Gone Green

I grew up in the distant suburbs of Chicago, where pretty much the only "ethnic" food generally available was Chinese and (pseudo) Mexican. (Random suburban pizza places do not count as Italian food...) There was a much broader selection in the city proper, but it wasn't until I moved to Seattle that I started really branching out. But still having my rather pedestrian Midwestern tastes, I have yet to acquire an appreciation for avocado, mainly because I'm one of those people who dislikes the taste of cilantro, and so tend to avoid Tex-Mex and Mexican food. But not being a fan of avocado also means that I don't eat much in the way of roll sushi, since it tends to be a pretty common ingredient.

Being pretty sure that avocado is not native to Japan, I was curious why it was so common in sushi. The simple answer is that many sushi rolls are American creations; to the extent that they exist in Japan in the same forms they do here, they've effectively been re-imported. The slightly more complex answer to why so much sushi contains avocado is one of immigrant ingenuity; what's at question is whether they were working around supply chains or Americans.

The first explanation I found for the prevalence of avocado in sushi (on the website of a local sushi restaurant) was that a Japanese chef in Los Angeles couldn't source fatty tuna for their sushi, and avocado was a good substitute for texture and consistency. The second explanation is that Americans didn't like the taste of raw tuna, in much the same way that uramaki sushi rolls were developed because of American dislike of the texture of seaweed.

Now, I'm going to admit that I tend to have a rather limited palate; I'm not that experimental when it comes to food. Which is part of the reason why, when I vacationed in Japan, I would simply point to a random menu entry and eat that. The upside was I had some amazing food I wouldn't have thought to order. (The downside was I don't know what any of it was called.) So I understand the idea that foreign cuisines tend to be (sometimes heavily) modified for American tastes.

But the competing narratives over the inclusion of avocado, rather than tuna also speak to how people, domestic and overseas, see the United States. While both are stories of innovation, one is a story of needing to work around Americans' refusal to try different foods, and I suspect that it sticks around specifically because it plays into people's understanding of the United States.

Past Its Prime

I think that one of the interesting things about the concept of media literacy is the understanding that the way a story is framed is important. I suspect the problem is that it can be difficult to tune into this without becoming suspicious of an outlet's motives; mainly because such framing is often partisan in nature, or at least show where someone's sympathies lie.

The framing of a story can also be about expectations, and who is understood to be best placed to take action on a given subject. I was checking through LinkedIn this morning, and they had a brief news segment on food expiration dates, titled: "Expiration Dates Waste Money, Food." It's linked to an article from The Wall Street Journal (which is always on the hunt for more subscribers), titled: "Here’s Something Past Its Expiration Date: The Expiration Date Itself" (subscription required, because it's The Wall Street Journal). Of course, given the theme of the article, the title is ironic, but that's beside the point.

In any event, the framing of the LinkedIn News snippet is that the "expiration dates" (which is a misnomer) are the culprit. Unless food manufacturers are doing something weird with their inks, it's not the dates themselves that are causing the problem, it's people's response to them, which is to throw away food once the dates have passed. But even that isn't really the problem, which is likely better described as: People's lack of knowledge of how to determine if food is safe results in them throwing away things that could be used. Because the expiration dates aren't the concern; the behavior is driven by the fact that for many people, "use by," "sell by" and "best by" dates are really all they have to go on, especially given the belief (correct or not) that it's possible for a food item to be invisibly tainted, and that the processes involved aren't "all or nothing."

And I'll admit to being one of those people. I'm not a stickler for the various dates that manufacturers place on food, but I do attempt to keep use of foods within those dates, and if I'm uncertain, I'm not going to experiment with it; out it goes. Because food poisoning or gastroenteritis really suck. And if I'm not confident that something won't make me ill, I'd rather skip it entirely. And I expect that this is the thinking on the part of a lot of people.

To be sure, the retail food landscape factors into this. Stack and stacks of "perfect" produce in grocery stores and supermarkets create a wariness of blemishes beyond the idea that one might be considered a less than conscientious host at a picnic or dinner party. And for restaurants, another source of food waste called out by LinkedIn, liability law can be unforgiving, especially in a society were a surviving a bout of foodborne illness can be like winning a (rather unpleasant) lottery; especially if one is a lawyer (for whom the situation is a lot less unpleasant).

