Category: Food and Drink

Yes I saw the counts today on the breakfast menu in New York City.  Being a silly man, who is easily prone to violating the independence of irrelevant alternatives, I immediately searched for the item with the highest calorie count (it involved butter and lobster, for breakfast).  I thought "no way will I get that" and ordered a bagel with lox and cream cheese.  Yes, I know about anchoring and behavioral economics.  Is not one equilibrium that every restaurant puts an especially high calorie item on its menu, so that people feel virtuous in ordering something else?

Josh writes to me:

This might not be normal,
but last night I started wondering why beer prices are not listed on
menus, while wine prices are.  My next thought was "Tyler Cowen would
know the exact answer to that".  I know you are busy and it is a rather
trivial question, but I was wondering if you could explain the
differences in wine and beer that lead restaurants to include the price
of one and not the price of the other on their menus.

Only sentence two is foolish but at least on this I am meta-rational and I appeal to you for help.  One possibility is that wine prices don’t have such a tight upper bound so you had better get the customer’s buy-in for a relatively expensive bottle.  Or if fine bottles are being sold relatively cheaply that is worth screaming about but how much can you discount a quality beer?

China is the world’s largest importer of chicken feet and the United States is the world’s largest exporter.  Tyson Foods alone send some 2.8 billion chicken feet to China every year.  The chicken feet are sold at Chinese Wal-Marts (among other places) which in China are upscale and appreciated for their high quality American goods.

Is there anywhere good to eat right off the road between Phoenix and Sedona?  I won’t be there long, it really must be along the way.  And it must be tasty.

The wine aisle in your grocery store is probably organized this way.
Yes, I know there is a California section and an Import section and
even a jug/box wine spot, but look within each wine display and you’ll
see the clear price stratification effect. The wines you have come to
buy are probably on the shelf just below your natural eye level, so
that you cannot help but see those special occasion wines just above
them (and the higher priced wines above them on the top shelf). Cheaper
wines are down below, near the floor, so that you have to stoop down to
choose them.

The physical act of taking the wine from the shelf mirrors the
psychological choice you make – reach up for better (more expensive)
wines, stoop down for the cheaper products. The principle will be the
same in upscale supermarkets and discount stores but the choices (what
price wine will be at the bottom, middle and top) will differ as you
might expect.

Here is the full post, which includes a photo.

Biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75% – far more than
previously estimated – according to a confidential World Bank report
obtained by the Guardian.

The damning unpublished assessment is
based on the most detailed analysis of the crisis so far, carried out
by an internationally-respected economist at global financial body.

The
figure emphatically contradicts the US government’s claims that
plant-derived fuels contribute less than 3% to food-price rises. It
will add to pressure on governments in Washington and across Europe,
which have turned to plant-derived fuels to reduce emissions of
greenhouse gases and reduce their dependence on imported oil.

Here is the story, the report is not yet available, at least not to me.  Seventy-five percent seems like a high estimate to me, especially since many foods are more expensive but they are not all used for biofuels.  Still, the government’s estimate of three percent is surely way too low.  Biofuels are maybe a good test case for various estimates of government quality: will the bad biofuels still be subsidized five years from now?

This has already achieved widespread circulation through the NYT, but if you don’t already know, its presented expected value is high.  A good way to eat pumpkin seeds is to fry them with chopped tomatillos and chopped white onions and a few chiles, then Cuisinart the whole thing into a sauce and use it with the meat or vegetable of your choice.  Tuna works well too, noting that a rural Mexican might add pumpkin or squash.  You can serve it with either rice or tortillas.

If you are ever in Hong Kong try the cream of almond and black sesame soup at Ching Ching Desserts on Electric Street just around the corner from the Tin Hau metro.  It’s like drinking marzipan – with a little garnish and served in style this dessert soup could find its way onto the menu of any five star restaurant in the world but you can get a bowl in Hong Kong for less than three bucks. 

Perhaps taking a page from the Pringles inventor who was recently buried
in a can of said dehydrated chips, a Ukrainian restaurant is shaped like
a coffin on the outside, and boasts a coffin theme inside.

Here is a photo and further explanation.  Many or perhaps all of the entries have themes of death.  Perhaps they should do an economic impact study:

The undertakers hope that their restaurant will be confirmed as the
world’s biggest coffin, attracting tourists to a region best known for
its mineral-rich bathing waters.

Here are even more photos of interest.

More than I had thought:

For instance, the
real price (in 1988 prices) for the basket of the entire Top 100 list [for the U.S.] was
$4,313 in 1988; $3,132 in 1993; $2,533 in 1999; and $2,421 in 2004. That is nearly a 44% decrease in prices
from 1988 to 2004. At the same time,
there was no significant change in the quality of the wines on the Top 100
list.

Here is much more information, from Karl Storchmann.

Ezra reports:

…two Carnegie Mellon researchers recently broke down
the carbon footprint of foods, and their findings were a bit
surprising. 83 percent of emissions came from the growth and production
of the food itself. Only 11 percent came from transportation, and even
then, only 4 percent came from the transportation between grower and
seller (which is the part that eating local helps cut).

In other words, when it comes to food the greenest things you can do, if that is your standard, is to eat less meat and have fewer kids.

Matsa and Anderson next looked at data on individual eating habits from
a survey conducted between 1994 and 1996. When eating out, people
reported consuming about 35 percent more calories on average than when
they ate at home. But importantly, respondents reduced their caloric
intake at home on days they ate out (that’s not to say that people were
watching their weight, since respondents who reported consuming more at
home also tended to eat more when going out). Overall, eating out
increased daily caloric intake by only 24 calories.

The researchers also find that greater access to fast food restaurants, as created by new highway construction, doesn’t much matter for weight.  Here is more, including a link to the original paper.