyond Meat’s prices are expected to drop further in the coming months as other companies jump on board the meatless meat train. Fast food chains like Burger King and McDonald’s have already started selling veggie burgers, and Beyond Meat’s competitor Impossible Burger is selling burgers nearly faster than it can make them.

Even traditional animal-product businesses are responding to the growing plant-product protein trend. Meat giant Tyson Foods owned a 6.5 percent stake in Beyond Meat. and also backed startups Memphis Meats (read Grist’s coverage of CEO and co-founder Uma Valeti) and Future Meat Technologies Ltd. It only recently sold its Beyond Meat shares as it announced its own plans to begin production of a plant-based protein.

Cargill Protein, another longtime meat company, has sunk nearly $1 million in the past few years to developing alternative meats, including investing in Memphis Meats. Many of these “Big Meat” companies are now stepping out of the shadows and outwardly rebranding themselves and their product lines to include meat alternatives as well — McDonald’s new veggie burger is a product of Nestle NA, and Kellogg is developing imitation chicken in addition to a veggie burger it already offers.

Since the first “Gardenburgers” were served up in 1981, meat alternatives have come a long way. But they’re not the only plant-based alternative with secret animal-product suitors.

Big Dairy, while outwardly attempting to censor how plant-based milks brand themselves, is slowly expanding its reach into the non-dairy world, as recently reported in Bloomberg. Good Karma Foods Flax Milk? The majority stake is owned by dairy company Dean Foods. Silk’s line of soy and nut milks? Owned by French dairy giant, Danone. While yogurt giant Chobani claimed in comments to the FDA last September that the use of dairy terminology on non-dairy products posed “a public health risk” and should be “illegal,” they, too, have launched a line of dairy alternative yogurts — labelled as non-dairy coconut blend, of course.

Part of this jumping on the plant-milk bandwagon may be a survival tactic for the dairy industry. Milk consumption has seen a 40 percent drop in about as many years.

For now, the meat industry still seems to have a solid stronghold in American diets. Will the fake meat hype just be a bubble or could meat be heading in a similar direction?

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Hold on to your buns, because fake burgers are going wild

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It’s Time to Separate the South From the Confederacy

Mother Jones

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On Wednesday, the Memphis City Council cast its final vote to remove a statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest from a downtown park. Despite the considerable pushback against the decision, I can’t help but feel a little hope that progress is being made in my home state.

Not to be mistaken for the garish Forrest statue in Nashville, this one is a tarnished bronze likeness of the Confederate general, slave trader, and first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. The statue tops a concrete burial vault that houses the remains of Forrest and his wife. The memorial has stood in Health Sciences Park (formerly Forrest Park) since 1905, when, 28 years after Forrest’s death, a group of wealthy, white Memphians dug up the general and his wife and entombed them in a vault beneath this statue in downtown Memphis. Astride his horse, Forrest faces north, positioned so he doesn’t seem to be retreating.

In the aftermath of the Charleston massacre and a renewed push to take down Confederate flags and other symbols of the Confederacy, the Memphis City Council voted to remove the statue and return the remains to Elmwood Cemetery, where Forrest was originally buried in accordance with his will. Surprisingly, much of the indignant outcry has surrounded the idea of moving the remains rather than removing the statue. In some of my recent personal conversations, people have expressed their outrage at such an “extreme” move.

A Confederate flag is draped over the base of the statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest at a celebration of his 194th birthday in July. Mike Brown/The Commercial Appeal via AP

Indeed, they do. At the ceremony unveiling the statue in May, 1905, nothing was said of Forrest’s order to massacre more than 300 African-American Union soldiers who had already surrendered at Fort Pillow, Tennessee, in 1864. His role as a leader in the KKK was never mentioned. Instead, the Forrest Monument Association spoke of his chivalry, and of heritage and honor. As Nate DiMeo notes in a recent episode of his podcast, The Memory Palace, the statue was unveiled “at a specific moment in time”: The city’s African-American population was increasing, and racial tensions were building. The memorial was a tip of the hat to an idealized past, and those who supported it hoped the symbol would inspire a similar future. “Memorials are not memories,” DiMeo says. “They have motives.”

The emphasis on tradition, heritage, and honor sounds familiar to me. I grew up in a tiny farming community about an hour and a half east of Memphis, in a place where those values tended to come before equality and the respect for anyone who isn’t white. My history classes were full of winding excuses about how the Civil War wasn’t really about slavery. It was a struggle over state’s rights, and economic power. Obviously. Dixie was a place of hospitality and heart—if you were white. Nathan Bedford Forrest’s name was everywhere. It was attached to a nearby state park, a handful of statues, and even the ROTC building on my college campus. DiMeo sees the current controversy as a collision between the present and history, but I’ve been staring at that collision since I was too young to know what it was.

