Timeless Advice from the Government

I know some people who would say this advice on food is as good today as in 1918 (a WWI poster).

On the Lack of French Snacks and French Slim

Via Tyler Cowen, a post arguing that the French, particularly French kids, don't snack.  I wonder, no vending machines? (Tried to do some research--this article says Japan has 10 times the number of vending machines as France, but it's twice the population.  In 2008 France banned all vending machines from schools).

And this, from Chris Blattman is a video showing how the French stay slim. Of course it involves sex, what else?

Ben Franklin and Tofu

Don't really know how I feel about this: Ben Franklin is one of my heroes, and a great bureaucrat.  Vegetarians and foodies I've reservations about.  But Boston 1775 reveals Ben Franklin discovered tofu for America!

McDonalds Is Special, in France

Dirk Beauregarde discusses the role of McDonalds in France:

Twenty or so years ago, McDonald’s were at best tolerated and at worst unwelcome in many French towns. They were the symbols of lousy nutrition and American colonisation. Nowadays, McDonalds are part and parcel of the French cullinary landscape . In my corner of small town France we have four McDonald’s outlets, two of which offer a 24/24 7 day a week drive in service. However,, in consumption terms, McDonalds is still at « treat status ». Most families will have a McDonald’s once or even twice a month. We are not at daily consumption. Most popular mealtime of the week a tour local McDonald’s – Sunday lunchtime- all the local outlets are packed. 

[Emphasis added]

Having Fun with Farmers and Ranchers

Chris Clayton enjoys poking fun at the US Farmers and Ranchers Alliance for bragging on their PR successes at the same time a producer of lean finely textured beef (the "pink slime") is going into bankruptcy.

Kevin Drum Loves Factory Farming

That's a tongue-in-cheek part of his reaction to a report on what Americans spend their money on compared to other countries. Food is low on our list.

[Updated to correct grammar]

Pink Slime Meets Green Slime

I've said a couple times that calling the thing "pink slime" is the most effective framing of an issue since the Republicans came up with the "death tax".  I'm amused by this Grist piece, which suggests that "pink slime" may contribute to the good taste of hamburgers and recounts the efforts of an organic beef producer to come up with an organic equivalent, which he calls "green slime".   His efforts, though, cause me to rethink my position: I now think "pink slime" is a much more effective framing than is the death tax.

I Bet You Didn't Know This

The first use of the word "refrigerator" was in 1611.

And the technology has its roots in the 11th century with Avicemma, with Oliver Evans inventing the first one in 1805.

All this was triggered by an Ann Althouse post ,
a long quotation by Mark Twain listing the foods he wanted to eat when he returned to the U.S.  The last sentence: "Ice-water--not prepared in the ineffectual goblet, but in the sincere and capable refrigerator."

The listing of foods is interesting--lots of game, lots of your basic American cuisine.

Food Compass??

USDA hyped their "food compass" yesterday.  I may be the only one, but the term "compass" led me to expect a visual metaphor, like the old food pyramid, but the metaphor is strictly verbal. The closest thing they have to graphics is an interactive map, which also has a pdf file to explain it.

I'd think they ought to be able to do better, more visual, more intuitive.  (Of course, this is Monday morning quarterbacking by someone who has no suggestions to offer.)

McDonalds in France

Via Ezra Klein, here's a study of how McDonalds has succeeded in France so well that it's their second most profitable market (the Klein post says "second biggest" but the study says profitable.

I've linked to Dirk Beauregarde posts in the past, most of which show France as a very centralized country.  But the lesson of McDonalds in France seems to be adaptation to local customs and suppliers, in contrast to their centralized and standardized operations in the US.  In part it's an attempt to recognize the French enjoy their food, and linger, while the Americans grab and go.

Lettuce Talk of Locavores

Post has an article on locally-grown lettuce which I find interesting, mostly because it includes some statistics.

The outfit produces 4,000 heads of leaf lettuce a week, every week, apparently immune to weather variations.  There may be additional outputs; it's not particularly clear. 

The lettuce in grown in 2 fancy-smancy greenhouses, very high tech with computers and stuff, which cover 12,000 square feet, which is a tad over .25 acre.  They're planning to add another greenhouse, some 20,000 square feet, which would bring them up to .75 acre.  Although they're greenhouses, consider this quote:

A computer regulates everything: the 43 high-pressure sodium lights and heater that maintain summerlike light and temperature; the shade cloths that come down at night or when it’s too sunny outside; the pH, nutrient balance and flow of the water and the water system; and carbon dioxide emitted into the air to boost growth.

 They have 12 part-time employees (retirees and housewives paid over minimum wage, plus 3 relatives of the owner-manager.

The lettuce with roots still attached sells in a clamshell for $5 a pop!!! (I'd assume they're selling to K street lobbyists, not to poor underpaid Feds.)  Not clear how much the grower gets. 


So, if we assume 5,000 a week for 50 weeks, that is 250,000.  Assume $2 to grower is $500,00; assume $4 and it's a million.  Assume the equivalent of 6 full-time employees paid $30,000 each is $180,000, leaving $320,00 for operating expenses and profit, or more.

If a population of 1 million uses a head per person per week, then it would take 200 such operations to supply, or 50 acres. So rooftop gardens could indeed supply greens for the city, assuming the residents were very well-paid.

Twelfth Night, Martha Washington, and French Bread

In days of yore Martha Washington would have her Great Cake prepared for Twelfth Night, also her wedding anniversary.  You start by separating the yolks and whites of 40 eggs!

