With Memorial Day behind us, Americas summer travel season is now in full swing. While flyers should be aware of how to find great fares and the best apps to use when taking a vacation overseas, they should also be mindful of a few new rule changes going into effect at popular airlines, which could impact their trips.
Those changes are happening at two of Americas most well-known airlinesSouthwest and Unitedand include alterations to the airlines’ free baggage and check-in policies, respectively. Heres what to know about the changes and when they go into effect.
Southwests signature Bags Fly Free policy changes on May 28
On Wednesday, May 28, Southwests signature Bags Fly Free policy is changing. The policy has been a defining feature of the airline for decades, which lets Southwest fliers check up to two bags for free on any flight.
However, come May 28, that policy will end for many Southwest passengers. As Fast Company previously reported, many passengers who book flights on Southwest from May 28 will now need to pay for checked baggage, although some will still be able to check bags for free.
Heres how the new checked baggage policies work, according to Southwest:
If you are a Rapid Rewards A-List Preferred Member or traveling on Business Select fares, youll still be able to check up to two bags for free on your flight.
If you are an A-List Member or a Rapid Rewards Credit Cardmember, youll get one checked bag for free on each flight.
But if you dont fall into the categories above, youll now be charged to check your first and second bags on each flight.
Its important to note that these new baggage-check rules and fees only apply to flights booked on or after May 28, 2025. If you booked your flight before that date, youll still be able to take advantage of Southwests old Bags Fly Free policy even if the flight takes place after May 28.
Uniteds check-in policy changes on June 3
On June 3, anyone flying on United will need to check in for their flight at least 45 minutes before departure, the airline confirmed with Fast Company. Previously, some passengers could check in as little as 30 minutes before their flight.
Those who do not check in at least 45 minutes before their flight is scheduled to depart will be denied boarding starting June 3.
Historically, United has allowed those flying without checked bags to check in by as little as 30 minutes before a domestic flight. Those on domestic flights with checked bags had a 45-minute check-in cutoff.
In order to simplify things for gate staff and provide uniformity for passengers, United will now require anyone on a domestic flight with or without checked bags to check in at least 45 minutes before departure.
“The change brings greater consistency for our customers by aligning with our current checked baggage deadline and the check-in policies followed by most other airlines,” a United spokesperson told Fast Company via email.
It should be noted that the new 45-minute check-in rule only applies to domestic flights. For international flights, United requires passengers to check in at least 60 minutes before the scheduled departure. Uniteds check-in time limits can be found here.
More Klarna customers are having trouble repaying their “buy now, pay later” loans, the short-term lender said this week. The disclosure corresponded with reports by lending platforms Bankrate and LendingTree, which cited an increasing share of all “buy now, pay later” users saying they had fallen behind on payments.The late or missed installments are a sign of faltering financial health among a segment of the US population, some analysts say, as the nation’s total consumer debt rises to a record $18.2 trillion and the Trump administration moves to collect on federal student loans.Shoppers who opt to finance purchases through BNPL services tend to be younger than the average consumer, and a study from the Federal Reserve last year said Black and Hispanic women were especially likely to use the plans, which customers of all income levels are increasingly adopting.“While BNPL provides credit to financially vulnerable consumers, these same consumers may be overextending themselves,” the authors of the Federal Reserve study wrote. “This concern is consistent with previous research that has shown consumers spend more when BNPL is offered when checking out and that BNPL use leads to an increase in overdraft fees and credit card interest payments and fees.”As Klarna grows its user base and revenue, the Swedish company said its first-quarter consumer credit losses rose 17% compared to the January-March period of last year, to $136 million.A company spokesperson said in a statement that the increase largely reflected the higher number of loans Klarna made year over year. The percentage of its loans at a global level that went unpaid in the first quarter grew from 0.51% in 2024 to 0.54% this year, and the company sees “no sign of a weakened U.S. consumer,” he said.
More consumers are using ‘buy now, pay later’ plans
Buy now, pay later plans generally let consumers split payments for purchases into four or fewer installments, often with a down payment at checkout. The loans are typically marketed as zero-interest, and most require no credit check or a soft credit check.BNPL providers promote the plans as a safer alternative to traditional credit cards when interest rates are high. The popularity of the deferred payment plans, and the expanding ways customers can use them, have also sparked public attention.When Klarna announced a partnership with DoorDash in March, the news led to online comments about Americans taking out loans to buy takeout food. Similar skepticism emerged when Billboard revealed that more than half of Coachella attendees used installment plans to finance their tickets to the music festival.An April report from LendingTree said about four in ten users of buy now, pay later plans said they had made late payments in the past year, up from one in three last year. According to a May report from Bankrate, about one in four users of the loans chose them because they were easier to get than traditional credit cards.The six largest BNPL providers Affirm, Afterpay, Klarna, PayPal, Sezzle, and Zip originated about 277.3 million loans for $33.8 billion in merchandise in 2022, or an amount equal to about 1% of credit card spending that year, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
An industry that is coming under less regulatory scrutiny
The federal agency said this month it did not intend to enforce a Biden-era regulation that was designed to put more boundaries around the fintech lenders.The rule treated buy now, pay later loans like traditional credit cards under the Truth In Lending Act, requiring disclosures, refund processing, a formal dispute process and other protections.The regulation, which took effect last year, also prevented borrowers from being forced into automatic payments or charged with multiple fees for the same missed payment.The Trump administration said its non-enforcement decision came “in the interest of focusing resources on supporting hard-working American taxpayers” and that it would “instead keep its enforcement and supervision resources focused on pressing threats to consumers, particularly servicemen and veterans.”Consumer advocates maintain that without federal oversight, customers seeking refunds or in search of clear information about BNPL fee structures and interest rates will have less legal recourse.
There are risks to taking out installment loans
Industry watchers point to consumers taking out loans they can’t afford to pay back as a top risk of BNPL use. Without credit bureaus keeping track of the new form of credit, there are fewer safeguards and less oversight.Justine Farrell, chair of the marketing department at the University of San Diego’s Knauss School of Business, said that when consumers aren’t able to make loan payments on time, it worsens the economic stress they’re already experiencing.“Consumers’ financial positions feel more spread thin than they have in a long time,” said Farrell, who studies consumer behavior and BNPL services. “The cost of food is continuing to go up, on top of rent and other goods so consumers are taking advantage of the ability to pay for items later.”The Consumer Federation of America and other watchdog organizations have expressed concern about the rollback of BNPL regulation as the use of the loans continues to rise.“By taking a head-in-the-sand approach to the new universe of fintech loans, the new CFPB is once again favoring Big Tech at the expense of everyday people,” said Adam Rust, director of financial services at the Consumer Federation of America.
