Bye bye vanilla ice cream?

[Japanfan]

Here's a 2016 article about how vanilla, coffee and cocoa are at risk of disappearing (while getting more expensive on the way out) due to climate change:

I cannot imagine life without coffee!

 

[Jenny]

I don't use much vanilla, but as a long time saffron user, welcome to my world.

 

[clairecloutier]

Here's a 2016 article about how vanilla, coffee and cocoa are at risk of disappearing (while getting more expensive on the way out) due to climate change:

https://www.foodmanufacturing.com/a...ng-its-flavor-3-spices-may-disappear-kitchens

This article really shines a light on how climate change affects our lives in so many ways, many of them as yet unknown.

 

[Simone411]

Don't you need vanilla to make all the other ice creams??!!!

And there is also aged vanilla in A&W Cream Soda which is one of my favorite soft drinks. And gosh, I'm also a chocoholic. I have to have my Mocha Coffee! No coffee, chocolate or vanilla equals to a catastrophe!

 

[rfisher]

This is the first time I realized that stuff in the bottle wasn't real vanilla. Bump in the road. Some other country will grow vanilla. It will taste all the sweeter if we have to wait a couple years.

No. Vanilla flowers, like coffee and cacao trees, require very specific microclimates (soil, air, temperatures) in which to grow. Microclimates even result in differences in the end products. For example, there is a difference between coffee grown on Kona and coffee grown in Africa. Coffee originated in volcanic soils and do best there. Or cacao grown in Ecuador or Africa. Or vanilla from Madagascar and vanilla from Peru (all these plants evolved in Central or South America). It's not a matter of another country deciding to just grow some. There's a reason why these plants are grown where they are.

There's been considerable concern for several years that cacao will become extinct due to climate change. I can live without vanilla, but chocolate? Life isn't worth living without chocolate. There have been some attempts to try and grow cacao trees in greenhouses, but they've pretty much failed.

 

[Skittl1321]

LOL, was it a "scrape the beans out" recipe? Like panna cotta or creme brulee? I can get one flask of vanilla from 3 beans and one weaker flask of vanilla from a second running.

This might have even just been a "set the beans in while heating, and discard" - either way, we read the recipe and was like "do they know how much those things cost?!"

 

[BittyBug]

This article really shines a light on how climate change affects our lives in so many ways, many of them as yet unknown.

And yet, the Trump administration is busily trying to erase as many references to climate change as possible, as if closing our eyes magically makes the issue go away. ? The most recent example is the white washing of the Pentagon's web site, this despite the Pentagon's acknowledgment in 2014 that climate change is a serious national security threat.

But yeah, let's just help Carl Icahn and the Koch Brothers stuff their pockets, with a little for ourselves as well while we can, and f*ck future generations who will face an increasingly inhospitable earth.

 

[Spun Silver]

No. Vanilla flowers, like coffee and cacao trees, require very specific microclimates (soil, air, temperatures) in which to grow. Microclimates even result in differences in the end products. For example, there is a difference between coffee grown on Kona and coffee grown in Africa. Coffee originated in volcanic soils and do best there. Or cacao grown in Ecuador or Africa. Or vanilla from Madagascar and vanilla from Peru (all these plants evolved in Central or South America). It's not a matter of another country deciding to just grow some. There's a reason why these plants are grown where they are.

There's been considerable concern for several years that cacao will become extinct due to climate change. I can live without vanilla, but chocolate? Life isn't worth living without chocolate. There have been some attempts to try and grow cacao trees in greenhouses, but they've pretty much failed.

Interesting. I would be willing to bet one of my cats that the world is not going to run out of vanilla despite short term problems. Scientists will find a solution, at least if the education system educate kids to become scientists and other fact-and thinking-based occupations instead of making them and their parents pay for four years of partying, drugging and social agitation. I am much more concerned about that than the current vanilla shortage.

 

[genevieve]

well, that took a weird turn

 

[skatingfan5]

well, that took a weird turn

Yes, but I learned something new -- I had never known before that apparently the "education system" enforced four years of partying, drugging, and social agitation.

Vanilla ice cream is the best flavor to top fruit pies and cobblers. The thought of no coffee or chocolate is .

 

[jeffisjeff]

well, that took a weird turn

But not entirely unpredictable, given the poster.

 

[MacMadame]

Don't you need vanilla to make all the other ice creams??!!!

This was a bit ago but I see no one answered you.

