Results for “food” 2044 found
Veronique de Rugy on *An Economist Gets Lunch*
On the (superior) French parental approach to children and food:
Growing up, my parents would mostly ignore my wishes when it came to food — or anything else for that matter. I wasn’t forced to eat blue cheese at every meal, but I had to try it once in a while, like I had to try every new food they put on the table. My mom fixed one meal for the whole family and if you didn’t like it, well, tough luck because that’s what was on the menu that night. As a result, my sister and I ate very diverse meals (most of them without particular enjoyment). This practice may not guarantee that children will grow into adults who can eat anything but it certainly makes it easier for parents (Having tried both ways with my children, I can confirm that point too!).
And in summary:
Finally, I can imagine that this book will annoy a serious portion of the “foodie” community as, in the end, I read it as an awesome statement about the democratization of great food, not to mention a serious exercise in debunking the idea that high-quality food is reserved for a rare elite willing to invest lots of money in eating.
There is more here.
Assorted links
1. I want to praise Robin Hanson, yet I also want him to become more trendy with the trendy people. Sometimes I think he already is trendy, yet he is certainly not shallow. What to do? Here is Robin’s CBA for uploads.
2. Will Disney manage to do away with lines?
3. The geographic flow of music: which cities lead in terms of listening habits? Oslo, for one, and Montreal, Atlanta for rap music.
4. Ask a Korean, on Korean food, from a self-proclaimed “Korean food Wahhabbist.”
Deregulate green carts!
Food trucks are not the only battle:
“Green carts are a quick and nimble approach that can get fresh food out there relatively quickly,” says Rick Luftglass, executive director of the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund, which has provided $2 million to support green carts in New York. “And because they are mobile, you can follow the need. If sales aren’t good on one block, you can move a few blocks away. It allows the market to build around the customers.”
…Generations of immigrants to New York got their start selling on the street. In the 19th century, the Lower East Side was full of pushcarts hawking pickles, flowers, buttons and hats. But today’s arrivals are limited by strict rules for sidewalk vending. There are multiyear waits to sell those New York hot dogs and a thriving black market for permits.
That is from the excellent Jane Black. Many green carts are starting to take food stamps.
Debtor’s Prison for Failure to Pay for Your Own Trial
Debtor’s prisons are supposed to be illegal in the United States but today poor people who fail to pay even small criminal justice fees are routinely being imprisoned. The problem has gotten worse recently because strapped states have dramatically increased the number of criminal justice fees. In Pennsylvania, for example, the criminal court charges for police transport, sheriff costs, state court costs, postage, and “judgment.” Many of these charges are not for any direct costs imposed by the criminal but have been added as revenue enhancers. A $5 fee, for example, supports the County Probation Officers’ Firearms Training Fund, an $8 fee supports the Judicial Computer Project, a $250 fee goes to the DNA Detection Fund. Convicted criminals may face dozens of fees (not including fines and restitution) totaling a substantial burden for people of limited means. Fees do not end outside the courtroom. Jailed criminals can be charged for room and board and for telephone use, haircuts, drug tests, transportation, booking, and medical co-pays. In Arizona, visitors to a prison are now charged a $25 maintenance fee. In PA in order to get parole there is a mandatory charge of $60. While on parole, defendants may be further assessed counseling, testing and other fees. Interest builds unpaid fees larger and larger. In Washington state unpaid legal debt accrues at an interest rate of 12%. As a result, the median person convicted in WA sees their criminal justice debt grow larger over time.
Many states are now even charging the accused to apply for and use a public defender! As a result, some defendants are discouraged from exercising their rights to an attorney.
Most outrageously, in some states public defender, pre-trial jail and other court fees can be assessed on individuals even when they are not convicted of any crime. Failure to pay criminal justice fees can result in revocation of an individual’s drivers license, arrest and imprisonment. Individuals with revoked licenses who drive (say to work to earn money to pay their fees) and are apprehended can be further fined and imprisoned. Unpaid criminal justice debt also results in damaged credit reports and reduced housing and employment prospects. Furthermore, failure to pay fees can mean a violation of probation and parole terms which makes an individual ineligible for Federal programs such as food stamps, Temporary Assistance to Needy Family funds and Social Security Income for the elderly and disabled.
It’s difficult to argue against criminal justice fees for those who can pay, but for those who cannot– and most criminal defendants are poor–such fees can be a personal and public policy disaster. Criminal justice debt drags people further away from reintegration with civil society. A person’s life can spiral out of their control when interest, late fees, revocation of a driver’s license and ineligibility for public assistance, mean that unpaid criminal justice debt snowballs. You can’t get blood from a stone but if you try, you can break the stone.
