How the woke sausage is made

Endometriosis and consent, tracking the shipping of rice, and political foodfights.

May 10, 2024

Kia ora and welcome to The Weekend with Madeleine Chapman

Mōrena and welcome to The Weekend after a week spent having a national conversation about… woke food? Sometimes you’re just going about your week thinking you’ve got a good handle on what might be coming as far as news topics and then someone (usually a politician) says something so ridiculous that everyone gets distracted for a few hours. Ideally, the distraction still involves something being written, but that’s not a given, as these distractions tend to flare very bright and disappear quickly so it’s easy to miss the moment. This week, the distraction was David Seymour saying some foods were “woke”, and three hours later we published a list of woke foods. I thought I’d give a little insight into how some of our fast, silly pieces come together (see also: The Spinoff Power List).

Is your favourite food woke?

On Wednesday, David Seymour announced that after weeks of threatening to kill the school lunch programme, he was actually going to ~~save it~~ not kill it. He also announced that it would be expanded and cheaper and would not include “woke food like quinoa and sushi”. As often happens when announcements are made, the details were posted in The Spinoff slack, with a possible silly angle for coverage.

After a flurry of activity and many, many thoughts on where every food item might be ranked, someone (deputy editor Alice) finally “did some work”.

Chat then moved to the doc and there’s inevitably a period where everyone’s in the doc at once then everyone leaves the doc and forgets about it for an hour until someone (Alice again) realises we should probably “do something with it”.

And by 3pm, our silly Slack chat had made it to the site as an article. Pretty cost-effective, actually, now that I think about it. Make of this what you will but that list of woke and non-woke foods is currently the most-viewed story on The Spinoff all year. It’s what I’d call a sweet treat (not woke) article. You know it’s not healthy for every meal but boy is it fun every once in a while.

Behind the Story

For some more nutritious food journalism, I spoke to staff writer Shanti Mathias about her data-heavy story this week, “Seven graphs that show where New Zealand’s food comes from… and where it goes”. Shanti gathered immense amounts of data from Statistics NZ about New Zealand’s imports and exports and compiled some fascinating graphs to show where some of our most common food items (think rice, wheat, bananas) actually come from. We chatted about her extensive process to make the data accessible to readers and the strange reality of our wheat growing in New Zealand (spoiler: it’s mostly for animals, not humans, so we import a lot).

Listen now

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Endometriosis and consent

In 2019, an Auckland woman woke up from surgery to find that she had undergone a treatment she didn’t consent to. Alex Casey reports on the case that was ruled to have been a breach of the Code of Health and Disability Services Consumers’ Rights. Having spoken to her surgeon about wanting only excision (cutting out the tissue) of endometrioses, not ablation (burning of the tissue), Laura woke from surgery – which was performed by a different surgeon due to her original one being sick that day – to learn that both methods had been used during her surgery. Laura’s case is a reminder of patient rights and the importance of advocating for yourself when it comes to your health.

Tikanga is the first law of Aotearoa

Early this week, a senior lawyer (KC) filed a complaint about tikanga becoming a required law school module. Law lecturer Carwyn Jones explained what he was getting wrong. “New Zealand legal professional and educational bodies are not on their own in recognising the need for students to engage with indigenous law if they are to produce graduates who are properly equipped to enter the profession.”

The stories Spinoff readers spent the most time with this week

As above, the definitive list of woke and non-woke foods. The biggest read of the week (and beyond).
Anna Rawhiti-Connell skewers and explains the prime minister and police minister’s messy press conference this week by skewering and explaining girl maths.
The Spinoff Board of Review contributes to the time-honoured tradition of media power lists with 50 New Zealanders you need to know. Featuring my infatuated neighbour, three Joans and Hera Lindsay Bird’s former dentist.
Primary school teacher Jessie Moss argues that the new Aotearoa histories curriculum is rich with potential. There’s still work to be done, but the education minister’s criticisms about “balance” miss the mark.
Shanti Mathias takes a data deep dive into where New Zealand’s food comes from… and where it goes. In a lovely loop back to the top story this week, it turns out we eat a lot of rice.

Reader feedback of the week

We recently turned comments back on for Spinoff members, and this week has been a big week for thoughtful and funny contributions, and good banter between members. Shout out to all who are also logging in to say “ha, ha”, “lol” and “happy to be alive, proud to be a member”. We see you and thank you.

Valid question about woke food