I think this is a common idea but vanilla ice cream is not plain ice cream. It's plain ice cream with vanilla flavor added. Just like chocolate ice cream is plain ice cream with chocolate added.

(That's a bit simplistic as some ice creams have more stuff added to the plain stuff but hopefully, you get the idea.)

 

[Aerobicidal]

"Welcome to Baskin Robbins, the home of 32 3 flavors. What can I get you?"

"I'd like a medium vanilla waffle cone, please."

"I would too, but thanks to leftist collegiate social education, the world has no more vanilla so you're SOL. Second choice?"

"How about a chocolate shake?"

"Puh-lease! Do you think the libs spent a hot second thinking about a cocoa-free universe when they turned higher education into an excuse for kids to take body shots while screaming Marxist slogans in Latin or Swahili? Do you want to order something that hasn't gone extinct or are you gonna keep wasting my time?"

"Butter brickle?"

"News flash! When the group of radical Democrats in charge of making sure college was nothing but a sinful excuse to brainwash impressionable and drunk kids to believe in the gay agenda and the trans agenda and the environmentalist agenda, except that they don't have any science or facts in their environmentalism so we can just call it mentalism--they didn't care about food, flavor, folks, or fun. You were hopped up on wacky weed, uppers, downers, and candy corn defacing portraits of Adam Smith and writing a dissertation on the politics of excess in ethnic takeout menus, and meanwhile the world has no more butter. No more brickle, either."

"Can you cry a single tear into a sundae cup for me?"

"I can for fifteen dollars. What, did you think it was going to be free? We aren't all commies!"

 

[Vagabond]

Yes, but I learned something new -- I had never known before that apparently the "education system" enforced four years of partying, drugging, and social agitation.

Oh, yes. Where I went, the graduation requirements included going to professors' wine and cheese parties, drinking espresso, and voting in Federal elections. It was awful.

 

[barbk]

Here's a 2016 article about how vanilla, coffee and cocoa are at risk of disappearing (while getting more expensive on the way out) due to climate change:

https://www.foodmanufacturing.com/a...ng-its-flavor-3-spices-may-disappear-kitchens

You are dead to me.

 

[pat c]

........It's not a matter of another country deciding to just grow some. There's a reason why these plants are grown where they are.........

There have been some attempts to try and grow cacao trees in greenhouses, but they've pretty much failed.

Exactly. You can't grow things where the conditions aren't suitable for them to survive and thrive. We like to think that greenhouses are the answer to growing *everything* but they aren't.

Interesting. I would be willing to bet one of my cats that the world is not going to run out of vanilla despite short term problems. Scientists will find a solution, at least if the education system educate kids to become scientists and other fact-and thinking-based occupations instead of making them and their parents pay for four years of partying, drugging and social agitation. I am much more concerned about that than the current vanilla shortage.

You should get out more. Look around, see how the climate is changing outside rather than worrying about what some university students do inside.

Scientists can not solve problems without research and total commitment from every country in the world. And that ain't happening. Too bad about your cat.

 

[Japanfan]

Oh, yes. Where I went, the graduation requirements included going to professors' wine and cheese parties, drinking espresso, and voting in Federal elections. It was awful.

When I was a film student one of my profs did host wine and cheese parties! The film department at my university was small (only four profs). The prof would sit in his Director's chair and show a film, then put out a pretty posh spread for us. It was a lot of fun.

 

[Japanfan]

deleted

 

[Winnipeg]

Long live vanilla!!!!!!!

 

[VGThuy]

We will be in Soylent Green in no time, but who cares about that so long as we can complain about college students on a figure skating forum in a thread that was not even about that even though the ones complaining only hear about what's going on in colleges through fake news and talk radio and it's been decades (if ever) since they visited a college campus.

 

[allezfred]

Interesting. I would be willing to bet one of my cats that the world is not going to run out of vanilla despite short term problems. Scientists will find a solution, at least if the education system educate kids to become scientists and other fact-and thinking-based occupations instead of making them and their parents pay for four years of partying, drugging and social agitation. I am much more concerned about that than the current vanilla shortage.

You really are a parody of yourself.

 

[PeterG]

And yet, the Trump administration is busily trying to erase as many references to climate change as possible, as if closing our eyes magically makes the issue go away.

I think I read somewhere that The Donald likes chocolate.

And suddenly, everything begins to make sense...