By chance I read about the Great Cake in the Post, then read Dirk Beauregarde's long piece on French bakers--boulangeries, which devotes space to the French custom of having the galette des rois on Twelfth Night (I think it means the "cake of the king") or at least in January. 

World Food Crisis?

So say some foodies.  But I see thisand I wonder:

Corn production outside the US in the 2011-12 marketing year is projected to be 6.6 percent larger than production of a year ago. Argentina, Brazil, China, and the Ukraine are all expected to have larger crops than those of last year. Of the larger producers, only Mexico is expected to have a smaller crop. Foreign wheat production is expected to be up 6.8 percent, led by a 39 percent increase in production in the countries that make up the former Soviet Union as that area recovers from the drought of 2010. Foreign soybean production is expected to increase by 1.4 percent

Agricultural Robots: Progress Report

The Economist has an interesting piece on the development of agricultural robots: machines intelligent enough and adept enough to handle growing and harvesting fruit (mostly), sometimes in greenhouses, sometimes not. (I owe a hat tip to someone, but I had a senior moment.)   Machines can take over some functions, replacing (immigrant) labor and saving money.  The problem is they represent an added capital cost, so they imply bigger operations, more "industrial" farms. One truth the foodies often don't recognize is that fruits and vegetables already represent the most concentrated, most industrial branch of agriculture.  Of course, the promise of cheaper fruits and vegetables is something the food movement can't oppose, is it?

97 Orchard, by Ziegelman

97 Orchard is a book, using a New York City tenement building, now a museum, as a way to link Irish, German, and Jewish immigrant families (who lived there) and to discuss their foodways, their recipes, and the general immigration and Americanization process.  Among the facts I found interesting:

• 10,000 pigs in city streets in 1842
• pigs and butter were the primary sources of fat in the cuisine of Irish and Germans, but problematic for Jews who turned to geese (goose fat = "smaltz").  They raised geese in the tenements, then in larger numbers in sites near the East River, until geese were ousted by reform efforts and the availability of chickens from the country.
• Italian "rag pickers" were much like Dicken's "dust" men (Our Mutual Friend), scavengers who sorted garbage and salvaged usable materials and food from the remains.
• lots of push carts selling everything in the streets, until Mayor La Guardia finally got rid of them right before WWII
• there were a number of places/times where WASPs provided food to immigrants: Ellis Island (food was free, paid for by steamship companies), school lunches, Home Relief (in 1931).  WASPs believed in no spices, no strong tastes, lots of dairy (as befits Northern Europeans) and lots of meat.  
• Irish drank tea at home, whiskey in public at saloons; Jews drank wine at home, tea in restaurants (as in the Russian Tea Room).

The book is good, not great (earning about 4.5 stars on Amazon) but recommended for anyone interested in the area.

The Commentariat Lose Weight

Matt Yglesias posts that he lost 50-70 pounds last year.  Ta-Nahesi Coates lost about the same amount in the same time.  Do two pundits make a trend?

High on the Hog, Surprising Factoids

High on the Hog, subtitled "A Culinary Journey from Africa to America" is a broadbrush history of slavery and race relations focused through the prism of food, food crops, food preparation, cuisines, etc. It's well-written, although I'd quibble with a couple items where I think an urbanite showed lack of agricultural background.  One was a reference to a slave being given 17 "stalks" of corn to subsist on.  Possible, but more likely "ears".  Another was a reference to an early writer (circa 1600?) who claimed that native Americans could raise 200 English bushels of wheat per acre.  The cite may be accurate, but it shows credulity by the writer.
 
A couple factoids: It has the surprising claim that the death rate for sailors on ships engaged in the slave trade was higher than the rate for the Africans held captive. Although the author, Jessica Harris, is a professor, it's not footnoted within the book.

I could explain it: if the analysis includes the whole trip for the sailors, time spent off the coast of Africa waiting to fill the slave ships was notoriously unhealthy.  And, there was a definite economic incentive to keep captives healthy enough to survive the Middle Passage.  So the factoid might be right, but I'm still uncomfortable

Another factoid: France's Code Noir in 1685 prescribed the diet to be provided to French slaves. The U.S. federal government never had such a provision and apparently no states did either.  That's a reflection of the difference in government between France and the U.S.: our governments are weaker and less prescriptive; French governments, whether monarcharies or democracies, are more centralized and prescriptive.

Butter

John Phipps links to a post on the history of butter, which the Romans disdained, and apparently it's no longer on the bad food list.  My mother would be glad to know that; she thought milk and eggs the perfect foods.

Food Prices and Inflation

Lots of recent discussion of the rise in food prices, including whether it had an impact in the Mid East uprisings.  But the graph in this post, hat tip Ezra Klein, shows the price trends for "foodstuffs" and finished consumer foods. The former (wheat, rice, corn, etc.) are much more volatile than the later, mostly because there's pennies worth of wheat in a loaf of bread, etc. etc.

And You Thought Vegetable Growers Didn't Get Subsidies

Foodies often point to the large subsidies given to field crops and complain that fruit and vegetable growers don't get subsidized.  Whatever the truth of the assertion, I want to point to this new FSA program.  Yes, it's for asparagus, which last I looked was a vegetable.  (I like asparagus, fresh asparagus, locally grown asparagus.) Of course the program is for the 2004 through 2007 crop years.

Frankly, I don't have time left in my life to research this, and the link to the body of the regulations does not work (I've complained to GPO) so I'll just fly off the handle.  This is ridiculous.  No bureaucrat can reasonably administer a program this far removed from the current day. Too much changes.  According to the press release, it sounds as if there were a surge of imports during the period.  Someone got some Congressperson to put this in the farm bill, though it doesn't count as an earmark.