ETN 215: Unadulterated goodies
Hello
Is the world ready to pay the true cost of food? Probably not.
Too Costly?
It is quite obvious that much of the food you buy, especially in a supermarket, is way too cheap, what with all the external costs that the world at large has to pay. But how much too cheap? This past week, shoppers at Penny, a discount chain in Germany, had a chance to find out, as the 2150 Penny shops raised the price on nine chosen items to “what experts from two universities have deemed to be their true cost, in relation to their effect on soil, climate, water use and health”.
That quote is from The Guardian’s piece on the experiment. There are some interesting details on Penny’s own website. The biggest increases were for cheese and Wiener sausages, the smallest for a vegan “schnitzel”. For each product except the “schnitzel” (and I wonder about that), Penny offered an organic alternative. The organic alternative was always more, a lot more if you go by the price per kilogram rather than the price per package. Still, the percent increase under true cost estimates was less for organic than non-organic, which suggests organic is already shouldering part of the external burden. And those are broad shoulders. Looking at the per kg true costs, the organic premium ranges from 98% for mozzarella down to 14% for the Maasdamer cheese.
Lots to unpack, making me wonder how soon we will see an analysis of how true costs affected shoppers.
Too Yellow
If you use turmeric in your kitchen, you will know how easily it stains anything it touches, from wooden spoons to linen tea towels. But apparently turmeric was not yellow enough for some turmeric traders in Bangladesh, so they mixed it with lead chromate. Yikes!
A long article in Undark explains the history of the practice, its possible effects around the world, and how authorities in Bangladesh worked to eliminate it effectively. A salutary story.
With so many of these food frauds, like peanut waste in cumin, the underlying motive is profit. Adulterated turmeric is brighter and, therefore, commanded a higher price in Bangladesh. The perpetrators probably didn’t know that what they were doing might have harmful consequences far afield, although one trader admitted that “it’s common sense that chemicals are harmful” and confessed that he never used lead chromate turmeric at home. And while Bangladesh may have eliminated the problem, for now, it is by no means the only source of turmeric. The article says that Bangladeshi traders learned to use lead chromate from their counterparts in India, which remains the number one source of turmeric and which has not so far taken any steps to confront the problem.
Weedy
OK, so it isn’t generally considered food, although lots of people eat it in one form or another, but cannabis is, aside from one important characteristic, just another agricultural crop eviscerated by the forces of darkness. Read it and see if you don’t agree.
Chill Pill
This story seemed at first like one of the especially vivid dreams that, for me, are one effect of my nightly ritual, 1mg of melatonin before bedtime: Melatonin, a sleep aid, is a surprising treatment for food waste. The waste in question is chilling injury, which happens when fruits and vegetables are kept at low temperatures for a long time between harvest and ultimate sale. The specific injuries vary from species to species and regime to regime, and essentially mean the product is rejected for sale.
The article summarises a meta-analysis of 23 research papers that measured the effects of spraying food with a melatonin solution before chilling. Overall, the analysis concludes that melatonin does reduce chilling injury, more so in fruits than vegetables, resulting in produce that was firmer and denser, indicative of less damage. How melatonin achieves these results remains a bit of a mystery, although the suggestion is that it activates a melatonin receptor on the plant cell surface, and this in turn triggers the synthesis of more melatonin inside the cell, where it seems to promote antioxidant chemicals that prevent decay.
Nostalgic
Jason Diamond writes about food and a lot more besides. A month or so ago, he published an extended riff on Kevin Kline's Great American Sandwich which I enjoyed. Don’t worry if the headline means nothing to you, the piece starts with a paragraph that gives all the background you need and leads straight to the meat of the matter; “turkey … possibly some ham”.
I’m not sure I’d want to eat the sandwich and to be honest, it isn’t really about the sandwich, it is about Jason Diamond’s life as it relates to the sandwich. That, probably, is why I enjoyed it.
Heroic
Once, the fruit came in thousands of varieties. Most of them have vanished or will be gone soon — unless John Bunker can track them down.
It’s the story that keeps on giving, the individual on a heroic mission to save the world … of apples. This version has a modern twist, the importance of the hero’s journey to gene jockeys running the numbers.
Take care
