Category: Food and Drink

Food Safety and Culture

by  Alex Tabarrok in

Scientific American has an excerpt from Myhrvold, Young and Bilet’s magnum opus, Modernist Cuisine, in which they discusses the often arbitrary, subjective and culturally bound nature of “food safety” rules and practices.

In decades past, pork was intrinsically less safe than other meats because of muscle infiltration by Trichinella and surface contamination from fecal-borne pathogens like Salmonella and Clostridium perfringens . As a result, people learned to tolerate overcooked pork, and farms raised pigs with increasing amounts of fat—far more fat than is typical in the wild ancestors of pigs such as wild boar. The extra fat helped to keep the meat moist when it was overcooked.

Since then… producers have vastly reduced the risk of contamination through preventive practices on the farm and in meat-processing facilities. Eventually the FDA relaxed the cooking requirements for pork; they are now no different than those for other meats. The irony is that few people noticed—­culinary professionals and cookbook authors included….

After decades of consuming overcooked pork by necessity, the American public has little appetite for rare pork; it isn’t considered traditional. With a lack of cultural pressure or agitation for change by industry groups, the new standards are largely ignored, and many new publications leave the old cooking recommendations intact.

Clearly, cultural and political factors impinge on decisions about food safety. If you doubt that, note the contrast between the standards applied to pork and those applied to beef. Many people love rare steak or raw beef served as carpaccio or steak tartare, and in the United States alone, millions of people safely eat beef products, whether raw, rare, or well-done. Beef is part of the national culture, and any attempt to outlaw rare or raw steak in the United States would face an immense cultural and political backlash from both the consumers and the producers of beef.

…Cultural and political factors also explain why cheese made from raw milk is considered safe in France yet viewed with great skepticism in the United States. Traditional cheese-making techniques, used correctly and with proper quality controls, eliminate pathogens without the need for milk pasteurization. Millions of people safely consume raw milk cheese in France, and any call to ban such a fundamental part of French culture would meet with enormous resistance there….

Raw milk cheese aged less than 60 days cannot be imported into the United States and cannot legally cross U.S. state lines. Yet in 24 of the 50 states, it is perfectly legal to make, sell, and consume raw milk cheeses within the state. In most of Canada raw milk cheese is banned, but in the province of Quebec it is legal.

One point they don’t note is that there may be multiple equilibria–that is, it may be more dangerous to produce raw milk cheese in a country or region without a history of producing raw milk cheese than elsewhere. Still, this is no reason we shouldn’t be eating more horse.

How to arbitrage the salad bar?

by  Tyler Cowen in

Nate Silver has a tip, based obviously on the assumption of additive separability of utility:

4. Go crazy on toppings. Check out how high the prices for walnuts, almonds, gorgonzola crumbles and croutons are in the graphic above. Much to its credit, Whole Foods doesn’t stock the best salad topping of all — bacon bits, obviously — in its salad bar. Why? Because it costs a whopping $21.28 per pound. With any luck your local salad-bar merchant isn’t quite as savvy.

I don’t want free toppings!  And you have to pay me to eat bacon bits.

Hong Kong markets in everything

by  Tyler Cowen in

…a McWedding starts at $1,280, which includes food and drinks for 50 people. The package includes a budget version of the usual trappings: a “cake” made of stacked apple pies, gifts for the guests and invitation cards, each with a wedding photo of the couple. (Hong Kong wedding photos are taken in advance, with the couple in rented finery.)

McDonald’s employees dressed in black suits mimic the actions of hostesses at upscale hotels. They greet guests at the entrance, usher them to the signature book and deliver food, even if it is just a Big Mac and fries.

The story is here and for the pointer I thank Chris F. Masse.  Don’t forget this part:

McWeddings were first announced on Oct. 10, 2010, because “10-10-10” is another lucky combination.