Optimal punishment is swift and sure but also has a defined endpoint. As with bankruptcy, punishment must end, leaving both hope and opportunity. We used to release criminals without a nickel or a nail but with an understanding that their debt to society had been paid. Today, we release criminals with a ball of debt that chains them to the criminal justice system and which can pull them back into prison long after their sentences have been served. Releasing people with little hope or opportunity for reintegration with civil society is good for neither the releasees nor society.
The Matt Yglesias take on restaurant decline
Matt writes:
Imagine some diners are, by temperament, venturesome while others are regulars. Over the long term, the best business strategy is to appeal to regulars since they offer a stable client base. But when a restaurant is new, it by definition lacks regulars and needs to appeal to venturesome diners both to get an initial wave of customers and also to attract “buzz” and get the temperamental regulars in the door. Over time, a successful restaurant will attempt to switch and become more a place for regulars, which means that venturesome diners will come to like it less. At the same time, alienating venturesome foodies is very low cost because being venturesome they would perceive their own growing familiarity with the food as declining quality one way or the other.
This is not at all far from my basic theory, though Matt seems to imply it is. In An Economist Gets Lunch I stress how the cycle of “ceasing to appeal to the informed diners” has very much accelerated with the internet. Good reviews arrive rapidly, perhaps too rapidly. If there is a new place you quite like — especially if it is trendy — go many times now, because it will decline in quality more rapidly than such places used to. Once the place is established, it can get by more on momentum and on its value as a focal venue for socializing. You can take the presence of a lot of beautiful women as one sign that a place has crossed into this territory.
Don’t think of the model as “what happens to a restaurant when there is an exogenous increase in the beauty of its women” (recall Scott Sumner — “don’t reason from a beautiful women [price] change!” ). Think of the model as “what does lots of beautiful women predict about the place of a restaurant in its product life cycle?”
Restaurants with beautiful women are still better than average, relative to the population of restaurants as a whole, for obvious reasons related to wealth and demographics. They’re just not likely to be the very best of the good restaurants, especially for the price.
Arguably it is a different case when a restaurant has beautiful women, but most mainstream male patrons would regard those women as “ineligible,” or “unapproachable,” perhaps for reason of a different religion or ethnicity. At those restaurants you can enjoy both great food for the price and beautiful women, though perhaps your enjoyment of the latter will remain at some distance.
NPR Morning Edition coverage of *An Economist Gets Lunch*
You will find it here. Here is one quotation:
“Vegetarians are more virtuous than the rest of us; they should be admired.”
Assorted links
1. Carrying costs > liquidity premium, German dead body edition. Raise the price of a donation, I say.
2. Liquidity premium > carrying costs, German live body edition, disintermediation; “He meets 10 to 15 women a month.” Recommended, I read it twice.
3. Jeff Sachs toys with the idea of a three-child limit for Nigeria (for fathers? mothers? probably de facto just the latter, then won’t it boost polygamy?). In any case it would be a huge tax on rural Nigerians and it is a very bad idea, not to mention a massive violation of personal liberty. Wouldn’t a more right-wing thinker have encountered a firestorm for a similar proposal? (Addendum: a related set of links and commentary from Chris Blattman.)
5. Me in El Diario, on El Paso and Ciudad Juárez, sister cities of a sort, a wonderful near-controlled experiment on how the law influences our food (in Spanish).
Toward a 21st-Century FDA?
In a WSJ op-ed, Andrew von Eschenbach, FDA commissioner from 2005 to 2009, is surprisingly candid about how the FDA is killing people.
When I was commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) from 2005 to 2009, I saw firsthand how regenerative medicine offered a cure for kidney and heart failure and other chronic conditions like diabetes. Researchers used stem cells to grow cells and tissues to replace failing organs, eliminating the need for expensive supportive treatments like dialysis and organ transplants.
But the beneficiaries were laboratory animals. Breakthroughs for humans were and still are a long way off. They have been stalled by regulatory uncertainty, because the FDA doesn’t have the scientific tools and resources to review complex innovations more expeditiously and pioneer regulatory pathways for state-of-the-art therapies that defy current agency conventions.
Ultimately, however, von Eschenbach blames not the FDA but Congress:
Congress has starved the agency of critical funding, limiting its scientists’ ability to keep up with peers in private industry and academia. The result is an agency in which science-based regulation often lags far behind scientific discovery.
Should we not, however, read the following ala Strauss?
The FDA isn’t obstructing progress because its employees are mean-spirited or foolish.
…For example, in August 2010, the FDA filed suit against a company called Regenerative Sciences. Three years earlier, the company had begun marketing a process it called Regenexx to repair damaged joints by injecting them with a patient’s own stem cells. The FDA alleged that the cells the firm used had been manipulated to the point that they should be regulated as drugs. A resulting court injunction halting use of the technique has cast a pall over the future of regenerative medicine.
A peculiar example of a patient-spirited and wise decision, no? And what are we to make of this?
