Born Round

 Just read Frank Bruni's memoir on food and his other loves. 

One point of his interest--he goes to Italy as the NYTimes correspondent soon after reaching a turning point in his food obsession which he'd lived with and denied since he was small. So he's very sensitive to Italy and their food ways (his grandparents were from southern Italy).  

Based on his memoir, and partially his analysis, at least circa the late 1990s, Italians enjoyed their food, but eating was wrapped in manners and routines, the servings were smaller and the eating slower. In his American milieu, the cooking was competitive (among his grandmother, aunts, and mother) and the amounts signified prosperity and success. 

Dieting and Human Institutions

 Tamar Haspel is one of the people I follow on Twitter.  She and her husband raise oysters in Maine, and she writes on food and diet issues, usually with the refrain that diet panaceas are just that, panaceas not based on hard science.  That's a position I can identify with.

She tweeted this about two new promising obesity drugs (more in the thread):

For all y'all dissing obesity drugs:

EVERYONE would prefer it if we could all just eat healthful foods we enjoy to be the weight we want to be.

But we can't, and if you insist that's the only possible solution you're abandoning people, often desperate, who want to lose weight https://t.co/JuvPuut4b9

— Tamar Haspel (@TamarHaspel) September 16, 2021

Her point is that we eat not because of hunger but because of temptation.  It got me thinking.  As I've written, I think, I'm a creature of habit. I'm also skinny. Are the two facts related?  I think they are: for whatever reason I have the habit of regarding food as fuel, to be consumed as soon as possible without wasting any time or energy in savoring, or in deciding what to eat.  So my meals, at least the ones I make or buy as opposed to those my wife prepares, tend to be the same from day to day.

So my decisions on what to eat don't allow much room for temptation by food.  (Nor, since I eat regularly, does feeling hungry have much to do with it--by eating at the times and with the food I'm habituated to I avoid hungry.)  

I'll jump from this analysis of me to extrapolate to human institutions--most institutions are based on habits.  That's part of what upsets us about covid-19; the pandemic has upset our habits which means undermining the foundations of some of our institutions. 

Packaged Produce

 My local Safeway is selling more and more produce in packages.  Corn is no longer on the cob, so you don't have the job of husking it.  Salad is shredded and mixed, just open the package into the bowl and put dressing on it.  

What the Safeway buyer wants is convenience, saving time by having someone back in the chain do the work. It's all part of work shifting by the upper middle class--we have money but, unless retired, not the time so we pay others to do stuff.

This trend, which has been going on for decades (think TV dinners in the 1950's), poses a big problem for the advocates of organic farming, CSA's, and similar ideas. You can't ask the farmer to do the packaging, but your market share will be limited if you don't.

Textiles and Food--a Similar Evolution?

 Virginia Postrel has a new book on the history of textiles. I gave it to my wife but haven't yet read it myself.  Based on online interviews/discussions with her I expect it to be very good.  One theory I've developed from them is there's a general parallel between the evolution of the making and use of textiles and the evolution of the growing and eating of food.  There's a gradual shift from individual hand labor to mass production and marketing of textiles, just as there's a gradual shift from hand labor to mass production and marketing of food.

More Freedom to Choose

 Rachel Laudan has a recent post  on the variety of food stores within a 6 mile radius of her Cincinnati home.

I could do a similar post about the Northern Virginia area, centered on Reston.  One notable addition: we have Wegmans.  

It's a big change since I was a boy.  Tyler Cowen did an early book arguing this point, although focused on art, IIRC--i.e., that while the world was becoming more similar, the diversity within many cultures/countries was growing.

"Economist Tyler Cowen argues that the capitalist market economy is a vital but underappreciated institutional framework for supporting a plurality of co-existing artistic visions, providing a steady stream of new and satisfying creations, supporting both high and low culture, helping consumers and artists refine their tastes, and paying homage to the past by capturing, reproducing, and disseminating it. Contemporary culture, Cowen argues, is flourishing in its various manifestations, including the visual arts, literature, music, architecture, and the cinema."

I think this is the book I remember. 