In short, the overall task that people have difficulty with is one of risk management. But that's something that's been known about the public at large for a long time, because modern society is far too complex for people to be experts in the myriad of subjects that have possible consequences for them on a daily basis. Still, if the goal is to reduce food waste, the focus on dating is misplaced. Either people have to be better educated in how to assess risks through understanding risk factors, or the risks have to be somehow reduced. Expecting companies to take that risk onto themselves is likely not going to be successful, especially if any instance of getting it wrong will be costly.

Holiday Cheer

I was at the grocery store today, and, at the end of one of the aisles, there is a little place where holiday candy tends to be stocked. Now that Christmas is over, it's full of Valentines Day candies, including Reece's Peanut Butter Hearts. They're basically the same thing as regular Reece's Peanut Butter Cups, but they're somewhat larger, and the ratio of peanut butter to chocolate seems to be higher, so they taste different.

Anyway, they're currently going to $1.25 each, or 4 for $5. A little ways from this, near where the seasonal non-food items are normally stocked, are the leftover Christmas candies, including the Reece's Peanut Butter Trees. Those are now on deep discount, and are being sold for 39¢ each. The Peanut Butter Trees are pretty much the same thing as the Peanut Butter Hearts; only the shape is different. If one is a Reece's Peanut Butter fan, now is a good time to stock up. (They freeze really well.) Personally, I'm past the days when I could stock up on them, as, now that I'm an old man, peanuts are bad for my skin.

But it's interesting to see what the holiday theming does to the price of two items that are, for all intents and purposes, the same. Both are highly processed (and sweetened) peanut butter in a low-grade chocolate shell; they're the same weight and the same calorie count. Yet the vaguely-evergreen shaped ones are now one-third the price of the heart-shaped ones, simply because Christmas was a little more than a week and a half ago and Valentine's day is somewhat more than a month away. After which point, the cycle will repeat, as Reece's Peanut Butter Eggs replace the Hearts on stores shelves.

Of course, this is a common phenomenon. There's all sorts of random Christmas-themed bric-a-brac on store shelves right now that's past it prime sales time. But most of that strikes me as much more strongly themed that the Reece's Trees. Given the number of evergreen trees in this part of the country, one could likely get away with selling them year-round without most people batting an eyelash.

But to the bargain bin they have been moved, and it is from there that they will dwindle away to nothing so that the Valentine hearts may have pride of place for a while.

Feel the Heat

Am I the only person who gets the feeling that restaurants are dark because it makes it harder to get good pictures of the food?

Last week, I went out to dinner. Not for any particular occasion, just because I'd grown weary of my own cooking. I popped into a Thai restaurant not far from the Microsoft campus and ordered a simple noodle dish with beef. (As opposed to my customary chicken.) It was good, but fairly bland. I'd ordered three out of five stars for spiciness, and despite the fact that I could see the spices, I couldn't really taste them.

The standard "five-star" scale that restaurants use tends to be wildly inconsistent. In some venues, "three stars" is noticeably hot, while in others, it's barely there.

I have a hypothesis about this, and it works as follows: Ethnic restaurants that have a larger percentage of customers they understand to have a typical "American" palate tend to make their foods less spicy than those that cater to their "home ethnicity" or people from nearby areas. I've heard rumors that Chinese restaurants, in particular, have both "American" and "Chinese" scales for spicy foods, such that the same rating requested by the Chinese person results in a much spicier dish than one requested by an American.

I grew up in the Midwest, and have really only started to appreciate spice in foods after moving out to Washington. Accordingly, I've been working on acquiring the taste, and the randomness with which restaurants spice their dishes works against that. But I'm getting there. I can comfortably manage three stars at some of the more "authentic" restaurants, and may start working on four soon. I suspect that a genuine five may be forever out of reach. But the experimentation that I've engaged in during the quest has been rewarding on its own.

Moldy But a Goodie

So, Burger King has a new ad out, in which a Whopper goes from pristine to decayed over the course of 34 days in time-lapse.