The Associated Press receives support from Charles Schwab Foundation for educational and explanatory reporting to improve financial literacy. The independent foundation is separate from Charles Schwab and Co. Inc. The AP is solely responsible for its journalism.
Cora Lewis, Associated Press
No place is more vulnerable to hurricanes in the 50 U.S. states than the Florida Keys.The chain of islands celebrated by singer Jimmy Buffett in his odes to tropical escapism is surrounded by water, jutting out 120 miles southwesterly from Florida’s mainland to Key West with the Gulf and Atlantic Ocean on either side.The archipelago historically has been known for its quirky and libertarian inhabitants who revel in the islands’ hedonistic, artistic, and outdoorsy lifestyle. In recent years, it also has become a haven for the wealthy.Overseeing safety for the more than 80,000 inhabitants of the Conch Republicthe nickname for the islands after denizens declared a tongue-in-cheek secession from the United States in the early 1980sis Shannon Weiner, director of emergency management for Monroe County, Florida.The Atlantic hurricane season starts June 1, and the county has some new weapons this season, including a brand-new emergency operations center and a new seawater desalination water treatment plant. The county also relies on surveillance flights from hurricane-hunting aircraft from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for information about how to prepare.But, the potential for a catastrophic storm like Hurricane Irma in 2017 is always at the back of residents’ minds. The Category 4 storm made landfall in the Florida Keys with winds up to 132 mph (209.2 km/h), destroying around 1,180 homes and seriously damaging another 3,000.Weiner recently talked to the Associated Press about the upcoming hurricane season. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
AP: Why is Monroe County perhaps the most vulnerable place in the 50 U.S. states for hurricanes?Shannon Weiner: Our entire island chain is surrounded by water. We have more water than we do land mass. Being uniquely situated between the two large bodies of water makes us very vulnerable. We see storms early, sometimes in their formationstorms that come across the Atlantic and then storms that develop in the south, in the Caribbean Sea. We tend to be in their path, and so we get a lot of storm practice here in Monroe County.Given your dependence on the National Weather Service and NOAA for hurricane predictions, how concerned are you about recent job cuts and budget cuts to the federal government?The weather service is a good partner, and the field offices, from what they were telling us and what they’re hearing here, everyone is secure. They are not expecting or anticipating any cuts to the (Florida Keys) field offices. So, of course, going into hurricane season, we’re really happy to hear that.Can we talk about Hurricane Irma? The Keys have always been vulnerable, but Irma was a shock to the system, right?The Keys had not had a storm of that magnitude or size since the early 20th century. People tend to get complacent. It’s human nature, right? They’re not as worried. They’re not as prepared. We were very fortunate with Irma in that we had plenty of days’ notice to evacuate. But when we came home and saw the devastation, it was an eye-opener. Being an island chain, we had unique challenges bringing logistics in to help us recover.Do residents typically evacuate when they are asked to?Usually, they tend to heed that advice. We are constantly reminding people to be prepared and how important it is in our county to evacuate because the Florida Keys, the entirety of the island chain, is a storm surge zone. People here tend to be pretty savvy when it comes to storms, and throughout the entire Keys, the bigger concern is storm surge rather than wind. We say, “hide from the wind and run from the water.”We are close to the start of the Atlantic hurricane season. What is keeping you up at night?The city of Key West is an incredibly resilient community. There’s a lot of history there. But there is also a lot of older architecture there. There are a lot of wooden homes, and for them to receive a storm, a direct impact of a major magnitude, that would be devastating for them. That is what keeps me up at nighta Category 4 or 5 storm hitting Key West.Given the Keys’ vulnerability, why do you think people choose to stay and live there?Because it’s beautiful here. It really is an island paradise. Being surrounded by a national marine sanctuary is amazing. I think everyone that lives here, we all live here for that reason. Because we appreciate the environment and the marine life and love the water. And so it’s worth it. You make sure that you’re prepared, and you have a plan if you need to go. And you go somewhere safe, and you come back, and you just put it back together.
Follow Mike Schneider on the social platform Bluesky: @mikeysid.bsky.social.
Mike Schneider, Associated Press
Hours before a federal law was set to take effect in January mandating that Chinese tech giant ByteDance sell TikTok’s U.S. operations, the social media app shut down. Though service was restored the next day, thousands of TikTok content creators were faced with the prospect of their source of income disappearing in an instant.
The incident laid bare a common problem creators face: As social media algorithms change and platforms fold and emerge, creators need to find a way to grow their following and take it with them to different sites. That’s where LTK comes in.
The 14-year-old company allows influencers to connect with brands, get commissions from products they plug, and hedge their bets by making money off any platform. The company also helps creators build a community thats not subject to the vicissitudes of social media platforms: When a creator links to a product via LTK on any social platform, consumers have the option of following that person on LTK as well. And the company helps creators carry their sponsored content deals from platform to platform as well.
LTK, which raised $550 million in 2021 at a $2 billion valuation, works with more than 350,000 creators, 8,000 retailers, and a million brands. Today, LTK facilitates more than $5 billion in annual sales through its platform.
The company was cofounded by Amber Venz Box, a content creator herself, who also serves as its president. Venz Box came on the Most Innovative Companies podcast to discuss how LTK is navigating ever-changing social media algorithms, the increasing amount of AI-generated social content, and consumer fatigue from sponsored content.
Every creator I talk with says they’re seeing less and less return on investment from their social posts. How do you handle that trend as a company?
Social media has changed a lot in the last year specifically. Until 2024, social media was a place to follow creators and be part of communities. You had control over your feed. [Instagram head] Adam Mosseri came out in January and said this year the majority of what you see is going to be recommended content [that an algorithm selects]. We saw and felt that. If you had 100,000 impressions in January, you ended the year with about 25,000 impressions per post.
How do you deal with those changes?
We saw, as early as 2015, 2016, that their business is built on advertising. Our business is not built on that. So there are incentives that are misaligned. You have to displace a piece of creator content in order to insert an ad. That was the beginning of us thinking that we need to start planning. Snap also scaled quickly [around that time]. We were seeing the rise of a major scaled platform almost every two years, which presents fragmentation risk for our creators. We also saw consumers shift from desktop content consumption to mobile.
At the end of 2016, we realized we had to create a home base for our creators because when you play this tape forward, it’s not great for our industry. So by 2017, we launched the LTK app. That is where everything lives for [our creators], where they house their community, and [where] they could start using social media as a marketing platform.
Is video a big part of your business?
