Complaining about _Waste Land_
May. 3rd, 2018 04:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
walkitout“my regular supermarket adds a new variety of store-baked bread and tempts us shoppers with samples. Last week, it was something called a “filone”. Before that it was a cheddar jalapeño loaf.”
So, I looked up what a filone was. I don’t know why he put “filone” in quotes but not “cheddar jalapeño loaf”. Filone is a legit bread. I’m not sure about that cheddar jalapeño thing.
He then whines for a bit about how only two days a week does a non-profit pick up the remaining bread; the rest goes into the trash. He does say this. “Because stores refuse to run out of anything — they view it as driving customers to their competitors — they feel compelled to have the full lineup of thirty breads available from the time they open their doors until closing time. And that ensures a surplus at the end of the day.”
In my younger years, post first divorce, I lived in Ballard (before Ballard was expensive). I figured out a bunch of shops that were walking distance to where I lived, where I could buy high quality produce, bread and meat (three shops, if you are counting). I wanted to live a life where I didn’t go to the supermarket, but went to local stores that specialized in things and got good at them. The butcher was decent — it was no A&J, mind you (which I understand has been closed for some years but recently replaced by another butcher). The produce shop was pretty fun to go to. And the bread bakery?
Oh, where do I even start?
They were unpredictably out of what I wanted more often than not. So I started placing an order. That helped, but sometimes they would sell the loaf I had on order even if I arrived earlier on the pickup day than I normally did. And then I missed picking up a week, and they canceled the order going forward. Why? I mean, they were already guaranteed to sell that loaf. I didn’t just stop shopping at _that_ bakery. I pretty much swore off shopping at bakeries period. I mean, it was pretty good bread, but you could easily get bread of comparable quality at the Ballard QFC — and you could be certain they’d have something in stock.
I can’t quite figure out where this author is going with his advocacy. He’s anti-waste. That’s fine. And his analysis of the amount of waste is pretty credible — he has multiple approaches to calculating the waste that produce comparable results over the population as a whole, usually a good sign. He can’t _really_ want us to go back to being hungry (can he?). But it was hunger that caused us to eat everything in sight. We’ve had a collapse in demand, that started in the 1920s when we switched from using muscle power predominantly to using fossil fuel power (sure, coal predated that, but the decline in agriculture devoted exclusively to feeding horses and so forth that occurred in the first quarter of the 20th century is absolutely astonishing, and unique in world history). And it would be for the best if that demand never came roaring back, which is why we work so hard to overfeed everyone starting from birth.
We don’t want hungry people.
So, how are we going to reduce waste? I don’t know. Mostly, he keeps mourning how people in the past used to really _value_ food. Which, true! They were hungry. We are not. And that is a good thing.
Expect edits.
ETA:
Wow is this man an idiot. He says that “American excess fully arrived when chemical fertilizers and pesticides became commonplace after World War II”. No, that’s when there was plenty to buy AND plenty of buyers with the money to pay. American excess had arrived much earlier, as I note above. But the collapse in demand occurred because we didn’t have plenty of buyers. Lots of food — some of my ancestors switched _back_ to horse drawn from trucks, because grain got so cheap that it was cheaper than gas, and that was _wheat_. Not enough buyers. How can one fail to notice this?
“Our separation from the production of food has helped erode our food knowledge, and, accordingly, our kitchen confidence. . .We’re not sure how long to cook items.”
Some of this is a direct result of public policy by body count. Having reduced the number of bodies that are produced by car accidents, we are now focusing on things that kill people earlier than they should. In addition to finally dealing effectively with cigarette smoking (yeah, I know we’re not done) we have actually gone after food borne illness with some focus. And along the way, we have discovered things that were always there, but which we didn’t necessarily recognize until now. Like, flour that hasn’t been through a kill step can give you a nasty E. coli infection. This is not an artifact of being separated from the production of food — this is an artifact of increased total knowledge of possible risks.
ETA:
“43 percent of respondents sought instructions explaining how best to reheat the items. While such tips in doggie bags would help solve part of the food-waste problem, shouldn’t it be self-evidence when the food is no longer good and how it should be reheated?”
Let’s just start with an easy one: French fries. Arguably, you shouldn’t be eating them in the first place, and what a surprise that any made it into a doggie bag, but let’s say you got those fries home. How should you reheat them? In order: a deep fat fryer, if you own one, an air fryer if you own one, a convection oven if you own one, a toaster oven if you own one, etc. Don’t bother with the microwave, that’s just nasty. I’ve had no luck reheating them in a pan on the stove, but some people say that it works for them. And that’s approximately the simplest food ever. Most people don’t even bother to bring fries home because it doesn’t occur to them to reheat fries other than in a microwave, which is, again, the worst idea ever.
So, NO, people don’t know how to reheat food. And we know that, because 43% of respondents to a survey on restaurant leftovers said they wanted instructions. They TOLD you they didn’t know.
Next up: the self-evidence of spoilage. Periodically, NIH and similar survey people in various countries to get a sense of just what kind of risky business people get up to when storing and eating leftovers at home (whether produced at home or from elsewhere). They are rarely impressed by typical practice. So, why should anyone assume that people in general know? This is learned, just like everything else.
“We squander more food than our ancestors. If their ghosts could talk, they’d call us wasteful.”