 

[MacMadame]

We will be in Soylent Green in no time, but who cares about that so long as we can complain about college students on a figure skating forum in a thread that was not even about that even though the ones complaining only hear about what's going on in colleges through fake news and talk radio and it's been decades (if ever) since they visited a college campus.

This is funny because my neighbors are entertaining someone who was bitching about college students just now.

I think manufactured food is a good thing. If we can continue to improve fake meat to the point where people stop eating meat, that will help the planet, for example. That kind of food (and GMOs) can sustain more people.

 

[Vagabond]

He likes vanilla too.

The waiters know well Trump’s personal preferences. As he settles down, they bring him a Diet Coke, while the rest of us are served water, with the Vice President sitting at one end of the table. With the salad course, Trump is served what appears to be Thousand Island dressing instead of the creamy vinaigrette for his guests. When the chicken arrives, he is the only one given an extra dish of sauce. At the dessert course, he gets two scoops of vanilla ice cream with his chocolate cream pie, instead of the single scoop for everyone else.

http://time.com/donald-trump-after-hours/

 

[snoopy]

I don’t even get the partying drugging and social agitation comment. College kids these days are more straight laced than in decades. Is that right wing propaganda? Whoa. Such propaganda used to be based at least on some kind of truthful meme.

 

[Japanfan]

I think I read somewhere that The Donald likes chocolate.

And suddenly, everything begins to make sense...

He also likes fast food a lot, like KFC.

I think manufactured food is a good thing. If we can continue to improve fake meat to the point where people stop eating meat, that will help the planet, for example. That kind of food (and GMOs) can sustain more people.

Fake meat isn't meat and won't get meat lovers to stop eating meat. Just as vegan cream cheese isn't dairy cream cheese. I bought a container of the vegan stuff by accident, and thought it tasted rather like glue.

In principal, we should all stop eating meat for environmental reasons and because of how those involved in meat production abuse animals. In reality, I would find it hard to give up eating meat because I was a hedonist.

I was a fairly committed vegetarian in my 20s, having grown up with a mother who was a fairly lousy cook (because she was focused on keeping her weight down and therefore mostly enjoyed veggies and salad). But that was before I learned how to cook a good roast chicken and a good roast lamb.

 

[BittyBug]

Fake meat isn't meat and won't get meat lovers to stop eating meat.

@MacMadame isn’t talking about Tofurkey or Not Dogs, she’s talking about clean meat, which is lab grown meat. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultured_meat

Some of the major agricultural companies have made investments in clean meat, which bodes well for its success.

In principal, we should all stop eating meat for environmental reasons and because of how those involved in meat production abuse animals. In reality, I would find it hard to give up eating meat because I was a hedonist.

It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. Even migrating to one or two plant based meals a week would make a big difference.

 

[jeffisjeff]

I don’t even get the partying drugging and social agitation comment. College kids these days are more straight laced than in decades. Is that right wing propaganda? Whoa. Such propaganda used to be based at least on some kind of truthful meme.

I was wondering if Spun Silver's post is part of a new right-wing response to climate change. First they tried to deny that climate change was occurring. When it got to the point that they couldn't completely deny it was happening, they switched to saying it wasn't caused by human activity. Maybe the next step is to say "Don't worry about climate change and what causes it - we'll adapt! We'll figure out where to grow our coffee, cacoa and vanilla! We'll enjoy the warmer weather!" Combine that line of thinking with the standard-issue right-wing attacks on higher education and you get Spun Silver's post.

 

[quartz]

wtheck is going on in this thread??

 

[snoopy]

I was wondering if Spun Silver's post is part of a new right-wing response to climate change. First they tried to deny that climate change was occurring. When it got to the point that they couldn't completely deny it was happening, they switched to saying it wasn't caused by human activity. Maybe the next step is to say "Don't worry about climate change and what causes it - we'll adapt! We'll figure out where to grow our coffee, cacoa and vanilla! We'll enjoy the warmer weather!" Combine that line of thinking with the standard-issue right-wing attacks on higher education and you get Spun Silver's post.

This is kind of the path my brother went down - and know that my brother is a chemist. He denied it for a few years, then he said, oh yes there is climate change but it's debatable if human activity impacts it. Now he is yes we can't deny it anymore there is climate change but the Chinese are contributing to it more than we are, so we don't have to do anything about it because what we would do won't matter anyway.

But BTW, if you are still a climate change denier, know that that horse has left the barn. Even for many Republicans these days.