Welcome to Open Tab, a weekly column covering the news, gossip, and stories that have stayed open in my tabs all week. Last time we covered so-called GLP-1 boosters.
A couple questions I think we have to address off the bat: First, does Elizabeth Holmes know how to scramble an egg? In the newly-released doc You Can See Everything, Holmes is shown listlessly beating an egg with a fork—a sorry attempt at scrambling—before her fiancé, Billy Evans, grabs the bowl of her hands and does it for her.
Could she truly not know how to beat eggs? Was Holmes simply playing 3D chess—engineering a moment that would portray her partner as controlling? Elizabeth Holmes, if you are reading this, please send me an email.
Relatedly: Why is Nathan Fielder holding his wine glass like that?
New York Congressional candidate Brad Lander was in the news this week after he was detained by the IDF Wednesday while harvesting olives in the West Bank with Palestinian activists and farmers. He’s since been released, but according to a statement on X, several dozen rabbis and participants are still detained. On Thursday, he posted that he was back in the fields harvesting olives again.
Also in today’s Open Tab: The burgeoning food shortages in Italy, it’s not just you; chocolate doesn’t taste the same, the 3D-printed meats arriving on grocery store shelves, and congressional candidate Abdul El-Sayed on shawarma law.
A looming food crisis in Italy
Strikes and blockades by Southern Italian truckers this week have left many supermarket shelves bare. Those strikes and blockades in the south were matched by protests which turned to riots in the north. Both movements were protesting the same issue: affordability. In the north, students marched against low wages, high taxes, and quickly rising grocery and fuel costs. In the south, farmers and truckers have blockaded ports and highways in protest of those same high fuel costs.
The high costs are associated with fuel shortages stemming from the war in Iran, and, on Thursday, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government announced the equivalent of $200 million to cover gas prices. Meloni’s government has already spent the equivalent of $3 billion to lower or offset gas prices this year.
But Italy’s protest movement is only part of the global story. Protests in France have resulted in major government intervention. Albanian students are protesting governmental corruption and the high cost of living. Bolivia has seen longstanding protests against rising fuel costs as well. Around the world, protest movements are heating up largely due to governmental corruption in conjunction to rising fuel and food costs associated with the war in Iran.
Why chocolate kind of tastes like nothing these days
Remember back in February when Brad Reese—yes, of the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup family—blew the whistle on how the formula for the beloved candy had been changed? The story struck a chord because it gave voice to what a lot of people had been sensing: Chocolate doesn’t taste as good as it used to. Yes, it does make me feel like an old man shaking his fist at the sky to say that, but we were all vindicated this week when New York magazine’s Rachel Handler released a deeply reported cover story blowing the lid off what has been going on.
As Handler reports it, Big Candy has been tweaking the ingredients and additives in its chocolate for years. Decades, really. Why? Price, of course. Such is life under late-stage capitalism, Handler tells us, rather bleakly. Notably, as Reese pointed out to me over the phone this week, Hershey’s stock price has been tumbling downward ever since his now-viral whistleblowing.
Meet 3D-printed meat
We have a new plant-based meat contender to consider. Perfecta, a subsidiary of Israel-based Steakholder Foods Ltd, is launching 3D-printed, plant-based meats in grocery stores across the northeastern United States (Delaware, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Virginia).
This phase of the rollout includes plant-based imitations of poultry, steak, and seafood. Stakeholder Foods also owns Belgian company Peace of Meat, which developed stem-cell-based technology to cultivate (read: grown in a lab) animal fats which can carry true meaty flavor.
Abdul El-Sayed on Michigan’s dynamic food culture
Michigan Senatorial candidate Abdul El-Sayed has been in the news a lot lately. As we inch closer to the Nov. 3 election, he chatted with Bon Appétit contributor Serena Maria Daniels to dig into his hometown of Detroit’s vibrant food culture, and the issues around groceries and affordability that are more important than ever—no matter what side of the aisle you’re on. Read on to see the full interview.