Upton Sinclair's Jungle

The covid-19 problems in meatpacking plants remind me of Upton Sinclair's Jungle. It had a major impact on the American food system, but much remains the same--especially the use of immigrant labor under what seems to be harsh conditions, at least when looked at through American eyes.

The Three Silos: Food Supply in the Age of Covid-19

The pandemic has revealed we have three silos in the food supply system:

• commodity agriculture supplying supermarkets and groceries.  This silo is working pretty well.
• food service agriculture supplying restaurants and fast food outlets.  Because the restaurant industry is closed down, except for delivery service (a possible fourth silo), this silo is in deep trouble.  Farmers supplying milk are having to dump, those supplying produce are having to dump. 
• the direct to consumer (Community supported agriculture and farmers markets).  This silo seems also in trouble according to this Times article.

The net result of the pandemic may be a setback for the farm-to-table movement.

[Updated: another Times article.]

Combining Organizations

I tend to think of the outcome of two organizations combining as based on physics, sort of like two objects in space.  An asteroid colliding with the earth doesn't affect the earth's path through space much at all.  Why shouldn't the same be true of two companies, like Perdue and Niman Ranch, which combined a few years ago.

Turns out humans aren't solid brainless objects, at least not always.  John Johnson has an interesting piece on the results of the combination of a big poultry producer and a smaller organic venture.

The Market in Farmer's Markets

The market in farmer's markets is not good, according to this NPR story.  Too many markets chasing too few buyers.  Another case where the free market in agriculture is overly productive.

Specialty Crops and Technology

A good piece on produce which avoids the usual crunchy critique that produce and specialty crops are so expensive because they haven't  been subsidized by the government.

The idea that junk food is cheaper than produce because of farm subsidies is so often repeated by food movement leaders like Michael Pollan that almost everyone assumes that it’s true. But the reality is more nuanced.
Subsidies on their own don’t explain why processed foods are cheaper than produce, calorie for calorie. Fruits and vegetables, first and foremost, are highly perishable, which makes everything about growing, harvesting, storing and shipping them infinitely more complicated and expensive. Many of these crops also take a ton of labor to maintain and harvest. Economists who’ve crunched the numbers have found that removing agricultural subsidies would have little effect on consumers’ food prices, in part because the cost of commodities like corn and soybeans represent just a tiny share of the cost of the food sold in the grocery store.

Mainly the piece is about the technology which is impacting the harvesting and marketing of these crops, kicking off with the recent advent of packaged spinach.

McArdle on "Authentic Food" and Church Suppers

Megan McArdle writes on "authentic food".  I agree with most of what she writes, except for the bit about "drying off" cows, which shows she didn't grow up on a dairy farm.  However there are times and places where "authentic food" is good eating, at least in memory.  For example, church/grange suppers in my youth.  The point there was each woman was bringing a dish which she was proud of, with which she wanted to impress the neighbors, hopefully even to field requests for the recipe. (I've still got my mother's card file of recipes, many gathered from her friends.) So the food was good.

Japanese Self-Cleaning Ovens

From Andrew Gelman at Statistical Modeling we learn that the Japanese have no word for "self-cleaning oven".   That inspired me to search: inquiring minds wanted to know why?  Were all ovens self-cleaning, or what?  This led me to an interesting write-up on Japanese kitchen appliances.

It doesn't directly answer the question, but this is what I read between the lines:

• kitchens are small and appliances are small
• meals are physically small (no Thanksgiving turkey)
• ovens are small (microwaves now)
• ranges are gas (I presume given the size of Japan and population density fuel was never abundant, so no (i.e. "no" = "few') wood/coal stoves for cooking and no transition to electric stoves.

Why Prefer Convenience Foods?

From an ERS study:

First, Americans may be constrained by labor-force participation and have less time to spend on preparing food. Second, prices of many convenience foods may have fallen relative to their less convenient counterparts. Third, income changes may affect the degree of convenience demanded by households. Lastly, advertising, which is notably
more visible for the most convenient foods, may stimulate demand for convenience foods.