FDA scientists I have encountered do care deeply about patients and want to say “yes” to safe and effective new therapies. Regulatory approval is the only bridge between miracles in the laboratory and lifesaving treatments. Yet until FDA reviewers can be scientifically confident of the benefits and risks of a new technology, their duty is to stop it—and stop it they will. (emphasis added).
von Eschenbach ends with what sounds like a threat or perhaps, as they say, it is a promise. Unless Congress funds the FDA at higher levels and lets it regulate itself:
…we had better get used to the agency saying no by calling “time out” or, worse, “game over” for American companies developing new, vital technologies like regenerative medicine.
Frankly, I do not want to “get used” to the FDA saying game over for American companies but nor do I trust Congress to solve this problem. Thus, von Eschenbach convinces me that if we do want new, vital technologies like regenerative medicine we need more fundamental reform.
Huffington Post covers *An Economist Gets Lunch*
The interview is here, with Arin Greenwood, here is one excerpt:
For the world as a whole the main thing we need to do is invest more in increasing agricultural productivity. It’s really slowed down since the 1990s. It’s a major problem for at least one billion people. I think it’s much more important than what people like Michael Pollan usually talk about. For the U.S., I think we should have a carbon tax, for environmental reasons.
I think as individuals, people overrate the virtues of local food. Most of the energy consumption in our food system is not caused by transportation. Sometimes local food is more energy efficient. But often it’s not. The strongest case for locavorism is to eat less that’s flown on planes, and not to worry about boats.
And this:
This will sound a little strange coming from me. The two dynamic sectors now are hamburgers and pizza.
And this:
There are any number of places with good decor and great food, they just cost a very high price. Most people don’t want to eat at those places on a regular basis for reasons of money or time, or just the sheer oppression of having to dress up and go to a nice place all the time.
You can order the book on Amazon here. For Barnes & Noble here. For Indiebound.org here.
Six Rules for Dining Out
The Atlantic Monthly feature article from An Economist Gets Lunch is now on-line, excerpt:
When you enter a restaurant, you don’t want to see expressions of disgust on the diners’ faces, but you do want to see a certain seriousness of purpose. Pull out a mirror and try eating some really good food. How much are you smiling? Not as much as you might think. A small aside: in many restaurants, it is a propitious omen when the diners are screaming at each other. It’s a sign they are regular customers and feel at home. Many Chinese restaurants are full of screaming Chinese patrons. Don’t ask me if they’re fighting, I have no idea—but it is a sign that I want to be there too.
And:
If you’re asking Google, put a “smart” word into your search query. Best restaurants Washington will yield too much information, and will serve up a lot of bad restaurants, too. That’s a lowest-common-denominator search query. Google something more specific instead, like best Indian restaurants Washington, even if you don’t want Indian food. You’ll get to more reliable, more finely grained, and better-informed sources about food, and you can then peruse those sources for their non-Indian recommendations. Google Washington best cauliflower dish, even if you don’t want cauliflower. Get away from Google-for-the-masses.
Here is a good video bit of me exploring a new Vietnamese restaurant in Eden Center.
You can pre-order the book on Amazon here. For Barnes & Noble here. For Indiebound.org here.
Further WSJ coverage of *An Economist Gets Lunch*
Recently he noted a jump in the quality of pizza and hamburger restaurants after his daughter dragged him to a Shake Shack restaurant.
“It took me a while to actually believe it. I had a bias,” Cowen said.
From Kristina Peterson, here is more. Here is the coverage from three days ago.
Publication day for *An Economist Gets Lunch*
Adam Ozimek writes:
Cowen’s history of how American food came to be so mediocre is a strong counterargument to those who look to blame the phenomenon on commercialization, capitalism, and excess of choice. In contrast to the usual narrative, Cowen tells us how bad laws have played an important role in shaping our food ecosystem for the worse over time. This includes prohibition’s negative and long lasting impact on restaurants, and the government aggressively limiting one of our greatest sources of culinary innovation: immigration. This is not to lay the blame entirely on the government. Television and a culture that panders to the desires of children have also incentivized poor culinary trends.
The book contains many other other important arguments against popular food ideas, including defenses of technology and agriculture commercialization against critiques of locavores, slow foodies, and environmentalists. For example, if you live in an area where it takes a lot of energy and resources to grow food — like the desert — the most environmentally friendly way may be to grow it somewhere else and ship it. An apple grown locally may be refrigerated for months, which consumes a lot of energy, whereas it may be both fresher and better for the environment to grow it elsewhere and ship it in from afar by boat. He also defends genetically modified crops as the likely cures to the biggest food problem we have today, which is not obesity but malnutrition.
But Cowen is not an apologist, and he doesn’t argue that we can just deregulate our way to a better food system. In fact he has many words of support for policies and values often supported by progressives.
