Welcome to the Saturday edition of The Conversation U.S.’s Daily newsletter.
This week – while editing a piece about how diet has featured in the Texas Senate race – I found myself listening and relistening to cable news and podcast clips litigating whether Rep. James Talarico is vegetarian or vegan or, alternatively, whether his campaign “runs on barbecue.”
My husband, who is from India, where being vegetarian is not particularly noteworthy, found it funny that voters would care whether a candidate eats meat. “Does that matter to anyone?” he asked, incredulously. Turns out it does.
S. Marek Muller and David Rooney are communication scholars who study the symbolic roles of meat and meat-eating in political communication. Their story today explains how what Americans eat can be shorthand for who they are, and why they expect this meaty culture war to beef up from here.
This week we also liked stories about making surge pricing work for workers and consumers, the consequences of spotty public health data, and how socialist institutions endure in deep-red North Dakota.
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