Food Waste

Was talking to the Starbucks guy in my local supermarket and he got onto the subject of food waste.  Apparently they have guidelines for the value of the food they toss each day: $800 for produce, $400 for other (including meat).  Food is tossed for the usual reasons: produce is ugly and not chosen so it spoils, other items pass their sell-by date.  According to the guy, who seemed to be knowledgeable, but after all he's just a guy, homeless people from the neighborhood utilize some of the tossed goods, but there was no indication of a food pantry or similar setup.

One can dream of a day where the flow of information from shelves to store to management to customer will be so good that prices can be adjusted to reflect advancing age, hopefully allowing more consumption and less waste. Sometimes I suspect that's already happening with the really perishable produce, like blackberries and raspberries, but maybe not.

Convenience, Waste, and Nutrition

Cornell gets credit/blame for initiating the rise of sliced apples, which has increased sales of apples, in this study.

That's just the tip of the iceberg.  In our local Safeway, the amount of cooler space devoted to packaged salad green mixes has exploded, as has the number which my wife has bought in the last year.  And what I thought was a temporary display of guacamole and other dips keyed to the Super Bowl stationed just inside the doors has mutated into a permanent display of packages of things like fresh pineapple chunks, etc.

In some ways the trend is good.  I assume there's less waste of food; even ugly apples can yield good slices. I don't see people being as picky over the box of salad greens as they are over a head of lettuce. And possibly the location of waste in the food chain shifts, more at the processing plant, less at the store.  It's convenient--the labor of cutting up a pineapple or making guacamole is centralized and more efficient than the ordinary househusband doing it.  It saves shopping time--by standardizing (the academic "in" term is "commoditizing" the shopper needs only to grab a box.

In other ways the trend is bad.It increases the amount of packaging material which needs to be disposed of.  It encourages consumption, leading to obesity.  Tradeoffs everywhere.

The Influence of Vested Interests and How to Overcome Them

 Political scientists and others like decry the power of special interest groups, sometimes described as having pretty complete power over public policy.  That's often true, but not always.  Take the example of the nutrition label on food, which has just been changed.

As background, consider this NY Times  article, which includes this: 

A team of researchers at the University of North Carolina conducted a detailed survey of the packaged foods and drinks that are purchased in American grocery stores and found that 60 percent of them include some form of added sugar. When they looked at every individual processed food in the store, 68 percent had added sugar.

Naturally the food processors liked the status quo.  But with Michelle Obama as the spokesperson, they were defeated.  Among the factors: Obama's image and clout, the easy contrast between self-interested food processors and those who want to improve the nation's health, and the absence of any broad-based coalition in favor of sugar.  There's no NRA, no grass-roots organization, to provide support to the processors.

World Hunger at an End?

The title cheats, because Bloomberg is just saying the world may have too much food, as reported by the World Health Organization in a study:

 "The main takeaway? Excess weight has become a far bigger global health problem than weighing too little. While low body weight is still a substantial health risk for parts of Africa and South Asia, being too heavy is a much more common hazard around the globe."

To someone who remembers famines in India and China, this is incredible (something I seem to be writing more every year).

Salad and Wasting Food

Tamar Haspel has a story dissing salad--lettuce and other salad constituents aren't very nutritious, at least by weight.  As she say:

Lettuce is a vehicle to transport refrigerated water from farm to table.

She points out that salad is a big component of food waste, at least when you measure by weight.

She's an interesting writer.

Growing Meat the New Way

Vox has a long piece on the prospects for lab-grown meat.  In short, progress is being made but it has yet to attract a whole bunch of researchers.

Having just been commenting over on Grist on the prospects for RNA interference (see my post here)
I have to wonder: will the food movement which resists gene modification in their food chain be comfortable with eating man-made meat?

Dairy and Efficiency and Meat

Nathanael Johnson at Grist has a piece on how to make meat greener.   The answer: be efficient--two quotes.

The average dairy cow in California produces 20,000 pounds of milk a year. But the average dairy cow in Mexico produces only 4,000 pounds of milk a year, while in India it’s just 1,000 pounds. 

The carbon footprint of American milk is 63 percent lower than in 1944, researchers have calculated.

Interesting throughout. (Same piece as the previous post on salmon.)

In the 1950's I think we were doing good at about 12,000 pounds, which was well above average for the county.