We introduced video to our platform 2017. Over the last two years our creators have produced 300% more video. It’s quickly becoming the largest content type on LTK and it’s the most important. We know that consumers really resonate with video. There’s a higher trust with that, and as a creator, I’m actually selling trust. Ultimately, I need to be in a relationship with my followers and video is the best way to do that. We totally rebuilt the app and relaunched it this year to be video-first.
When it comes to [the shutdown of] TikTok, we were the first generation to be fully disenfranchised for a minute. Our users were able to feel firsthand what it meant to have their community pulled. They need a home base to own their audience. We saw a huge uptick and people setting up their LTKs and driving their community over to the platform.
These days, consumers can spot sponsored content and advertising from a mile away. What are some of the ways a creator can stay authentic and also sell things?
Creators definitely don’t win by tricking people. For example, if I tell you this mascara is a tubing mascara and it’s not going to smudge on your face, and then when you try it and it smudges and it’s total crap and it’s flaky, you’re never going to trust me ever again. Creators need to be truly helpful.
The environment we’re in this year is so wild when it comes to trust because there’s just a lack of it across the internet. Consumers are looking at AI creators across TikTok. Mark Zuckerberg says the vast majority of content you’re going to see on his platform is going to be machine created. Those are super low-trust things. Being a human creator is a differentiator.
How does LTK make money?
When you look at the monetization structure, our incentives are aligned with the whole ecosystem. The creator wants to create content that resonates with consumers. When that content resonates, the consumer makes a purchase. In that case, the brand pays a commission or transaction fee to that creator. If you go to Sephora, maybe somebody’s getting a commission. If you go to me online and buy the lip gloss from me, I’m going to get a commission. That’s one piece of the business.
The other half is when brands come into our brand platform and say, Hey, I actually am launching that new lip gloss and I want to make sure everyone talks about it. They can find creators and have them do paid collaborations. The creator can accept offers through the platform or not. They’re being paid a flat fee to talk about the product.
LTK has tons of other [revenue-generating] products, but if you want to think of it in two core ways, it’s really the transaction revenue and then the campaigns or the collaborations.
Some of your competitors make money from affiliate links. What differentiates your business?
We’ve created a whole platform where creators set up and run their business. [We help with] everything from content creation and distribution to partnerships. There’s a really rich technology stack that doesn’t meet the consumer eye. And when it comes to consumer distribution, we have 40 million consumers. Thats about 38% of millennial and Gen Z women who are using LTK right now. LTK is in a category of its own pursuing a vision to be the creator app in the same way that LinkedIn is the professional app orStrava is the running app.
As a marketer, you want to leverage a creator who’s able to reach their audience. In January of this year, Adam Mosseri came out and said that stories are not a distribution point. They’re for friends who are friends in real life and know each other well. Everything he says comes true, so we should expect for the degradation of story reach even further than it already is. If you’re a brand marketer, it’s not great news. If you are working with a platform that is just providing affiliate links, then you may not have a place to use those links [when the algorithm changes]. Were providing a home base to creators that’s separate from the influencer marketing platforms and storefront affiliate type of platform.
LTK raised $300 million from SoftBank in 2021. Is the company profitable?
Yes. We’re really unique for a SoftBank investment. My husband and I started the business and self-funded it. It has remained within our family and we still both operate it. I’m the president and he’s the CEO of the company. Ten years in, we decided to give some relief to some of our shareholders. We were already a profitable business. What SoftBank allowed us to do is give some reward to people who had been with us for about 10 years and run our road map forward. Since that time, we’ve more than doubled the business. And we remain EBITDA positive.
Are you incorporating AI and machine learning into LTK?
Our team uses a suite of 20 different AI companies and products to be more efficient, whether it’s from legal to design to everything else. At LTK we think that our creators being human is their superpower, but we can make them more efficient. AI is being used across all of our services. We’ll be releasing AI music, which is music that’s custom-created for the videos and content that our creators have made. We also use AI to pre-tag their content. The CRM for our creators is also totally automated. Were also using it to send the right message to the right customer at the right time [to get them to buy something]. We sent over a billion notifications last year on behalf of our creators to their customers. On the brand side, we’re building campaigns for them in partnership with the right creators. The vast majority of creators we are recommending to brands are based on AI insights.
Will you ever let AI influencers on the platform?
We will not. The human promise is so important. There’s been a lot of articles that have come out actually about AI creators. They can gain a following and they look so real, but ultimately we think there’s a lack of trust. They’re not going to know that something ships faster, how it fits you. Again, it becomes like an ad, right? Because anything they’re going to be doing in that context is going to be because they were paid or told to by someone. So we will remain a human app, but it’ll be powered by AI. And the music might be created by AI, but the person that you’re chatting with and all that is real.
Last month in Los Angeles electric vehicle startup Slate Auto revealed its low-cost, American-made electric truck, with hopes to become the holy grail the auto industry needs to make EVs more affordable and accessible.The company expects its trucks sales price to be less than $20,000 with $7,500 U.S. federal tax incentives taken into consideration.
While markets like Europe and China are seeing moderate to accelerated sales growth in their electric vehicle markets, the transition to EVs is slower in the United States. According to McKinseys latest annual survey, 12% of respondents in the U.S. said they intend their next car purchase to be a battery electric vehicle. However, the rate of EV adoption depends on where consumers are located in the country with urban areas seeing rates twice as much as rural areas.
That data may indicate that adoption rates in the U.S. will remain slow, but Slate Auto chief commercial officer Jeremy Snyder is hoping the company can build demand by focusing on accessibility. Slate is approaching the automobile differently,” Snyder says. We are not competing with the existing market so I think it is creating a new one. People are going to want this one for the price, for the personalization.
According to the company, Slate Auto has raised its Series A and Series B, amounting to almost $700 million in funding. The company plans to produce up to 150,000 vehicles annually by the end of 2027which would be less than 10% of Teslas 2024 deliveries, but roughly three times what luxe EV brand Rivian expects to deliver this year.
[Image: Slate]
Less Money, more problems?
Currently, the average transaction price of an electric car in the U.S. is $59,205. Much of the market is dominated by high-dollar makers like Tesla, Rivian, and Polestar, which are likely out of reach for hourly wage workersSlate Autos target audience.
When you talk about target demographics for current automotive, everybody is going towards the top 20%, 30% of the market, Snyder says. We don’t need to focus there. We need to focus [on] the folks that don’t have a lot of product choice. Those are the folks that we are really wanting to provide a safe, reliable, and affordable vehicle to.
