Eat This Newsletter 232: Shokuiku
Hello
My thanks to a subscriber who used the piece in the previous issue about pricey and perfect Japanese fruit to send me links to two videos, one about melons and the other about strawberries. There is a suggestion that lower quality fruit goes for a lower price, but is there no Japanese edible equivalent of pile ‘em high and sell ‘em cheap? Perhaps not.
Feeding the Future
There is a definite trope in writing about school food policy in which someone goes to a strange land, observes how the strangers feed their children at school, and comes home to ask “why can’t we do the same here?”. The most recent one I’ve come across is Gabe Baskin’s article describing What the United States Can Learn from Japan’s School Lunch System.
Baskin explains in some detail how Japanese school meal programmes address many areas besides getting children fed. Costs, waste, sourcing, community, dietary diversity all play their part, and Baskin makes it clear how weak American school feeding is by comparison. Is there nothing Japan could take from America? Apparently, “Japan could learn from the United States’s free lunch offerings, a practice some municipalities in Japan are beginning to implement”.
That’s interesting. Public school in Japan is effectively free, but school lunches cost an average of ¥56,000 (€350, $375) a year for junior high. To me, that seems like an incredible bargain, and one of the downsides of free school meals, not just in America, is that it creates a stigma such that poorer families may choose not to avail themselves of the subsidy. Is that happening in Japan, I wonder. And truly, regardless of any stigma, would it not be worth giving all children in public schools free meals, even if it means taxing wealthier parents a teeny bit more?
Peasants Are Revolting? No, Farmers Are Revolting
Call me naive, but I don’t think someone who drives a modern €75,000 tractor, no matter how little of it they actually own themselves, is a peasant. So while they may be clogging up the traffic in European capitals — with the notable exception of Rome where a token convoy of just four tractors was permitted to drive symbolically past the Colosseum — it is hard for me to see the current unrest in Europe as a peasants’ revolt. That hasn’t stopped Pratinav Anil from dredging up 500 years of history to warn: “As in the Holy Roman Empire circa 1524, so in the Europe of 2024: we must beware the peasant”.
Must we, really? Or must we, rather, beware putting something as important as food into the hands of a global economy that frankly cares nothing for the well-being of those who produce food, those who process food, those who eat food and the environment we all live in. For far too long government policy towards food and farming has consisted of fairly toothless attempts to stop farmers taking advantage of the incentives offered them by the “free market”. Buyers (industrial and individual) want cheaper food? Sure, we will pay you for everything you can grow, regardless of quality. Oh wait, you miss the countryside? We will pay you not to grow food and to replant trees. You want higher welfare standards? Ok, we can mandate that, but we won’t stop imports from low-welfare countries even though we know your concern for welfare does not extend to putting your money where your mouth is.
I’ve railed often enough about none of us paying — or even knowing — the true cost of the food we eat. The true peasant knew. Equally, the true peasant knew hardship and hunger and that self-sufficiency was often not sufficient. Of course we would not be here if we still relied on peasant farmers and the meagre surplus that could be extracted from them without actually killing them. Nevertheless, today’s farmers are not their descendants.
Sustainable Salmon
You’re in the supermarket freezer aisle trying to make sense of the different labels on seafood products. You know the oceans are in trouble and you’re trying to do the right thing, but the information is confusing and seemingly contradictory.
One packet of salmon fillets has a smiling dolphin logo on the back. Another, a less-smiley bright blue fish logo. You pull out your smartphone and open the sustainable seafood app your friend told you about, only to become more confused by its traffic light ratings. In the end, you just pick any product that the label assures you is sustainable.
Fear not, help may be at hand, thanks to an article in The Conversation. Laurence Wainwright and Natasha Lutz hack a path through the network of “certification schemes, eco-labels, rankings and guides [that] exist to signpost salmon sustainability”. The conclusion seems to be that all of them are lacking in some respect, and that maybe certification from the Marine Stewardship Council and Aquaculture Stewardship Council — both of which feature a fish-like logo and a check mark — are best. Me, I buy wild-caught Alaskan salmon, which has a fishy logo that I don't actually know anything about.
And, as an impeccable segue into the next item, take a look at the questions Wainwright and Lutz suggest you ask before you order salmon in a restaurant.
Restaurants Need Sustainability Too
“Excuse me, but can you tell me what species of salmon you’re serving? Was it farmed or wild caught? Oh, farmed. So, what was it fed, and where did the feed come from? Does it have any eco-labels?”
Try that, I dare you, next time you’re in a restaurant. Demanding customers, however, are just one of the factors that are giving American restaurateurs sleepless nights, according to Business Insider. And yet, demanding customers are also, it seems, the reason they can’t change.
Post-covid (a stupid shorthand, because we are by no means post covid) restaurants are struggling to get and keep staff, and Business Insider explores the many forms the struggle takes. Reducing the need for staff, by having people order at a counter, rather than from a waiter at your table. Paying less for the same food if you eat at 5pm on a Tuesday. Open book management, which “involves educating employees about the finances and management of the business, exposing them to the decision-making processes and incentivizing them to improve business outcomes”. But perhaps the biggest single issue is pay. Many comments on the article profer better pay for staff as the solution, without asking whether customers are willing to pay more rather than tip.
Tipping, often 20% or more, is fundamental to the restaurant business in America (and, increasingly, beyond). Is it right, or fair? Not when customer biasses decide how much they value the service they get. Not when management can play favourites by moving shifts around. Not when the people who serve food can make twice as much as the people who cook food. And yet, many restaurants abandon no-tip experiments.
Customers don’t like it either. “Restaurants that replaced tipping with service charges or service-included pricing received lower online customer ratings,” which I find bizarre. But that study is from 2018. What would customers feel now? How is a $10 sandwich with 20% tip different from a $12 sandwich with service included?
A Couple of Crumbs
For the breadheads, two items. At The Perfect Loaf, Eric Pallant goes long on rye bread for the home baker, how it’s complex flavours tap into nostalgia, why it can be tricky, and what to do about that. And in the New York Times, Lexie Smith traces her sourdough starter to 36 countries after she began to offer free samples. Along the way, of course, she takes the opportunity to muse on community, togetherness and bread.
Bread is a bellwether, its absence a death knell. In the corners of the world where bread flows freely and remains affordable for every rung of society, there is at least the potential for people to thrive.
Amen.
A couple of closing notes. Thanks to Gabe Baskin’s article, I learned the Japanese word shokuiku, which “includes food and nutrition education, respect for food labor and agriculture, and traditional and regional food culture”. Too late to change my brand.
And I wish I had kept a copy of an episode of Farming Today I made with Richard Sanders in 1995. It was billed as a sideways look at European farm subsidies; in reality it was a look at the modern peasant, one who was content to live a good and decent life without pursuing endless economic growth. Thirty years on, I’m not sure we could have made that programme.
Take care
