Plant-based food: The new gluten-free?

Thanks, Sprouts! Without your ad:

I never would have known that bread is a "plant-based food."

You know what else is a plant-based food?

Oreos. (Not Hydrox, though, unless they stopped using lard.)

Kettle fried potato chips. (Not that they use an actual kettle at Frito-Lay, I'm sure.)

Marshmallows.

You get the idea.

I don't know the "why" of this; I suspect it's "vegetarianism for people who don't want to call themselves vegetarians" or something similar.

Per the above, vegetarianism isn't necessarily healthy, of course.

Nor, to the degree something like kettle chips is based on monocrop agriculture, is it environmentally friendly, environmentally sustainable or something else. Fried crickets and even grass-fed beef (as long as that's 100 percent of the feed cycle) are more environmentally friendly and sustainable, arguably. Definitely so with fried crickets; can't ever picture them being overharvested.

So, yeah, this is like stamping "gluten-free" on foods that never had any gluten in the first place.

You know, like this plant-based kettle chips that are also gluten-free.

But, per H.L. Mencken, nobody ever went broke underestimating American intelligence about food and food marketing.