Blog
How I Fell Into a Parallel Food Universe
Apr
Saying that I have always loved to eat is an understatement. The way an art fan might long after a Picasso, I would drool at the mention of ice cream on a sizzling summer day. My days as a student in Nice naturally led to gorging on copious amounts of Gouda and Gruyère. And traditionally, the only successful way to turn my frown upside down has been to present me with a hearty bowl of spaghetti swimming in Bolognese. While I have always been a fruit and salad lover (mostly because that is the only range within my cooking repertoire), the term vegan remained ever elusive and just seemed beyond my reach.
The issue was not lack of exploration or an open mind. Being married to a chef, one quickly learns to discard any prudish taste buds. I have always appreciated clean and healthy food, and tried to measure to the “you are what you eat” yardstick as best as I could. But for me, that has generally meant a plate of a baked and juicy chicken leg, with a heaping of quinoa and feta cheese swimming in olive oil (the Mediterranean side of me still kicking strong). But having arrived in Hong Kong, where feta is a rarity on league with the black swan, and when found comparable to the price of gold, I was forced to adapt. The feta tragedy however was balanced by a more opportune event, as I began working at SpiceBox Organics.
A year went by in the blink of an eye, with me pleasantly surprised that I was not being plagued my average four times by the Streptococcus infection. As I scaled the peaks, I paused to admire Hong Kong’s concrete skyline and to gravely ponder, “Could it be I have at last metamorphosed into a strong and healthy individual?”. If you are passionate about health and wellness, working at SpiceBox Organics is the equivalent of a kid working in a candy store. Featuring an all-vegetarian café with a wide selection of freshly-made, superfood and tasty dishes, in addition to an extensive USDA certified organic retail line of over 1000 products, it dawned on me that I was standing at the very mecca of the plant-based movement. Lost in bliss drinking innumerable cartons of Rude Health Hazelnut Milk, gorging on spoons of Kehoe’s Kitchen Vegan Tasty Cream Cheese and protein superfoods such as SpiceBox Organics Tempeh, I entirely forgot about my initial feta plight. I realized that the issue all along had not been a lack of curiosity on my part, but rather lack of accessibility of high quality vegan brands. One year later after being initiated in the plant-based mecca, I was witnessing my very taste buds changing!
This was a welcome transition given all the research I had recently come across, both on the environmental and ethical front. I had become aware of the high use of antibiotics to sustain industrial production levels in the meat and dairy industry. The figures had always concerned me, but had somewhat always been brushed aside by the urban, practical side of me. The reality is that today we have become so distanced from food sourcing and production, that we have lost our conception of the immense environmental burden that our diets are causing to the very planet that feeds us. From the reduction of biodiversity to clear up land for livestock, to the gallons of water consumed, to pollution of vital resources by chemicals and pesticides, current industrial farming methods are unsustainable. When you buy nicely packaged piece beef in the supermarket after a long day of work, your brain does not flash a statistic like “a 2013 study by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization estimated that livestock were responsible for more than 14 percent of all man-made greenhouse gas emissions”. You are way too tired at that point to weigh in on the counterfactual that “plant-based diets could reduce food’s greenhouse emissions by up to 73%”.
And that is why at SpiceBox Organics we believe that the onus is on us, the market, to place within consumers’ reach a variety of nutritious and protein-rich options that make plant-based more accessible. The food industry has taken notice as investment into meat alternative products has now reached hundreds of millions of US dollars. As time lapses, this will translate to viable commercial products (with some already on the market such as the Impossible Burger, Beyond Meat, etc.) and a new line of vegan products will enter the market. SpiceBox Organics will be your trusty curator ensuring that the gates remain open only for the highest quality ingredients. We hope that for the sake of the environment, animal well-being, and your own optimal health, you drop by for a browse with the possibility that one day just like me, you might find yourself transformed!