Early reaction to the campaign Wednesday was a mix of applause for the shift away from preservatives, to disgust.
Burger King portrays moldy Whopper in new TV ad

I've seen some of the negative reaction, and for me, the point is less about the daring or honesty of the advertisement, and more about the unrealistic expectations of food that are now commonplace in the United States. Food, especially perishable food, left unprotected for a month, is going to become moldy. That's a fact of life, or in this case, death. Nothing about a Whopper, or the majority of the food we eat is alive when we eat it. And decomposition is what happens to dead biomass. That's where new biomass comes from. Digestion and decomposition are different processes, but not completely so; it's reasonable to say that mold digests food. And food in the middle of the digestive process is pretty gross, too.

It's also worth noting that we have an inconsistent relationship with preservation. The (false) idea that Twinkies are so loaded up with chemical preservatives that they have a shelf life measured in decades is often cited as proof that they lack any real food ingredients. Even the actual shelf life of Twinkies, twenty-five days, is often viewed suspiciously.

This paints a picture of a society that wants things to be a certain way; in this case, wanting food to be safe and visually appealing over time, but doesn't really want to understand how it is made to be that way; in many cases, through chemical additives (natural or synthetic) that arrest the decomposition process. And this can contribute to a dialog around food that is fundamentally dishonest. Food companies tell the public what they understand the public wants to hear, and, in turn, the public treats it as the truth for long enough that they lose sight of the fact that it's a lie.

Regulating Success

The title of the video is a bit misleading: "America's Hottest Black Market: Inside the Eel Gold Rush." The video doesn't really go all that deeply into the black market for juvenile American eels, know as elvers or glass eels. It's more about the local elver fishing industry, and some of the conflicts that have been created. It's an interesting video.

The part that most caught my attention is at about the 7:14 mark. A local elver fisherman is being interviewed and he says: "It picked up around here back in the early '90s, but people have been doing it for a long time and getting fifteen, twenty dollars a pound. But the minute it hit a thousand dollars a pound, it's 'Oh, well wait a minute, they're endangered'." The point is never revisited, which is kind of a shame, because I think that it speaks to the understanding that a number of people in agriculture have of environmental regulation; that it's a tool to prevent them from taking full advantage of the resources available to them to better themselves.

The way the Maine eel fishery works is roughly like this: The fishermen catch the small juvenile eels on their way into local rivers from the ocean, and ship them to the far east. According to the Maine state government's page on The Maine Eel and Elver Fishery, "In recent years, market demand has increased dramatically. Elvers are highly valued in the far east (Japan, China, Taiwan, and Korea) where they are cultured and reared to adult size for the food fish market. Due to recent intense market demand, elvers have now become the most valuable marine resource in terms of price per pound which, in 2015, was over $2,000." One can see how this might be a problem for the local eel population, since the eels are never able to return to the Atlantic Ocean to spawn.

But for people with licenses to catch the eels, the sudden increase in demand, which appears to due to a combination of the destruction of Japanese eel farms after the tsunami in 2011 and the closure of the European eel fishery due to overfishing, has been a chance to cash in.

Now, fishermen can support their families, pay off taxes, help put their kids through college and buy new cars or tractors for their farms. “Elver fishing dumped millions of dollars into a poor state,” says fisherman Jeff Pierce, head of the Maine Elver Fisherman Association, “It’s a huge success story. It’s given people pride.”
Glass Eel Gold Rush Casts Maine Fishermen against Scientists

It's little wonder that they see attempts to prevent the overharvest of the fish as a threat to that pride and success. It's the idea that there is a deliberate intent to that threat that may be a problem.

Bleah...

I was reading an article on the BBC's website about the teapot tempest stirred up when United States Naval War College professor Tom Nichols said "Indian food is terrible and we pretend it isn't."

But this also caught my eye: "I'm honest enough to say that my mostly Irish taste buds can't handle whatever it is that is called 'Indian' in the US and UK." And while it was lost in the ensuing fracas, it raises an interesting point about foreign cuisines in the United States. An ex-girlfriend from China hated my taste in "Chinese" food, saying that my favorite local Chinese restaurant was "too American."

"Hello!" I replied. "American here." I understand that, as an American who has never been to China, I don't actually have any first-hand knowledge of what genuine Chinese food is like. I completely understand that most Chinese restaurants I've ever been to cater to primarily American palettes. They are, after all, in the United States. (One interesting side effect of this is that, at least for Chinese restaurants, the food varies regionally. Chinese food in Chicagoland is as different from Chinese food in the Seattle suburbs as the pizza is.)