Since its reveal event, a recent report indicates that the company has garnered over 100,000 refundable reservations ahead of the trucks availability, which is expected by the last quarter of 2026.
[Image: Slate]
Infrastructure issues
Though Slates early numbers suggest an appetite for low-cost EVs, that hints at a need for more robust charging infrastructure, according to Philipp Kampshoff, McKinsey senior partner and leader of the consultancys automotive practice.
The moment you tap into the volume segment, you will also tap into a part of the consumer population that is going to be more reliant on public charging, Kampshoff says. Right now, most of the battery electric vehicle buyers are more affluent. They tend to have their own houses and they can charge at home. The moment you go more and more in the volume segment, [you] will have people that don’t own their houses and may be renting.
McKinsey’s summer 2024 report on EV buying trends, found only 9% of respondents felt existing charging infrastructure was sufficient.
Kampshoff explains that particularly in the U.S., there is a chicken and egg problem when it comes to public charging infrastructure. Some consumers are hesitant to purchase an EV because public charging stations are either not visible or do not exist. On the other hand, charging infrastructure players may not want to invest in establishing charging stations because of low EV ownership.
Based on lessons from other regions, potential solutions to this problem could center on government incentives beyond subsidies. For instance, in China, some nonmonetary incentives include preferential parking for EV drivers. Additionally, increasing awareness of existing public charging stations could also help resolve the issue.
“When people are worried because there’s not enough charging infrastructure, you don’t take that worry away unless you know they see it,” Kampshoff says. If you’re driving down a highway, it’s very easy to see a gas station. But, there’s no signage for EV stations in most states.”
Youve just graduated, and it’s time to get ready for your first adult job. This feels different from your summer jobs and internshipsyet its not. Take a pause, two deep breaths, and realize: you are not flying solo.
Remember: in the workplace and throughout your career, a we, not me mentality makes all the difference. None of us gets anywhere alone. Not even fiercely independent believers in rugged individualism.
Many graduates think they dont have a personal board of directors and that theyre starting their careers with an empty table. But Im here to tell you that nobody starts from zero. It can be hard to recognize at first, but you already have a group of people invested in you and your professional journey. These are your go-to people: those you trust, respect, and who have demonstrated their commitment to your professional growth and success. Think of the “board” as a figurative way to describe the individuals you turn to for guidance, support, input, radical honesty, and feedback.
How to establish your board of directors
First, start by setting some ground rules for your board: there are always open seats, and there are no term limits. Some people may only be on your board briefly; others may stay for a lifetime. These relationships shouldnt be transactional or one-way. They are respectful, thoughtful connections that you must nurture.
Here are three actions you can take to strengthen your relationship with your current board members.
1. Start with an audit
Ask yourself, whos already sitting at your table? Think about the people you call when youre in a personal or professional crisis, the ones who make you feel better just by talking. Think about the friends you trust to discuss school, career decisions, fashion dilemmas, or family stresses.
Dont forget about teammates, club members, or organization peers whose advice you value. Reflect on those who have once sat you down to walk you through a critical decision. Even family members who offer solicited (and sometimes unsolicited) advice can be part of your board if you trust their input. These are the people who are already serving.
2. Be open to changing your board members
Second, roll people off when necessary. Not everyone is meant to stay forever. As you grow and evolve, its natural for board membership to change. Sometimes its them, they might have life commitments that shift, which decreases availability. Sometimes its you. You develop new priorities or outgrow the relationship. Sometimes, a person might break your trust, and a once-valued board member no longer feels like a safe person. Whatever the reason, honor the evolution. The right board changes over time to meet the needs of the person you are becoming.
3. Show gratitude
Third, show gratitude. Ask yourself if youve truly done the work to nurture these relationships. Once you finish reading this, reach out to a few board members to say thank you. Whether you send a handwritten note, a text, an email, or make a phone call, be intentional. Share an updatelet them know youve graduated and are starting your next chapter. Express your gratitude with a specific example of how their support helped you reach this milestone. And tell them that youd like to stay in touch, if theyre open to continued communication. This isnt a transactionits the ongoing work of maintaining and valuing real relationships.
As you begin your new job, remember that there are always open seats at your boardroom table. Think about who youd like to join next. What areas of growth could benefit from more support? For example, when I graduated from medical school, I wished I had someone to help me with financial literacysomeone who could have guided me through paying off debt and making smart financial decisions. Books, podcasts, and newsletters are helpful, but nothing replaces having a real person to call or email when questions arise.
The most successful professionals dont achieve everything at once. They build careers by learning and applying micro skillssmall, intentional behaviors that compound over time and can be implemented in real time. Congratulations, graduate. You already have a board. People are serving on it. Now its time to reinforce, grow, and celebrate the support.
On February 17, Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek released a video assuring Oregonians that Donald Trump would not derail the progressive states efforts to combat climate change.
As promised during his presidential campaign, Trump had issued executive orders during his first week in office aimed at halting new sources of wind power and freezing Biden-era funding for renewable energy.
Oregon, Kotek said, had been leading the way for years on courageous state policies to fight climate change. Along with neighboring Washington state, Oregon has set an ambitious mandate for electric utilities to be carbon neutral within the next two decades.
Its going to take all of us working together finding innovative solutions, no matter the obstacles, to confront the climate crisis, the governor said, and we are not turning back.
But the reality is not nearly as inspiring as Kotek made it sound. For all their progressive claims, Oregon and Washington trail nearly all other states in adding new sources of renewable energy. Iowa, a Republican-led state with roughly the same population and usable volume of wind as Oregon, has built enough wind farms to generate three times as much wind power.
Whats held the Northwest back is a bottleneck Oregon and Washington leaders paid little attention to when they set out to go 100% green, an investigation by ProPublica and Oregon Public Broadcasting found: The region lacks the wiring to deliver new sources of renewable energy to peoples homes, and little has been done to change that.
Northwest leaders left it to a federal agency known as the Bonneville Power Administration to arrange badly needed upgrades to an electrical grid thats nearly a century old in places.
Bonneville, under a setup that is unique to the Northwest, owns most of the power lines needed to carry green power from the regions sunny and windy high desert to its major population centers. Bonneville has no state or local representation within its federally appointed bureaucracy and, by statute, operates as a self-funded business.
The agency decides which energy projects can hook up based on whether its infrastructure can handle the extra load, and it decides how quickly that infrastructure gets expanded. Its glacial pace has delayed wind and solar projects under Democratic and Republican presidents alike.