…If there is one overarching lesson it is that looking at food through the framework of supply and demand can help you both understand our food system better, and also help you be a smarter consumer and get more out of every meal.
You can pre-order the book on Amazon here. For Barnes & Noble here. For Indiebound.org here.
What I’ve been reading
1. Barb Stuckey, Taste: What You’re Missing: The Passionate Eater’s Guide to Why Good Food Tastes Good. A very good and interesting look at how and why food tastes as it does, from a professional food developer.
2.Robert J. Sampson, Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect. I’m still grappling with this book, which I find difficult to parse. It’s a very detailed empirical study of the strength of neighborhood effects, with reference to Chicago. I thought I would give the book its own post, but it is difficult to excerpt. I don’t quite understand how he distinguishes neighborhood effects from selection effects, though I have read his discussion that selection effects are themselves neighborhood effects, ultimately. I feel there is a good deal of interesting social science in here, but the book should be far more transparent. William Julius Wilson called it “…one of the most comprehensive and sophisticated empirical studies ever conducted by a social scientist.” Here is a Harvard story on the book. For sure some of you should pick this one up, but I am myself still torn.
3. Lifeboat: A Novel, by Charlotte Rogan. A genuinely gripping story of a bunch of people in a sinking lifeboat, facing the usual philosophical dilemmas. Maybe that doesn’t sound thrilling, but I pressed on eagerly and read it to the end.
4. Free Market Fairness, by John Tomasi. Here is Matt on the book: “Without being by any means a libertarian, I do think that people of a left-wing orientation sometimes give short shrift to the non-pecuniary aspects of economic freedom. Whether or not you buy that barber licensing rules are a big deal economically, the specter of the government throwing a person in jail for participating in an exchange of haircuts for money between consenting adults should bother liberally inclined people for basically the same reasons that all random state interference in the conduct of private life is bothersome.”
5. India After Gandhi: The History of the World’s Largest Democracy, by Ramachandra Guha. Both informationally dense and conceptual, in a good way.
Dual coverage from The New York Times
Damon Darlin liked my new book, An Economist Gets Lunch:
It’s a sports bar, which seems like an unlikely choice, but not to Professor Cowen’s way of thinking. He chose it precisely because it was an unlikely choice. An American sports bar might mean Buffalo wings and cheeseburgers, but an Ethiopian sports bar? “They are making no attempt to appeal to non-Ethiopians,” he said.
…As for the food at Eyo’s Sports Bar, it persuaded me on his thesis that immigrants rejuvenated the American palate and it was best to leave the finicky children, or teenagers, at home.
Dwight Garner did not like it:
Reading Mr. Cowen is like pushing a shopping cart through Whole Foods with Rush Limbaugh. The patter is nonstop and bracing. Mr. Cowen delivers observations that, should Alice Waters ever be detained in Gitmo, her captors will play over loudspeakers to break her spirit.
These observations include: “There’s nothing especially virtuous about the local farmer”; “buying green products seems to encourage individuals to be less moral”; and — a contender for Orwellian sentence of the year — “technology and business are a big part of what makes the world gentle and fun.”
I think it’s Orwellian that he thinks this is Orwellian. On the two errors he claims to have found in the book, he is wrong in both cases. Brad DeLong adds appropriate comment on the first. My estimate for the Google search number claims was correct and multiply checked when I did it, and these days it comes in at around the high 400,000s, nothing near his 115,000 figure.
You can pre-order the book on Amazon here. For Barnes & Noble here. For Indiebound.org here. It is due out tomorrow.
The WSJ reviews *An Economist Gets Lunch*
From Graeme Wood, the review is here. It has the excellent title “From Invisible Hand to Mouth.” Excerpt:
For authenticity, he awards points to Pakistani restaurants that feature pictures of Mecca, since they’re more likely to cater to Pakistani clientele. (“The more aggressively religious the décor, the better it will be for the food.”) Find restaurants where diners are “screaming at each other” or “pursuing blood feuds,” he says—indications that people feel comfortable there and return frequently with their familiars.
I liked this line:
These labor-intensive operations, Mr. Cowen writes, show “just how uneconomical true barbecue art can be”—which suggests that if you want to eat like an economist, you should find a chef who doesn’t cook like one.
Note, however, that if you have talent but do not wish to scale it up very far, running an excellent local barbecue restaurant still may be a good use of your time. The last two lines are sincere flattery:
Mr. Cowen says to beware of scenic views, bevies of beautiful women, and well-stocked bars. “You want to see that the people eating there mean business,” Mr. Cowen writes. Food is a business he knows intimately, although his preference for delicious meals in windowless rooms with ugly women, pictures of the Kaaba, and active blood-feuds will not be a taste shared by all.
You can pre-order the book on Amazon here. For Barnes & Noble here. For Indiebound.org here. It is due out April 12.