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Mariah Harrod
Professor D. Kirchner
PHI 305
12 April 2016
Food Lab 3: Grocery
Chickpea Tacos
When I removed animals from my diet, I finally found the motivation to learn cooking.
My meat-loving, frozen dinner eating family was not entirely antagonistic to my transition, but
they certainly had no intention of catering to what they perceived to be an elitist decision. So I
started preparing my own meals. Confessedly untalented at meal planning, my habit is to visit
Kroger once every week or two to purchase produce and a few other products and wing it. Fully
aware that my nutrition is nowhere near optimal and that I will continue to investigate my food
choices and make adjustments, my diet is still assuredly one of the healthiest and most
environmentally-aware on campus. But I know that I am nearly as susceptible to the persuasive
tactics of corporations in my food choices as anyone else, and so I try to check myself in
selecting “organic” and “fair trade” foods. The threat of going to the grocery store and simply
picking the “green” labels is that I may continue to impose harmful impacts under the gullible
belief that these “better” choices are ethically justifiable. In this reconsideration of what is ethical
for a person to consume, this food lab pushed me to question seductive ads and better grasp the
fact that all commercial food implies an ethical dilemma through ambiguous production and
disconnect between consumer and the life underlying food. However, this lab also encouraged
me to qualify rather than wholly reject commercial food which has a great deal of power to do
large scale positive change.
Jimmy and I (while inviting Emma but also knowing how Emma is) planned our meal
together. I found a recipe on vegan chickpea tacos and already possessed most of the ingredients
excluding salsa, lettuce, and taco shells. These were provided by Jimmy. Our meal included
Kroger dry chickpeas (likely from India, thanks Food Lab 2), white onions (probably from the
western US, thanks Food Lab 1), a tablespoon of organic olive oil, coriander, cumin, paprika, sea
salt, garlic powder, a wee bit of cayenne pepper, organic avocado, lime, fresh cilantro, and

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romaine lettuce, Ortega whole grain corn taco shells, and Newman’s Own mild salsa. Of these, I
investigated the taco shells and salsa:
1. Ortega Whole Grain Corn Taco Shells: To be quite honest and a tad uppity, had I and not
Jimmy been the designated shell provider I would not have chosen inorganic name brand.
But Jimmy’s choice makes for an interesting (and frustrating) food investigation.
According to the company website, Ortega began the first commercial food operation in
California from a family tradition of Mexican cooking (“About Ortega”). Starting as chile
producers, the Ortega family continued to own the company until 1946, and the new
owners sold to B&G Foods, Inc. in 2003 (“About Ortega”). B&G Foods, Inc. is one of
those massive commercial conglomerates to which Preston introduced our class. The
B&G website lists 45 brands owned and—unsurprisingly—no sourcing information
whatsoever (“Get to Know Our Family”). I could not find production sites, farm
contributors, or even corporate partners creating some of the processed ingredients.
Neither website (both amusingly attempting to establish filial ethos) provided any
further information beyond ingredient listing. The front of the shell box screamed “whole
grain” and “excellent source of fiber!” and bragged about the innovative, non-
biodegrading plastic “freshness pack.” The back listed the ingredients of whole grain
yellow corn, high oleic canola oil, corn bran, maltodextrin, water, salt, and hydrated lime.
The corn is assuredly GMO, as is 88% of this crop produced in the US (Dupont). Likely
Iowa or another “corn belt” state grew it. This GM corn is often used in conjunction with
pesticides, fungicides, herbicides, and synthetic fertilizers. As corn is the main ingredient
and source of both the bran and maltodextrin, I will focus on it and its GM nature for
ethical evaluation.
2. Newman’s Own Mild Salsa: I decided to investigate this product because its labels
screamed too loudly for me to ignore. The logo purports “all profits to charity” along
with the signature white haired male character (actor and founder Paul Newman himself)
portrayed in a sombrero and handlebar mustache in what many may deem cultural
appropriation. Newman’s Own claims to have donated “over $450 million to charity” to
hundreds of different organizations in just the past few decades (“Charity”). According to
legend, actor Paul Newman began the company after gifting homemade salad dressing in
old wine bottles and subsequently deciding to sell these dressings and other food products