Of the 469 large renewable projects that applied to connect to Bonnevilles grid since 2015, only one has reached approval. Those are longer odds than in any other region of the country, the news organizations found. No major grid operator is as stingy as Bonneville in its approach to financing new transmission lines and substations needed to grow the power supply, according to industry groups that represent power producers.
Efforts to bypass Bonneville didnt start until this year, when Oregon and Washington legislators considered bills to create their own state bonding authorities for upgrading the regions high-voltage network.
Both bills died.
The grids severe constraints are hindering the Northwest at a time when it desperately needs more electricity. Oregon and Washington lawmakers lured power-guzzling data centers with tax breaks in recent years, and the industry has helped drive electricity demand sky high.
Having failed to add enough green-energy sources or any new gas-fired power, the Northwest buys electricity from elsewhere, at high prices, during extreme weather. Rates paid by customers of major Oregon utilities are now 50% higher than five years ago. The worsening energy shortage threatens millions of residents with continual rate hikes and sporadic power outagesnot to mention dashing the Northwests hopes of drastically reducing its contribution to climate change.
The people who, technically speaking, are in charge of our transmission system are dropping the ball, said Oregon state Rep. Mark Gamba, a Democrat who sponsored this years failed legislation aimed at creating a state grid improvement authority. We are absolutely looking at rolling blackouts, and we are absolutely looking at not hitting any of our climate targets when it comes to energy production.
Kotek declined an interview request. Kotek spokesperson Anca Matica said in a statement that the governor is open to innovative ideas to increase transmission capacity and labeled it key to achieving the states energy goals. She offered no direct response to questions about Oregons lack of progress in boosting renewables.
Reuven Carlyle, the former state senator who crafted Washingtons 2019 decarbonization bill, said he was deeply cognizant of the regions transmission challenges at the time but that plans to address the problem simply slipped.
Its certainly nothing to be proud of that it didnt get resolved, said Carlyle, who founded a consulting firm for climate-focused investments after leaving the Legislature. And its embarrassing that Oregon and Washington, which are such good-looking states, simply cant practically build anything in terms of energy.
In the final months of the Biden administration, Bonneville announced a plan to do some grid upgrades, and agency Administrator John Hairston has said the self-funded federal agency is investing in transmission as much as it can without taking on too much debt.
Bonneville responded to written questions from OPB and ProPublica by citing recent improvements to its process for connecting energy projects and noting that its not the only player responsible for growing the grid. The agency added that it remains committed to its critical mission of supporting the region with affordable, reliable and secure power.
But Bonnevilles latest plans for the grid are in jeopardy. In addition to suspending all new federal wind permits, the Trump White House has added Bonneville to the long list of agencies cutting federal jobs. Three Bonneville employees, requesting anonymity for fear of retribution, said the cuts will make building out the transmission system even harder.
With four years of Joe Bidens climate activism in the rearview mirror, the Pacific Northwest appears to have blown its best chance to realize its ambitions for renewable power.
Projects in Limbo
David Brown is a case study in the long and agonizing path to breaking ground on a Northwest solar farm.
The Portland energy developer has been in the renewables business since 2003, and his firm, Obsidian Renewables, has a plan to put a vast array of solar panels on a piece of southern Oregon high desert thats the size of 3,000 football fields. Brown said its expected to produce enough energy for about 110,000 homes.
Obsidian will handle everything from acquiring the land to getting permits approved, then look to sell the solar farm to an investor or utility once its ready for construction.
But any power plant, whether fueled by coal, wind or sunshine, has to be wired into the electrical grid: a system of transmission lines and transformers that pools electricity and channels it to customers. While power lines crisscross the nation, power mainly gets used within the region that generates it.
As in most parts of the Northwest, the nearest transmission lines Brown could plug into belong to Bonneville. He asked the agency for permision to connect his solar farm to its system in 2020. He doesnt expect approval until at least 2028.
I dont know a single place in Oregon or Washington where I can connect a new solar project and get transmission. Not one, he said.
One part of the holdup is that Bonneville needs to finish studying what kind of substation it will need to safely let a big new power source into the grid.
Browns 400-megawatt solar farm has been through three such interconnection studies so far. The first time, Bonneville estimated Browns business would need to pay $23 million to build a substation, which Bonneville would own. The second study bumped the price to $70 million. By the third, Brown said, it was $212 million. He said the agency blamed supply chain and labor issues, in part, for the near-tripling in cost over four years.
There are hundreds of projects like Browns: more than 200,000 megawatts worth of renewable energy awaiting Bonnevilles signoff, or enough to power the Northwest nearly 10 times over. One proposed wind farm has been in Bonnevilles queue for more than 16 years.
Among projects 20 megawatts or bigger that were proposed in the past decade, the only one that made it through Bonnevilles waitlist was an add-on to an existing Portland General Electric wind farm that didnt require any major transmission upgrades. It won approval in 2022.
The Northwest is not the only region with a backlog of projects waiting to plug in. Grid operators across the country have navigated a deluge of new wind, solar and mass-storage battery requests in recent years. Many applicants proved to be merely testing the waters, with nearly 3 in 4 ultimately pulling their plans, according to Joseph Rand, an energy researcher at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
But other regions managed to sort out problems better than the Northwest, OPB and ProPublica found.
The news organizations used data from Bonneville and from a national database compiled by researchers at the Berkeley Lab to analyze how many large renewable energy projects waiting for grid connections made it to the finish line.
The data showed that for large projects proposed since 2015, Bonnevilles one approval translates to a success rate of 0.2%, the lowest rate of any region. By contrast, about 10% of new applications for major projects in the Midwest and 28% in Texas made it through.
Bonneville has said one reason for the slow progress is that its waitlist is jammed up with too many speculative projectsmore dream than financial reality. (Theres no evidence that Bonneville has it worse, though; data shows that the share of developers who back out after seeking Bonnevilles approval, 76%, is close to the national average.)
Renewable advocates and energy developers say Bonneville struggles to hire and retain people to process connection requests because the agency pays less than the private sector. In January, Washington U.S. Reps. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, a Democrat, and Dan Newhouse, a Republican, introduced a bill to make Bonnevilles compensation more competitive, but it hasnt moved since.
To speed things up, Bonneville has halted new requests for grid connections and changed its approach to reviewing applications. Where specialists used to review proposals one at a time, in the order received, they now plan to prioritize projects that are closest to ready. The agency said the new approach will increase the number of projects that get connected while cutting processing time in half, from an expected 15 years.
Bonneville said in a statement that it is confident the interconnection reforms we adopted will prove sufficient to meet our customers needs.
The changes have not yet helped Brown, who has been awaiting Bonnevilles approval to start work in southern Oregon since 2020. For now, the planned solar project remains in limbo.