The lack of alcohol has not seemed to bother anyone, and Ms. Chang said there had been no requests for it so far. Instead, couples toast with something sugary, because of the implications of “sweetness” in Chinese belief. “That’s why we toast with sundaes,” she said. “You can have a lot of fun with soft drinks.”

The Big Society just got smaller

by  Tyler Cowen in

Migrants from outside the European Economic Area will no longer be allowed to work in the UK as chefs in takeaway restaurants, the government has said.

…A similar ban will apply to workers such as hairdressers, beauty salon managers and estate agents from April.

The number of skilled migrants not from the European Economic Area is being capped annually at 21,700.

…The government wants to cut net migration from about 200,000 a year to tens of thousands by 2015.

Here is the story, hat tip goes to Random Variable.

Markets in everything, northern Korea filtered through northern Virginia edition

by  Tyler Cowen in

Chung Jin Dong, 6499 Little River Turnpike, West Alexandria, 202-360-2746.

The sausage is some of the best in the area, most of all because of the vibrant fresh pepper; it also comes with stomach and liver.  Dip the pieces in the shrimp sauce.  The soup also has the knockout fresh pepper.  The menu is in Korean only and most of the staff do not speak much English.  The food is recognizably Korean, although not like any Korean food I have had.

They assure me it is real North Korean cuisine, although they assent to any question I ask them.  The owner and cook is from North Korea:

A little more than a decade ago, Ma was an undercover agent for North Korea’s Ministry of Public Security, conducting drug investigations. Her job was to bust smugglers—farmers, mostly—who were exporting opium to China.

It is not your go-to place for variety, but the quality is high and the originality is off the charts.  Anyone interested in ethnic food should visit this outlet.

For the pointer I thank Annie Lowrey.

Gas station tacos

by  Tyler Cowen in

R&R Tacqueria, 7894 Washington Blvd. (Rt.1); 410-799-0001, Elkridge, Maryland, 13 minutes north of the 495/95 intersection, look for the Shell sign.

This tacqueria is in a gas station, with two small counters and three chairs to sit on.  It is the best huarache I have eaten, ever, including in Mexico.  It is the best chile relleno I've had in the United States, ever.  They serve among the best Mexican soups I have had, ever, and I have been to Mexico almost twenty times.  I recommend the tacos al pastor as well.  At first Yana and Natasha were skeptics ("Sometimes you exaggerate about food") but now they are converts and the takeaways have vanished.  They even sell Mexican Coca-Cola and by the way the place is quite clean and nice, albeit cramped.

The highly intelligent proprietor is a former cargo pilot from Mexico City and speaks excellent English.  The restaurant is called R&R after the names of his two sons. 

For over twenty years I have sought such a place in the Washington, D.C. area and now I have one.  For over twenty years people have been asking me how can they scratch this itch and now I have an answer.  (The version of this post to appear on tylercowensethnicdiningguide.com will have photos of the food.)

Via Jodi Ettenberg, The Wall Street Journal reports on gas station tacos.

This guy is serious about competing, or the culture that is Philadelphia

by  Tyler Cowen in

"I've been at this for 47 years, and I've never seen mice used as a criminal tool"…

How so?

The owner of a suburban Philadelphia pizza shop was arraigned on Tuesday on charges he schemed to plant live mice in competing pizza parlours in hope of putting them out of business.

Nickolas Galiatsatos, owner of Nina's Bella Pizzeria in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, is accused of putting bags of mice at nearby competitors on Monday afternoon, according to Upper Darby Police Superintendent Michael Chitwood.

The owner of Verona Pizza watched Galiatsatos go into his restroom carrying a bag but emerge empty-handed, and alerted two patrol officers who were in the restaurant, Chitwood said.

The officers found a bag of mice and footprints on a toilet seat, suggesting someone had been trying to reach the ceiling tiles, he said.

For the pointer I thank Daniel Lippman.

Former markets in everything

by  Tyler Cowen in

Ice cream made from [human] breast milk has been removed from a central London restaurant on health grounds following complaints by members of the public.