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for philanthropic purposes (“Charity”). Again, the familial appeal to credibility is evident.
We can trust Mama Ortega and “Pa” Newman, right?
In spite of great commitment to wholesome, “natural” ingredients and inspiring
allocation of profits, nowhere on the website sources the ingredients listed in each
product. These ingredients—as they pertain to the mild salsa—include diced tomatoes,
tomato puree (water, tomato paste), green chili peppers, green bell peppers, onions, red
bell peppers, distilled vinegar, salt, cilantro, garlic, black pepper. Neither the salsa jar nor
any website I could find outlined specifically where the plants that provided these
inorganic fruits, vegetables, and spices once lived or the labor and processes that brought
them to my table. After multiple search engine queries, I could not find production sites
for the salsa (sold internationally) or any named produce supplier. Quite possibly, the
company is just too large to enumerate every single farmer contributing to their products.
Likely, many of the ingredients were produced in the USA to maintain freshness without
the addition of preservatives, but this is mere deduction. Due to this lack of information,
my ethical evaluation focuses on the philanthropic intent behind the product rather than
the product itself or its impact.
Dilemmas & Ethical Evaluation
1. Ortega Whole Grain Corn Taco Shells: As we discussed in class—and Comstock would
agree—no arguments for the intrinsic immorality of GM food really hold up. So for this
evaluation of GM corn, whole grain or otherwise, I will use a consequentialist utilitarian
framework. To begin, thus far GMOs have been shown in multiple studies to be no more
dangerous to human health in consumption than any other produce. However, that does
not mean they are without pain-inducing impact. From a basic Bentham approach, GM
corn does indeed produce pleasure for farmers saved labor and able to mass produce food
so that others do not have to. But this BT corn has also been shown to have adverse
ecological effects like killing pollinators eating the toxic leaves (Newman and
D’Agnese). Additionally, the Round-Up for which the GM corn is “ready” has been
linked to the death of bees which pollinate a large portion of our food (Herbert et al.). We
could very well do without this genetic modification, as much of this corn mass produced

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is force fed to livestock who are not even adapted to eat it year-round. So the mass
production benefit of GMOs really is not that pleasurable or even necessary, especially
when considering the massive loss of pollinators in recent years linked to increasing ag-
chem use correlating with GMO use. Without these pollinators, our food production will
likely plummet, prices will increase, and more labor will be needed to produce less food.
This, compounded with the fact that the chemicals associated with GMO corn in my taco
shell are linked to major fish die-offs, farm laborer sickness, nutritional depletion, and the
loss of pervasive public connection to one’s environment due to specialization (and
minimization) of agricultural labor and the needlessness of the lauded mass production of
GMOs, these taco shells wrapped in plastic inflict far more pain than pleasure—
especially to future generations who will bear the burden of our current labor-saving
environmental destruction. This is unethical.
2. Newman’s Own Mild Salsa: In her book The Newman’s Own Organics Guide to a Good
Life: Simple Measures That Benefit You and the Place You Live, Paul’s daughter Nell
explains why she challenged her father to add a line of organic-only food products to his
charitable work and stakes her own ethical claim. In the introduction, Nell combines
deontological and consequentialist ethics by writing, “Let me confess up front that this
book is not without contradictions… It took resources to produce it and get it to you…
Every positive measure you take to help the environment probably entails a downside…
But that’s okay. Perfection isn’t the goal. A good life is. And a good life has a lot to do
with who you are in the world, with your intent as much as with the end result” (Newman
and D’Agnese). I believe she is right in saying that every action we take has its positive
and negatives, and that what makes an action good is trying to outweigh negatives with
positives. So does the mild salsa do this?
Clearly I would be more inclined to ethically justify the salsa had it been organic
(see evaluation of onions in Food Lab 1), but as I had trouble sourcing any of the
inorganic ingredients, I would like to focus more on the intent behind the company and
its impact as a whole over the production of my food. As previously stated, Newman’s
Own has donated almost half a billion dollars to hundreds of organizations, enabling ill
children to play, Kenyan girls to receive free education, increasing access to local
produce in communities, and encouraging American volunteers (“Charity”). Few could

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likely quantify such an extensive impact as may be necessary from a utilitarian approach,
so I will use Kant to decide if Jimmy’s money and our collaborative consumption of this
salsa is ethical.
Kantian deontologists believe that what makes an action right is that it can
translate into universal law without any seeming qualm. Such a qualm might be that the
action treats people as means to one’s own goal rather than as having end goals
themselves. When we disregard the ecological impact of topsoil loss, ag-chem additives,
packaging production and disposal, and fossil fuel use in transport (to name a few), we
are left only to evaluate whether Paul Newman intended to treat people as means or as
ends. In spite of glaring labels purporting the latter, this is complex. On one hand, the
company donates every penny (apart from tax deductions) to charities that can then
subsequently expand to do even more fulfilling work to help people and their
environment. On the other hand, using inorganic ingredients that endanger workers and
non-compostable packaging to be littered or dumped near poor neighborhoods does not
seem to respect people as individuals desiring and deserving health and happiness. Yet it
seems to me that Newman, in his original conception, did very much intend to do right by
people when making these products. According to his daughter, his choice to reject
organic ingredients arose from a rather conservative mindset that saw these products as
elitist and overrated—“he didn’t really understand organics” (Nell and D’Agnese).
Rather than knowing the impact that these processes had on agriculture workers and on
neighboring communities, he simply did not know. Due to his immediate desire to
relinquish all profits to help others and his ignorance as to the impact of inorganic
commercial food, Kant would likely say that eating Newman’s Own food is ethically
commendable.
Eat, Think, Write
As Jimmy and I hurriedly arranged this afternoon meal between classes and meetings, I
was struck by how much more intimate this meal was in comparison to the previous two.
Whereas my Taco Bell burrito and Cowan salad were prepared and presented to me in “food”
form, this meal I was forced to work with mostly raw ingredients. Though I did not personally