Its gonna take me years and a couple million dollars to get land use approval, Brown said, and why do I want to get land use approval if I dont know whether or not I have transmission?
Theres No Room for Your Project
The predicament Brown and dozens of other wind and solar developers face is a product of the Northwests unusual history with electric power.
Oregon and Washington were blessed with powerful rivers fed by abundant snow and rainfall. Beginning in the New Deal era, the federal government built dozens of hydroelectric dams and a sprawling transmission system to electrify the rural West. The regions energy supply was cheaper and emitted less carbon than the rest of the nations. Bonneville was at the helm.
Even today, hydropower supplies almost 35% of Oregons electricity and more than 50% of Washingtons, according to the most recent data available.
But hydroelectric dams are a finite and increasingly shaky power source. Output from existing dams dips whenever droughts sap water from the Columbia River basin. New dams are a nonstarter because dams have decimated the regions salmon populations.
That leaves wind, solar and battery storage as the most promising places for the Northwest to turn as it approaches self-imposed deadlines to fully wean utilities off electricity that comes from oil, coal or gas.
Bonneville has now become a barrier to accommodating the new power sources, six green energy developers told OPB and ProPublica.
An agency that erected more than 4,800 miles of high-voltage transmission lines from 1960 to 1990 built fewer than 500 miles from 1990 to 2020. In the past five years, it built 1.
Bonneville has the ability to borrow money, at low interest rates, for projects that would enable the grid to carry more power. Congress pushed the agency to do so in 2021, more than doubling Bonnevilles debt limit specifically to finance transmission upgrades.
The chairs of the Oregon and Washington public utility commissions, in a joint 2022 letter, urged Bonneville to spend the money: The region needs BPA to be a leader in delivering a transmission system that serves the entire region.
Bonneville, however, has been reluctant to take on debt. It is still paying off billions of dollars in bonds from failed nuclear plants in the 1970s. As recently as 2019, the agencys finances were so poor that some economists expected it to become insolvent.
Bonnevilles transmission planners, for their part, have told OPB and ProPublica in previous interviews that they want to avoid building expensive transmission lines that no one ends up using.
We cant speculate and build a transmission line to nowhere, Jeff Cook, the agencys vice president for transmission planning, said in May 2024.
When Bonneville announced in the fall it would tap some of its expanded debt limit to help pay for $5 billion in transmission upgrades over a decade, renewable energy advocates characterized the work as long overdue maintenance that wouldnt provide the expansion the grid needs.
Most of the work Bonneville announced was the equivalent of fixing potholes, installing some new round-abouts, doing some repaving, Spencer Gray, executive director of the Northwest & Intermountain Power Producers Coalition, said in an email.
A frther frustration for wind and solar developers that is unique to Bonneville: The grid operator makes them absorb an outsize share of the cost for projects that help the transmission network accommodate their electricityand it requires a big deposit up front. Thats true even if the new power lines benefit a wide network and will be around for many generations of customers.
Lately, the answer to these individual developers has been, Theres no room for your project. If you want to put this project on our system, its going to cost you this many millions of dollars to help us upgrade the system, said Sarah Edmonds, president of a coalition of utilities known as the Western Power Pool.
The approach, Edmonds said, has had a chilling effect on the ability of developers to get their projects online.
Michelle Manary, Bonnevilles vice president of transmission marketing and sales, said requiring up-front deposits keeps existing ratepayers from getting stuck with the tab if a developer backs out and that Bonneville has begun work on a transmission upgrade. She said other regions have more control over who pays these costs because their entire distribution networks are under one operator. Bonnevilles transmission lines are more like highways, from which electric utilities serve as exit ramps that deliver power the last mile to Northwest neighborhoods.
Manary denied that Bonnevilles current way of allocating costs has stifled green energy projects. But she acknowledged the agency needs to reevaluate its policy amid the flood of applications for new projects, and she said that process is underway.
Texas Is Kicking Our Ass
The rest of the nation has taken a different approach to bringing green power onlinewith better outcomes.
In most parts of the country, each grid has a central, independent operator, known as a regional transmission organization, typically run by a board that represents customers, electric utilities and other groups. Bonneville recently rejected joining a California-based energy market that advocates described as the Northwests best bet at accelerating the adoption of renewables.
In Texas, which runs its own grid, large renewable projects applying to connect in the past decade took a median of 19 months to get the green light, or nearly two years less than the one project Bonneville approved in that time frame. California and the Midwest were also faster than Bonneville.
Texas doesnt require project-by-project grid upgrades the way other grid operators do. It essentially tells developers it will connect their project, and then it figures out how to balance the added electricity after the fact.
Texas and other regional grid operators spend billions more than Bonneville on transmission upgrades annually, and they spread the costs across a wider swath of customers than Bonneville does. (Bonneville says the federal agency differs so much from regional operators that theyre not a fair comparison group.)
Texas brought more energy online in the past two years than any other power region. Thats helped the oil and gas powerhouse become the countrys biggest producer of wind and solar energy. Last year alone it added more than enough renewable energy to power the entire Northwest.
Texas is kicking our ass, said Gamba, the Oregon state representative.
Northwest lawmakers were told that theyd need to find effective ways of confronting their regions aging transmission system if they wished to phase out coal and natural gas.
As Washington lawmakers debated a mandate for renewable power in 2019, Nicholas Garcia of the Washington Public Utility Districts Association testified that replacing coal plants with wind and solar would require more transmission, significantly more transmission.
In 2021, when Oregon lawmakers debated their own mandate for carbon-free energy, Republicans also raised concerns that the states transmission lines were maxed out. It became one more GOP argument against the bill, in addition to saying more should be done to ensure green energy projects were built in Oregon.
Numerous reportsfrom the Oregon and U.S. departments of energy, for examplesupported the assertion that heftier transmission lines were needed.
Bonneville would be key to meeting that need, with one utilities lobbyist calling Bonnevilles grid the backbone for decarbonization in testimony to Oregon lawmakers.
But Oregon state Rep. Pam Marsh, who led the 2021 effort, said in a recent interview she was focused on getting utilities to cut their carbon emissions and that green energy advocates werent demanding transmission improvements at the time.
I was not thinking personally about the role that Bonneville might play in this, said Marsh, a Democrat representing southern Oregon.
Washingtons Legislature took some action on the need for better transmission: It required the state to study the issue. The resulting 2022 report concluded that the grid was indeed inadequate but led to little in the way of solutions. Instead, lawmakers decided to require utilities to plan out transmission needs 20 years ahead rather than 10, and they created a statewide environmental review in hopes of streamlining the states approval process for transmission. It did nothing about impediments posed by Bonneville.