Here is more.  The response?:

Mr O'Connor, said: "We have had an amazing response – many women have come forward and offer to give us milk.

"You can buy alcohol and tobacco but not breast milk in Westminster.

For the pointer I thank John Chilton.

Facts about India

by  Tyler Cowen in

Four decades after the Green Revolution seemed to be solving India’s food problems, nearly half of Indian children age 5 or younger are malnourished.

And:

There is no agribusiness of the type known in the United States, with highly mechanized farms growing thousands of acres of food crops, because Indian laws and customs bar corporations from farming land directly for food crops. The laws also make it difficult to assemble large land holdings.

Yet even as India’s farming still depends on manual labor and the age-old vicissitudes of nature, demand for food has continued to rise – because of a growing population and rising incomes, especially in the middle and upper classes. As a result, India is importing ever greater amounts of some staples like beans and lentils (up 157 percent from 2004 to 2009) and cooking oil (up 68 percent in the same period).

The story is here.

Is the cow a silo of option value?

by  Tyler Cowen in

I was struck by this argument, which I had never heard:

The overriding advantage of meat is that demand for it is elastic.  People don't need it but they like it, and up to a point, however much you produce, they'll keep on buying it.  The demand for cereals for human consumption, on the other hand, tends to be inelastic.  People need their pound of grain a day, but they don't need much more, and they won't buy any more unless they have sufficient wealth to invest the grain in animals, either to produce higher value food, or else to keep it "on the hoof" for a rainy day (or a drought).

The existence of meat means that a farmer can sow wheat, barley, oats, beans, maize, and so on with reasonable confidence that, in the event of a good harvest, someone will buy it, because even if everybody has sufficient, it can be fed to animals.  This dynamic is not restricted to a money economy.  It works exactly the same for Melanesian subsistence farmers who can sow enough sweet potato and manioc to cover a bad year knowing that it is not a waste of effort, because in a good year the surplus can be fed to pigs.

Take the animals, the elastic element, out of the equation and the business of sowing grain suddenly become far more risky…This elementary matter of the need for a feed buffer fails to feature in most of the literature that is written about meat-eating and vegetarianism…

That quotation is from Simon Fairlie's quite interesting Meat: A Benign Extravagance. 

As they used to say on the U. Chicago Ph.d. qualifying exams, true, false, or uncertain?  And under what conditions?

Why are so many islanders obese?

by  Tyler Cowen in

Via Chris Bodenner, Joshua Keating reports:

What really sets the size of these islanders apart is the size of their islands: Tuvalu, Palau, Nauru, and the other countries on the obesity list are among the world's smallest countries in terms of land area and population. So a single tourist resort, fast-food chain, or trade deal has a much more profound effect on society than it would, say, in India or Nigeria.  

Could it be something about Polynesians?  After all, there are some hefty Maori in New Zealand and that is not a small island, especially not measured in economic terms.  Mexico (not Polynesian, of course) also has a growing obesity problem and that cannot be attributed to the island factor.  The same is true of the Persian Gulf states and there Keating suggests very rapid modernization as a culprit.

Keating discusses other factors.  Don't Polynesians naturally eat a starchy diet?  Are island groups more used to the prospect of famine, and thus their bodies store fat more readily?  Being heavy is not low status on many of these islands.  Here are some separate (speculative) claims about their voyaging history.  Nauru is the heaviest island  population, so maybe it has something to do with not having to work for a living, in this case due to phosphates.  Cape Verde and Okinawa are islands, but their residents do not seem to be very heavy.

Don't residents of (some) small islands have weaker prospects of migrating to large cities and might that affect their dietary decisions?  I think of rural isolation as a factor behind obesity, though Keating does not mention that.  Being heavy is also one way of identifying with the local rather than the global culture, and islanders may be faced with stronger pressures to reaffirm their identities.  I would like to see a comparison between Samoans who move to New Zealand and those who stay put.