But it's as inaccurate to say that there is one way that Americans like to eat as it is to say that there is only one style of "Chinese" food. Not all Americans like all "American" food. And so non-American cuisines often find themselves in something of a squeeze. It's widely understood that many Americans are not adventurous eaters, and so there is an "Americanizing" that happens. But many Americans are unaware enough of this that they don't realize that many of the dishes they eat would be unrecognizable to people in the countries they are supposedly from. And so, either way, the food is panned as terrible; authentic cuisines by the non-adventurous and the Americanized versions by those who find the habit of sweetening and calorie-bombing cheap foods to be distasteful.

I had, I believe, a few opportunities to eat authentic Japanese food when I was in Japan, and I quite liked it. Of course, not speaking, or reading, Japanese, when we were away from the tourist areas, I had no idea what it was I was eating, and so I can't now look for it here in the United States. But perhaps it's better that way.

Hella Noms

It has become an increasingly common story: A dollar store opens up in an economically depressed area with scarce healthy and affordable food options, sometimes with the help of local tax incentives. It advertises hard-to-beat low prices but it offers little in terms of fresh produce and nutritious items—further trapping residents in a cycle of poverty and ill-health.
The Dollar Store Backlash Has Begun

Thus opens another story that takes a symptom of poverty, and casts it as a cause, in the name of everything that is not the solution is a part of the problem.

This strikes me as dubious, because I don't understand how the presence of dollar stores makes "healthy and affordable (where 'affordable' is simply a synonym for 'cheap') food options" any more scarce in low-income neighborhoods than they were at the start. And part of the reason why the food tend to be prepackaged and of dubious nutritional quality are the aforementioned "hard-to-beat low prices," which rarely attach themselves to perishable or high-quality items.

In this respect, the problem isn't the dollar store industry. It's simply offering people an illusory standard of living, cobbled together out of low-end merchandise that's inexpensive to purchase, but doesn't last in proportion to its price. Part of what makes poverty so expensive (relatively speaking) is the fact that a hypothetical low-end good may be a quarter of the price of a higher-quality equivalent, but only have a fifth of the lifespan, and that lost twentieth adds up quickly. Returning to food, the ability to buy lots of something at one time is helpful. The article says that: "When economists compared the price of goods like flour and raisins of the same weight, they noticed that dollar store products were higher cost than those at the nearby Walmart or Costco." But the link is important, because it makes clear that the packages are not the same weight. Dollar stores sell flour at $1 for a two-pound package. Walmart and Costco charge less than $2.50 for a five-pound package. But this is a common phenomenon, and one that you don't need to compare stores in order to see. My local grocery store charges $5.99 a pound for a regular-sized pack of chicken. But if you're willing and able to buy the four-plus pound value pack, the price drops to $3.99 a pound. A car and a reasonably spacious freezer can make grocery shopping less expensive. But the large package sizes that big-box stores can manage often mean that the middle-income can stock up more cheaply. Equating this to "privilege" may be overstating it, but the economic benefits are clear.

But none of this is the fault of the businesses that sell inexpensive goods. Especially when they've opened in places where other options are rare. "Healthy and affordable food options" may be fairly common, but that's different than saying that they're ubiquitous. And both the words "healthy" and "affordable" are relative. While the food that I can pick up from my local grocery store or the cafeteria at work may fit the bill as far as this article is concerned, I'm pretty sure that there are health-conscious people who would consider my typical; purchases to be nightmares and I'm well aware of the fact that there are people for whom my food budget is more or less entirely out of reach. Given this, the idea that dollar stores are complicit in the problems of America's poor due to their failure to serve foods the health-conscious would approve of at prices the destitute can routinely manage seems to be wishful thinking. Likewise, one can fault the main grocery chains for following their customers away from declining neighborhoods or for responding to people who have more options by making their stores nicer and the merchandise better. But given that this is the way business works, it seems unproductive, at best.