The Legislature was a little complacent about relying on Bonneville to upgrade the grid, said Sen. Sharon Shewmake, a freshman lawmaker in 2019 when Washington enacted its energy mandate.
Shewmake and Gamba both introduced legislation this year following states like Colorado, New Mexico, North Dakota and Wyoming in creating independent authorities to finance transmission infrastructure. Gamba said he led an 80-person group of interested parties through 18 months of drafting. Democratic Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson labeled Shewmakes bill a priority.
The legislation didnt make it through either states Democrat-controlled legislatures, however.
Brown, the energy developer whos been awaiting Bonnevilles solar approval since 2020, said the future of the Northwests energy dreams looks dim.
We dont have a prayer of meeting our heralded, flag-waving renewable energy goals, he said. The dialogue will be to blame Trump; it wont be to blame ourselves for poor planning and extremely low expectations.
Tony Schick and Monica Samayoa, Oregon Public Broadcasting
Ellis Simani assisted with data analysis.
ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. This article was produced for ProPublicas Local Reporting Network in partnership with Oregon Public Broadcasting.
Were often told to stand up for ourselves, have boundaries, “do you,” and often in the process, frequently encouraged to say “no.” In recent times, weve seen entire books and productivity philosophies built around the art of refusal.
Saying “no” works well for establishing healthy workplace boundaries and for self-preservation, and many see it as the stamp of a mature professional. The ability to say “no” creates a respectful and safe workplace, helps avoid burnout, and importantly, elevates and empowers individuals.
But there is such a thing as saying “no” too often. And as a result, you might miss out on promotions, learning opportunities, and being part of important projects. In the process, your career could stagnate.
Identifying boundaries or barriers
One of the ways we justify the “no” is by positioning it as a boundary. But not every “no” is a boundary. These false boundaries are obstructive barriers. Instead of protection, they can actually act as an obstruction to growth, quietly and assuredly dismantling opportunities from coming your way.
Statements like “I dont have time” or “Im too busy,” without an offer of a solution, are hard stops. Using statements habitually can be problematic because it has the potential to send the wrong message to your boss and team. They stop being a reason and start becoming a reputation.
We tend to decline specific projects when they appear too challenging or unfamiliar, or when they potentially expose weaknesses. Yet, research supports the idea that discomfort can be a catalyst for growth.
Boundaries need to evolve with context. Static boundaries may provide short-term clarity, but dynamic boundariesthose that respond to workload, team goals, and personal valuecreate sustainability.
How saying ‘no’ can impact growth and learning
Saying “no” out of fear rather than necessity can cause you to miss out on developing skills, exploring new networks, and having experiences that test your resilience. Studies in developmental and organizational psychology show that growth occurs on the edge of competence, not in the comfort zone. When we say “no” to tasks that feel uncertain or emotionally risky, we shield ourselves from the very friction that sharpens our skills.
Neuroscientific studies suggest that novelty and challenge stimulate learning centers in the brain. Research shows that exposure to novel environments can enhance memory consolidation and recall. Additional studies demonstrate that novelty tends to activate the dopamine system, which plays a central role in learning. That stretch project you’re tempted to decline? It may offer more return on investment for your brain than any formal training.
Being aware of relational consequences
The workplace is a social ecosystem with collaboration and trust built over time. Say “no” too often and you can weaken precious relationships. This can hamper teamwork and connection. To build psychological safety, which is foundational to high-performing teams, you need shared risk and shared effort. When you constantly say “no” without context or care, you inadvertently signal disengagement, which corrodes the very trust high-performing teams rely on.
When you display frequent signals of detachment and resistance to take on stretch projects, you run the risk of them seeing you as a “non-participant.” When that happens, others might start to exclude you from influence, advancement, and trust-building. And when colleagues cant rely on your participation, they inevitably stop including you in pivotal conversations. Saying “yes” is a social cue that communicates engagement, cooperation, and a willingness to be part of the ensemble.
The importance of saying ‘yes’ when you dont want to
Sometimes and often in life, we have to do the things we dont want to do. And at work, its no different. Every job has unpalatable aspects. Even the most glamorous of positions. Its the ying that balances the jobs yang. Accepting that we sometimes have to do things we dont want to do is part of being a productive member of the workforce and your team. Helpingeven when its inconvenientsignals credibility and fosters influence across teams.
Additionally, reaching long-term goals often means doing things we dont feel like doing. Too many refusals over time, and others may interpret your “no’s” as disengagement or entitlement. If youre in a leadership or management role, dont delegate parts of your job because you dont like them. You might have the authority to do that, but your team will see through it. Over time, it can erode trust and credibility, two things no leader can afford to lose.
Say “yes” if you dont want to, but only if youll benefit from the learning, networking, and development. Say “yes” if it assists a team member, and if it is a critical team and business value. Dont forget that you might need the favor one day, too. The more people who see your actions, the more influence you have.
When should you say ‘no’?
Of course, there are times when “no” is the appropriate answer. Saying “no” when saying “yes” would compromise your values, ethics, or professional integrity. Just ensure your claim on values is genuine and not a cosmetic excuse. Otherwise, it risks becoming another false boundary. Say “no” when the cost is too high, when it leads to too much stress and burnout.
If you feel burdened and overwhelmed, saying “no” can be a legitimate and smart decision. However, you still need to say it the right way. Knowing when and how to say “no” is a skill. Your “no” should never be a limitation. Saying “no” at workthe right way and for the right reasonshould empower, not restrict. Refusal isn’t inherently bad. Quite the opposite, its essential. But discernment is key.
When you do say “no,” maintain goodwill. It can be a redirection rather than a rejection. You can achieve this by offering an alternate solution. This may mean a change of date, deadline, or part of the task. Follow up to make sure all went well. A well-placed “no” isnt about shutting things down, its about knowing when, where, and how to create the most value.
When you reach the role of manager in an organization (particularly for the first time), you have often been there a while. Chances are, youre managing people who had roles like the one you had before you started to supervise others. The rhythms and routines of work are familiar.
Despite your feelings of closeness to team members on the front lines, you’re likely to forget three key issues that can hamper your ability to succeed. These factors can be a particular problem when working with people who are new to the organization.
Now youre one of ‘them’
When you become a manager, you dont feel much different than you did before your promotion. In fact, when you first step into that managerial role, you may feel less confident about going to work and doing your job than you did when you were a successful individual contributor.
When you head to work, youre probably going to see most of the same people you used to work with closely. Only, something is different. You have suddenly gone from being one of us to being one of them. Thats rightnow youre on the management side of things.
