Eat This Newsletter 284: Marketing
Hello
Economics may not be perfect, or even close to it, but there are some problems that it solves much more effectively than well-meaning people.
Market Forces Improve Food Distribution
Recording where I picked up some tidbit to share usually takes a back seat to actually making a note of the tidbit. And yet I am quite good at noticing patterns. About a week ago I noted a podcast from December 2015 about how a market economy improved the efficiency of allocations to food banks in the US and increased total donations. Unfortunately I have no recollection of where I found it. Then, on Friday, I bookmarked a very recent article that celebrated the exact same study and that added almost nothing to the 2015 podcast.
Why am I even mentioning the article? Because it offers a better written account than the podcast’s direct transcription and you might find an 8-minute read more attractive than an hour-long, possibly over-geeky listen. The gist is that a cleverly designed auction system allows food banks to bid for what they actually need rather than the previous take-it-or-leave-it approach.
However, one thing the article did not mention is a disagreement within the food bank community over the role of nutrition. Some take a stand and will not offer, say, sweetened fizzy drinks because sweetened fizzy drinks aren’t good for you. Others feel that it’s none of their business. And one effect of the market system was to make it easier for food banks to get exactly what they wanted. So a food bank that wants to get a truck-load of Halloween candy to brighten up the lives of its customers can do so, while others can make the decision to let their customers spend the money they saved on peanut butter on Halloween candy if they so choose.
It is tempting, at this point, to say something like “in a perfect world, of course, there’d be no need for food banks.” I’m not sure that’s true. Even if everyone has enough money to buy what they want and need, there will always be food in excess of demand, whether it is perishable stock on a shop shelf or overproduction by an industrial food manufacturer. Making that food available must reduce the amount that is never eaten.
And Corrupt Behaviour
Yet another golden goose is apparently being killed by greed. This time, it’s the orecchiette handmade by the women of the Via del’Arco Basso in Bari in Puglia. They sit in their doorways morning noon and night, deftly making those little pasta ears that tourists snap and snap up by the bagful. But woe! As Angela Giufridda reports in The Guardian:
The neighbourhood was rocked in August when plainclothes police officers showed up and confiscated stacks of orecchiette and pasta-making equipment amid allegations that some of the women were sourcing commercially produced pasta and passing it off as their own. Some were also accused of flouting food safety standards and fiscal rules.
There were large fines, and some pasta grannies ’fessed up.
“Yes, I was fined,” she said, declining to reveal her name. “But what else was I supposed to do? Demand was such that I couldn’t keep up.”
The obvious thing to do if you can’t increase production, as any economist would tell you, is to put your prices up. Ah, but what if your neighbours won’t do the same? Were the pasta grannies running a price-fixing ring? And even if they weren’t, someone will always be tempted to free-ride and offer reduced quality, perhaps even the horror of store-bought pasta, at the same price.
Gawping tourists who felt they had been ripped off was one factor that apparently prompted the authorities to investigate. To them I say, caveat emptor.
White Olives
For the past six years an item headed l’oliva bianca has lingered on my long list of potential topics for podcast episodes, resisting several attempts to contact growers and promotors. White olives get no mention in Gillian Riley’s glorious Oxford Companion to Italian Food, but they are definitely a thing, albeit in small patches here and there. And, apparently, in Malta.
The story is similar to the others I have bookmarked, of an individual who discovers the mysterious white olives — which lack the anthocyanins that colour other olives purple as they ripen — and who makes it their business to learn more in an effort to bring back these strange fruits, once fêted across the continent. An interesting aspect of the story is that Malta’s white olives are believed to have been brought from Italy “sometime during the Renaissance”.
Which makes me wonder … White olives grow in a few locations in Italy and also, currently, in Greece, Libya, Morocco, and Portugal and, once, in Spain. Are they all genetically one stock, or did the mutation that blocks pigment production crop up a few times? A 2018 study identified at least two independent sets of Italian white olives, both of which are distinct from the Maltese white olive, so maybe those weren’t brought from Italy. In fact, the four varieties from Malta all seem to be distinct from other olives. Maybe the time has come for a detailed look at all known white olive varieties.
Foodie? 👍🏽 or 👎🏽
How do you feel if someone calls you a foodie? I loathe it, and always have. An excellent swansong from Jaya Saxea, recently let go by Eater magazine, charts The Life and Death of the American Foodie. Yes, it is resolutely focused on the United States; no mention of Bake-Off. But the idea of the foodie is global and Jaya Saxena gives a good account of its life and times, ending her eulogy by extracting some of the cultural changes that “foodie” made happen.
“We’re foodies through and through. Even if we don’t want to say it.”
Tea-time for Tariffs
There are all sorts of silly rules about country of origin, and not just in the EU, where a brief sojourn in a country can gain an immigrant lamb or pig resident status. Trump’s Tip-Top Tariffs are providing ongoing lessons about the complexity of it all, as revealed in a recent newsletter from Sam Lowe.
At issue is tea from Fortnum & Mason. The posh people’s grocer argues that as its tea is blended and packed in Newcastle, its country of origin is the UK, which enjoys the low, low tariff of 10% as opposed to India and China’s who-knows-these-days-but-definitely-more-than-10%. US authorities do not agree, whacking on the full tariff for Indian or Chinese tea. This is on top of scrapping the de minimis ruling that exempted small value packages from any taxes and duties.
Sam goes into the full details and concludes: “A nice cup of tea is probably not from the UK. At least if you’re a US customs officer.” I, naturally, beg to differ. Peterston Tea and Tregothnan both offer teas grown entirely in Wales and England respectively, and neither needs any tariff to enjoy sky-high prices.
Digest This
The 35th Annual Ig Nobel prize ceremony rolled around last week in Boston. The theme of the ceremony this year was Digestion, which, as the organisers point out, does not necessarily apply to any of the new Ig Nobel winners. Nevertheless, food research was well to the fore with garlic, pasta, pizza, and alcohol among the ingredients. ABC News in Australia picked out some of the winners, while the prize committee noted that This year’s ceremony was difficult to produce, in a new way.
Take care