What would need to change to eliminate food deserts is perhaps another revolution in agriculture; one that made what would now be considered high-end, healthful food common enough that the overall price drops far enough that selling it in low-income neighborhoods would be the only way to prevent waste. Dollar stores could sell high-quality food, and there would be enough choice that low-quality groceries would become non-viable. But that seems unlikely. Restricting where dollar stores can set up shop seems like a viable option, but it's really simply forcing certain suboptimal choices (paying more for food) at the expense of others (a less healthy diet).

Poverty can be defined as having one's choices constrained to the point of being straited by a lack of resources. What makes people poor is that they're faced with food that either costs more than they can pay and still have enough money left over for other priorities or leaves them more exposed to health risks than is optimal when considering what they need to do to care for themselves. And this is the thing about dollar stores. Doing away with them does not remove that constraint. It may force people's hands towards the sub-optimal choice that advocates prefer, but it's no less a bad choice for being marginally more acceptable to the alternative.

Threat Context

The Volokh Conspiracy blog has the news that in an Oklahoma State University Department of Agricultural Economics survey, 80% of respondents would support “mandatory labels on foods containing DNA.” Now, for a lot of people, this is the time to cue the laugh track, but “Conspiracy” author Ilya Somin is more charitable, noting that both political and scientific ignorance are not primarily the result of stupidity, but rather rational reactions to the sheer amount of information available.

But given this, I’m not sure that I agree with his statement that: “The most obvious explanation for the data is that most of these people don’t really understand what DNA is, and don’t realize that it is contained in almost all food.” I suspect that what’s really going on is that people who answered the survey didn’t, for the most part, make the connection between deoxyribonucleic acid as they’d encountered the term in the past, and as they were encountering it right at that moment. The term “deoxyribonucleic acid” is not part of my daily lexicon - I suspect that this blog post honestly represents the first time that I’ve used it in a sentence since the mid-1980s. And I’m pretty sure that if you stopped me on the street in the middle of searching Downtown Seattle for something photogenic, I couldn’t repeat it back to you, if you asked me what the initialism “DNA” stood for in biology. I’m not a chemist or a geneticist, and it’s not a term that comes up all that much in youth care, social work or software. And so it doesn’t surprise me that a large number of people, when encountering the term outside of it’s usual context, assumed that it was “some dangerous chemical inserted by greedy corporations for their own nefarious purposes.”

Because that context, of corporations being willing to use opaque processes and procedures to boost profitability at the direct expense of public health and safety, is very usual. Professor Somin leaves out a third area of public rational ignorance, and that’s what goes on behind the doors of corporate boardrooms (or, more likely, legal departments). While that body of knowledge may be just as vast and complicated as government or science, for most of us, the real problem is that it’s hidden. Somin’s warning against “excessive and unnecessary warning labels on food products could confuse consumers, and divert their limited attention from real dangers,” is well-taken. But for many people, what agricultural and food businesses may by using as ingredients in foods (and the nefarious purposes of those same businesses) are the real, and hidden, dangers that they are attempting to turning their finite attention to.

It can be misleading to presume that everyone understand as term, even one that spends a lot of time in the public eye, in the same way that we do. When encountered outside of their usual context, the correct understanding of terms that most of us use only rarely likely falls outside of the realm of the instrumentally useful. Given vast body of knowledge that is the human experience, I think that we underestimate the ease with which we can catch people out with gotchas that they’re unprepared for in the moment. Public ignorance may be both pervasive and dangerous, but seeing it under every rock will not help us combat it.

Does a Strike Come With That Shake?

But let's also be realistic. The [fast-food worker] strikes would have a much better shot at inspiring a change in franchise- and corporate-level policy if fast-food chains perceived one of two threats: (a) a threat to the steady supply of food-service workers who want to be employed at any wage and (b) a threat from consumers demanding higher wages for their fast-food clerks by not buying burgers and fries at McDonald's.
Derek Thompson "Why the Fast-Food Worker Strikes Are Doomed"

One of the interesting things about being in the Seattle area during part of the tech boom was watching restaurants suffer. With technology companies sprouting up like dandelions and hiring just about anyone with a pulse and two spare brain cells to rub together, it started becoming difficult for some places to maintain a high enough level of staffing to provide worthwhile service. The culmination of this was, for me, seeing a Burger King that was offering $500 signing bonuses to people who would work there.