You may very well want to be friends with all of your superviseesparticularly because you may have been close to many of them before getting your new role. But, your responsibilities will make it difficult to have the same relationship with the front-line team as you did before, because you also have to give them assignments and evaluate their performance. It’s easy to forget the way you used to view management before you entered into that role.
There are big information asymmetries
Once you move into a leadership role, you are privy to a lot of information about what is happening across the organization including discussions of strategy and new initiatives. Much of this information isn’t spread to the front lines of the organization, and is often not relevant to the daily work of individual contributors.
That means you need to become more effective at talking with people who do not share some of the knowledge you have. You may have to explain more of your references and remind yourself of the likely state of information of the people who report to you.
In addition, while Im not a huge fan of organizational secrets, there are times when you become aware of information that is not supposed to be shared more widely. There are often good strategic reasons for a company to withhold some information from all employees until it can be communicated broadly and with a consistent message. It can be difficult to avoid spilling the beans, but you have to practice having knowledge other people might want to know, but cant hear yet.
New people are still learning
A common problem for many people who have developed some expertise is returning to the beginners mind. It can be difficult to remember how little you knew before you were steeped in the processes, jargon, and lore of the organization.
As a manager, a significant part of your role is coaching new people. That means reminding yourself what it is like not to know anything about how the organization works.
Early on, you may find that what’s wrong with new employees is that they do not have basic knowledge of how to do their jobs or how the organization functions. Remember that you probably had no clue how to do your job when you first started. What makes people so smart is not that we come preloaded with lots of understanding of how to do tasks, but rather that we are so effective at learning from others effectively.
So, give your newest employees some grace. Give them a chance to adapt to their new environment. Teach a lot. Create a team where people want to let you know all the things they dont yet understand. It’s much easier to teach someone who owns the gaps in their knowledge than to have to ferret out the holes in your employees knowledge that they are reluctant to reveal.
The hottest thing in meat, these days? Apparently, its vegetables.
Nectar, a nonprofit research organization dedicated to advancing alternative proteins, released findings last week from a large-scale blind taste test comparing hybrid meat-veggie products with traditional meat. The blended products, which theyre calling balanced proteins, are a hit with omnivoresso much so that testers actually preferred some of them to their all-meat counterparts.
The irony is that a burger is a blended product, says Andrew Arentowicz, CEO & Co-Founder of Both, one of the brands that taste testers in the Nectar survey rated as on-par with comparable all-meat products. You got lettuce, tomato, onion, cheese, ketchup, mayonnaise, pickles, thats a burger. So this isnt some like oh-my-god what a revolutionary concept; its actually very obvious, the whole thing.
Perhaps Arentowicz is right that this is a no-brainer, but I do think the study results are impressive, and maybe even a little surprising, given that we arent exactly a nation of veggie lovers. Only about one in ten Americans eat the recommended amount of fruit and vegetables. That gap mattersnot just for personal health, but for the planet and animals, too. Issues of access, cost, and culture are, of course, factors here, but it cant be denied that taste is also a concern. No matter how convenient or inexpensive, if people dont find the healthier and more eco-friendly option to be tasty, theyre going to have a hard time choosing it.
And for some people, the taste and texture of vegetables just arent appealing. Thats where the whole idea of plant-based meat like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods even came from: People like the taste of animal flesh, but arent okay with the health, environmental, and ethical drawbacks, so mission-driven entrepreneurs devised a sort of compromise. But so far, that compromise just hasnt been good enough to win most people over.
The market identified the right problem, that people want to eat less meat, says Arentowicz. But it picked the wrong solution. Nobody asked for more processed plant[-based meat], or more lab-grown meat. So we decided to give consumers what they say they want, which is meat, but less meat.
As someone whose lifes work is devoted to empowering people to reduce their intake of factory farmed animal products, I remain enthusiastic about all forms of alternative protein. After all, its not as if any other strategyincluding non-tech-food ones like policy and educationhave shown great promise in achieving this goal (societal meat consumption is more or less up year over year). But I also welcome the trend of plant-forward products that are chock-full of vegetables, fungi, and/or legumes.
For example, DUOs and Fables blended burgers are infused with mushrooms and Perdues blended nuggets contain chickpeas and cauliflowerall were rated as tasting better than comparable conventional products. While I wish more people were drawn to vegan options, less meat is less meat, and it could be a pathway to a more plant-forward lifestyle.
Crafty parents have been doing it for generations: Trojan-horsing some veggies into their kids diet by hiding them in more preferable foods. Some might object to using this kind of spoonful of sugar strategy with full-grown human adultsa wife who stealthily buys blended meat for her husband, for examplecalling it paternalistic or rolling their eyes at grown-ups who cant just eat a vegetable. But frankly, I dont see the problem. The reason people have been pulling this trick for ages is because it worksand thats what matters.
Granted, it might not work as well when they know what’s inside. Food aversions can be severe and deeply psychological; for some individuals, just knowing that mushrooms are in a foodeven if theyre not obviouscan spark disgust, or worse. And of course, some people are just picky eaters who wont be sold on a partial-veggie burger. Still, its worth a shot, and as the Nectar study shows, taste is on the side of blended meat.
The reality is most people arent going to hop on the all-kale-all-the-time train. Still, sans a few carnivore-diet shills, everyone knows they should be eating more vegetables. But if youve ever met a human being, you know were not entirely rational animals. Every smoker knows it would be healthier to quit, but that knowledge doesnt make it any easier, let alone more enjoyable. A gentler approach, one centered around harm reduction, may be the best way to help some people change their habits. If adding some veggies into a beef patty or chicken nugget is whats going to get people eating in a way thats not only better for their own health, but for the climate and the well-being of animals, isnt that ultimately worth it?
Perhaps there doesnt need to be a binary that pits alternative and traditional meat as competing products in a zero-sum game for consumer favor. Perhaps embracing balanced proteins could be the solution for brands struggling from the perception of being unhealthy, in these supposedly hyper-“wellness”-conscious times. In fact, 61% of parents Nectar surveyed said they would visit a fast food restaurant more often if it served blended meat. It could be beneficial for peoples health, but its also just good business sense.
As a society, we probably should be taking a multipronged approach to major issues like public health, environmental protection, and animal welfare. Some people happily subsist on diets made up entirely of plant foods. I salute them. For everyone else, lets meet them halfway, or even a quarter of the way, at least to start. If people are willing to cut their meat consumption, just by mixing it with some mushrooms, lets welcome that. The world will be better for it.