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plant and grow the chickpeas, onions, lettuce, spices, avocado, lime, tomatoes, peppers, or corn
in my meal, I did have the opportunity to consciously consider that I was eating a plant that had
been born and lived in the soil. Even without the onion’s aboveground leaf structures attached
and even with the plastic band holding together the dirt-free romaine, it is difficult to ignore that
the food stuffs I was consuming were once growing plants. Admittedly, this recognition and
respect is still not something I actively reflect upon once I cook it up and stick it in my mouth. I
wish to change this.
We tossed our tacos together with little expectation and the mild panic that constantly
underlies being a student at Centre College in April. Being adventurous and also famished, I took
the first bite. Delicious. The mashed chickpeas I overnight-soaked and cooked with oil, onions,
and spices were akin to refried beans but less pinto-y. They were richly salty and savory, and I
could taste the olive oil with a slightly spicy crunch of onion. The cumin, as I intended, gave
them a meaty flavor. The guacamole I instructed Jimmy in making (he is learning how to cook
after also recently converting to veganism) was light, limey, and distinctly avocado-y with
simplified ingredients comparable to the laundry list of preservatives and additives in store-
bought guac. The lettuce was nothing superb, slightly bitterer than expected but a nice textural
contrast. I mentally thanked the underpaid workers who produced it.
In spite of my revulsion to processed food and the knowledge of all the environmental
harms (and nutritional depletion) that ag-chem additives have caused, the taco shell was still
pretty enjoyable. It did not burst with corny flavor, but the shell held up with a nice, somewhat
thick composition. On the flip side, the salsa was OK, and I would have preferred whole chunks
of fruits and vegetables over tomato puree. But salsa is almost always an excellent addition, and
the flavor contrast between the juicy, spicy puree and the salty, dense chickpeas was pleasant.
Jimmy ate three tacos, but after two I was fit to pop.
The most salient lesson I gained from this lab is the recognition that, as Nell so
eloquently stated, “Every positive measure you take to help the environment probably entails a
downside… But that’s okay” (Newman and D’Agnese). Every single thing we do has an impact,
but sometimes the positives outweigh the negatives when we add context. Even though the salsa
I ate was inorganic and maybe contributed to anoxic zones, sickness in laborers, or deaths of
pollinators, it also helped provide funding for non-profits who were then empowered to expand

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their own positive impacts. Just because something is not organic does not make it unethical,
especially—if you are Kant—if your intent is pure. Likewise, just because something is GMO
does not make it inherently bad. What makes GMOs problematic is context. When pollinators
are dying at alarming rates merely so that the US can quickly mass produce inedible corn for
processing, this is troubling. Likely GMO corn and its buddy Round-Up cause far more pain than
pleasure not only when we consume less nutritious inorganic processed food or when laborers
working with the ag chemicals sicken but in the future when our pollinators die out and we are
forced to cut back food production and pay heightened prices. As always, we must investigate to
the best of our abilities both the impact and intent behind actions and try, as Nell Newman says,
to lead a good life because perfection is unattainable.
Works Cited
"About Ortega." Ortega. B&G Foods, Inc., n.d. Web. 7 Apr. 2016.
"Charity." Newman’s Own. 2 May 2012. Web. 7 Apr. 2016.
Dupont, Veronique. "GMO Corn, Soybeans Dominate US Market." Phys Org. Science X
Network, 4 June 2013. Web. 7 Apr. 2016.
"Get to Know Our Family." B&G Foods, Inc. N.p., n.d. Web. 7 Apr. 2016.
Herbert, Lucila T., Diego E. Vázquez, Andrés Arenas and Walter M. Farina. “Effects of Field-
Realistic Doses of Glyphosate on Honeybee Appetitive Behavior.” The Company of
Biologists, Ltd, 2013. Web. 7 April 2016.
Newman, Nell, and Joseph D’Agnese. The Newman’s Own Organics Guide to a Good Life:
Simple Measures That Benefit You and the Place You Live. Random House Publishing
Group, 2003. Web. 7 April 2016.