DiMeo says that despite Forrest’s alleged regret at the end of his life for his actions, he’s no American role model. He imagines adding a plaque to the Forrest statue and others like it. “Maybe the plaque should just say, maybe they should all say, that the men who fought and died for the CSA, whatever their personal reasons, whatever was in their hearts, did so on behalf of a government, formed for the express purpose that men and women and children could be bought and sold and destroyed at will,” DiMeo says. I tend to agree.

There are people I’ve known my whole life who are fiercely protective of the Confederacy and its symbols. They mean well when they speak of heritage and honor, but their pride comes at the expense of those who have suffered far worse than we ever have. Their refusal to recognize that perpetuates a racism that is so insidious that it is confused with cultural values.

I love where I came from. I love the mile-wide stubborn streak I inherited from my deeply Southern grandmother, a woman who is strong and outspoken, because as the daughter of poor sharecroppers, she had to be. I love the syrupy sound of our accents, and I love dark, heady summer nights filled with fireflies. I love being part of a community that is armed with casseroles whenever tragedy catches someone unaware. I do not love the Confederacy, and I do not stand for its murderous agenda or its skewed racial hierarchy. We cannot change the past, but as Memphis removes the statue and tries to move forward, so should the South. It’s time to separate the South from the Confederacy.

Listen to The Memory Palace episode on the Nathan Bedford Forrest statue, “Notes on an Imaginary Plaque…”

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It’s Time to Separate the South From the Confederacy

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For Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell, a Strong Round 2

Mother Jones

Emmylou Harris & Rodney Crowell
The Traveling Kind
Nonesuch

If only Hollywood sequels were this good. Following Old Yellow Moon, their captivating 2013 collaboration, rootsy stalwarts Emmylou and Rodney have recombined for another go-round, which may be even more entertaining than its predecessor. The two first crossed paths professionally 40 (!) years ago, when Crowell joined Harris’ band. Their recent work together has underscored the virtues of experience and, yes, age. No longer needing to prove anything, both seem as loose and confident as they’ve ever been, delivering heartrending tunes like “You Can’t Say We Didn’t Try” with the simple, sure-handed eloquence that marked the Everly Brothers’ best, and rockin’ out in fine style on the rollicking “Bring It on Home to Memphis.” Harris’ still-beautiful voice has acquired a darker, slightly rougher texture that adds authority, while the weathered grace of Crowell’s singing makes him a perfect match. A fine job by all concerned, including the stellar players.

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For Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell, a Strong Round 2

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5 Must-See True Crime Documentaries to Catch After "The Jinx"

Mother Jones

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Sunday’s finale of the HBO documentary series The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst ended with the eccentric protagonist muttering a seeming confession to three murders over the last 30 years.

“What the hell did I do?” Durst said. “Killed them all, of course.”

The revelation culminated an eight-year investigation into the life and trials of Durst, the estranged son of a New York real estate dynasty. He has maintained his innocence in the 1982 disappearance of his first wife and was acquitted in the 2001 slaying of Morris Black in Galveston, Texas. But Durst was arrested on Saturday, a day before the finale aired, in a New Orleans hotel after new evidence emerged that law enforcement officials allege linked him to the 2000 murder of confidante Susan Berman. On Monday, Los Angeles prosecutors charged Durst with first-degree murder in California, in addition to weapons charges in Louisiana.

All eyes will surely stay glued to Durst’s case as it unfolds, but The Jinx, a well-paced journalistic masterpiece, is over. The inevitable question for today’s budding Sherlock Holmes becomes: What to watch next?

Since True Detective reportedly won’t return until this summer, and the second season of Serial isn’t out yet, here are a few true-crime documentaries to check out now:

Central Park Five

The 2012 Ken Burns documentary looks into the 1989 case of five black and Latino teenagers who were wrongly convicted of raping a white woman in Central Park. The film, which is on Netflix, takes a look at the case and its aftermath from the perspectives of the accused, whose convictions were later tossed out after a convicted rapist confessed to the crime.

Into The Abyss

Acclaimed filmmaker Werner Herzog dives into the aftermath of a triple homicide in the small city of Conroe, Texas as part of a larger examination into capital punishment in the United States. This 2011 doc is still on Netflix.

The Imposter

A 13-year-old boy in Texas disappears in 1994, then reportedly resurfaces three years later in Spain. But that’s not the whole story. A French con artist tells all in this gripping 2012 documentary, which can be seen on Netflix.

The Paradise Lost trilogy

In this three-part series, renowned filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky focus on the infamous case of the “West Memphis Three,” a trio of teenagers who were convicted of the brutal triple homicide in 1993 of three young boys in West Memphis, Arkansas. The three men were later freed after 18 years in prison. You can find this one on Amazon Prime.

The Thin Blue Line

A throwback from 1988, Errol Morris investigates the questionable conviction of Randall Dale Adams, who was wrongly sentenced to life in prison for killing a Dallas police officer in 1976. The film, which is on Netflix, played a role in exonerating Adams a year later.

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5 Must-See True Crime Documentaries to Catch After "The Jinx"

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