Arguably, in this way, the Tech Bubble made food-service work more attractive (in absolute terms) by reducing the supply of people who needed, despite their job skills (or lack thereof) to settle for it on an employers terms. At that time, had workers thought to strike, they could likely have wrested some pretty serious concessions out of owners and corporations that would have had a very hard time replacing them. But, that's kind of the point. When the labor market is tight, strikes, while devastating, are often unnecessary - employers realize that it's an employee's market, and that they have to pony up, or, like some places here were eventually forced to, go out of business.

On the flip side of the Mr. Thompson's equation is customer action. The simple way to get higher pay for fast-food (and other food) workers, is for people to not eat at places that pay rock-bottom wages. The calculus, for businesses, is simple. If being perceived as a cheapskate becomes a competeive disadvantage, companies will work as shedding the image that they don't pay very well. Now, even though Seattle bills itself as a fairly progressive place, there doesn't seem to be much appetite for a targetted boycott arond here. And there likely won't be unless someone takes it on themselves to raise employee wages and then calls on people to support them. But that will be dicey. Most people expect fast food to be cheap, and likely won't stick around if it isn't. When prices go up, sales drop.

And, it turns out, to double the McDonald's wages, a Big Mac would actually cost an extra $1.28. Still hungry?

But if fast-food workers are going to make more money, something has to give. For their strike to work, they're going to need help from external factors, either the labor market or restaurant customers. So the question is: will it come?

Bad Education

According to the Indian textbook " New Healthway: Health, Hygiene, Physiology, Safety, Sex Education, Games and Exercises:"

• Non-vegetarians, "easily cheat, tell lies, they forget promises, they are dishonest and tell bad words, steal, fight and turn to violence and commit sex crimes."
• "It is the waste products which largely produce the flavour of meat."
• "[The Japanese] are vegetarians and live longer than most other peoples. The generous use of green leafy vegetables, soya beans and grams has helped the people to maintain vigour, strength and endurance throughout the centuries."
• "The Arabs who helped in constructing the Suez Canal lived on wheat and dates and were superior to the beef-fed Englishmen engaged in the same work."
• "[T]he Creator of this Universe did not include meat in the original diet for Adam and Eve. He gave them fruits, nuts and vegetables."
• "To get married without a bad name is a dream of every young girl."
• The Inuit are "lazy, sluggish and short-lived", because they live on "a diet largely of meat."

Because even students in the Third World should have access to ideological, inaccurate textbooks.

The Blame Game

Don't Worry. They'll Be Back.

Now that Hostess Brands has (temporarily) closed up shop, the recriminations and blaming have started. Most of it is misplaced.

For starters, the reason why Hostess is not in business as I write this (a situation I expect to see change before not too long) is because the management team of the company chose to shut it down. End. It wasn't forced into liquidation by creditors or clobbered by market forces. The management team decided, honestly or cynically, that they couldn't be profitable with the current cost structure, so they closed up shop. They had every right to do so. The point can be made that they had some sort of moral obligation to their workforce to keep the doors open as long as possible, but no laws were broken when management decided to pack it in.

Okay, with that out of the way, you can debate whether or not the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union was wise to stay out on strike with the company threatening to close the company down and simply lay everyone off. Again, they had every right to go out on strike. The point can be made that they had some sort of moral obligation to their members to prevent a worst-case scenario, but no laws were broken. One thing that's worth keeping in mind is that "the Union" is actually a different organization than "the people who worked in Hostess' bakeries," and because of this, their interests don't always align 100%. While this turn of events sucks for the workers, it may actually turn out to be a good thing for the union. And it was, to a degree, to be expected. Strikes are successful to the degree that they a) deprive a company of skills and/or labor that cannot be replaced and b) have the ability to cause harm to the company. If Hostess could have operated indefinitely without its union workforce being on the job, a strike would have been utterly pointless, except perhaps in the Court of Public Opinion. (But when it come to cheap junk food versus the American Worker, smart money always bets the public at large sides with Twinkies.) For my part, I would be unsurprised to find that organized labor as a whole seeks to find ways to make an example of Hostess when they sit down with other employers.

It's only if you perceive the sole aim of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union to be the preservation of some level on income for the workers at Hostess does the union become blameworthy for a miscalculation. But even then, this is how games of Chicken are played. The threat of a collision is what makes them relevant.