Yeah, well, they’d say it with an envious tone. And some of them probably became ghosts as a result of eating bad food — the loss of smell in the elderly along with their frugality (whether necessary or the habit of a long lifetime) is legendary for leading to illness. (Go ahead: google anosmia elderly food poisoning — you’d be amazed how everyone knows this except possibly this author.)
Dude worked at a McDonald’s for a while for research. Notes few people ordered the regular hamburger or cheeseburger (my husband orders two of the former, typically, as a way of working around onion issues). Lots of people ordering the McDouble (which is interesting — it’s basically slightly less meat than a quarter pounder, if I remember the patty sizing standard correctly), at a much better price point at that point in time. Seems _entirely_ unaware that back when people ordered the regular burgers (because all those fancy big burgers were still in the future), they ate a _bag_ of them. Same thing with the waffles. You eat _a_ waffle now, if you own a “Belgian” waffle iron. The waffle irons of our past you ate more than one waffle. Same thing has happened with pancakes and a bunch of other things. I’m sure this isn’t universal, but it’s really easy to misrepresent the past.
One way you can tell the book isn’t new: Brian Wansink is mentioned lovingly, respectfully, with no caveats. Brian Wansink is Poster Boy for P-Hacking right now. Which basically calls into question all of the book that is derived from Wansink’s work.
Google Brian Wansink P-hacking Joy of Cooking. Go ahead. I’ll wait.
“Food was just not wasted in the 1930s. Not when nearly everyone was struggling just to survive.” Yeah. We’re going to just ignore that year when the AAA (no, not the car organization) destroyed hundreds of thousands of pigs because the price was too low, in an effort to support prices to keep farmers from going under.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_Adjustment_Act
Bon Appetit!
If you write a book with the theory that everything worked better in the past, and you really only pay attention to what end consumers can do to change things, you’re gonna miss things like this.
So, I looked up what a filone was. I don’t know why he put “filone” in quotes but not “cheddar jalapeño loaf”. Filone is a legit bread. I’m not sure about that cheddar jalapeño thing.
He then whines for a bit about how only two days a week does a non-profit pick up the remaining bread; the rest goes into the trash. He does say this. “Because stores refuse to run out of anything — they view it as driving customers to their competitors — they feel compelled to have the full lineup of thirty breads available from the time they open their doors until closing time. And that ensures a surplus at the end of the day.”
In my younger years, post first divorce, I lived in Ballard (before Ballard was expensive). I figured out a bunch of shops that were walking distance to where I lived, where I could buy high quality produce, bread and meat (three shops, if you are counting). I wanted to live a life where I didn’t go to the supermarket, but went to local stores that specialized in things and got good at them. The butcher was decent — it was no A&J, mind you (which I understand has been closed for some years but recently replaced by another butcher). The produce shop was pretty fun to go to. And the bread bakery?
Oh, where do I even start?
They were unpredictably out of what I wanted more often than not. So I started placing an order. That helped, but sometimes they would sell the loaf I had on order even if I arrived earlier on the pickup day than I normally did. And then I missed picking up a week, and they canceled the order going forward. Why? I mean, they were already guaranteed to sell that loaf. I didn’t just stop shopping at _that_ bakery. I pretty much swore off shopping at bakeries period. I mean, it was pretty good bread, but you could easily get bread of comparable quality at the Ballard QFC — and you could be certain they’d have something in stock.
I can’t quite figure out where this author is going with his advocacy. He’s anti-waste. That’s fine. And his analysis of the amount of waste is pretty credible — he has multiple approaches to calculating the waste that produce comparable results over the population as a whole, usually a good sign. He can’t _really_ want us to go back to being hungry (can he?). But it was hunger that caused us to eat everything in sight. We’ve had a collapse in demand, that started in the 1920s when we switched from using muscle power predominantly to using fossil fuel power (sure, coal predated that, but the decline in agriculture devoted exclusively to feeding horses and so forth that occurred in the first quarter of the 20th century is absolutely astonishing, and unique in world history). And it would be for the best if that demand never came roaring back, which is why we work so hard to overfeed everyone starting from birth.
We don’t want hungry people.
So, how are we going to reduce waste? I don’t know. Mostly, he keeps mourning how people in the past used to really _value_ food. Which, true! They were hungry. We are not. And that is a good thing.
Expect edits.
ETA:
Wow is this man an idiot. He says that “American excess fully arrived when chemical fertilizers and pesticides became commonplace after World War II”. No, that’s when there was plenty to buy AND plenty of buyers with the money to pay. American excess had arrived much earlier, as I note above. But the collapse in demand occurred because we didn’t have plenty of buyers. Lots of food — some of my ancestors switched _back_ to horse drawn from trucks, because grain got so cheap that it was cheaper than gas, and that was _wheat_. Not enough buyers. How can one fail to notice this?
“Our separation from the production of food has helped erode our food knowledge, and, accordingly, our kitchen confidence. . .We’re not sure how long to cook items.”
Some of this is a direct result of public policy by body count. Having reduced the number of bodies that are produced by car accidents, we are now focusing on things that kill people earlier than they should. In addition to finally dealing effectively with cigarette smoking (yeah, I know we’re not done) we have actually gone after food borne illness with some focus. And along the way, we have discovered things that were always there, but which we didn’t necessarily recognize until now. Like, flour that hasn’t been through a kill step can give you a nasty E. coli infection. This is not an artifact of being separated from the production of food — this is an artifact of increased total knowledge of possible risks.
ETA:
“43 percent of respondents sought instructions explaining how best to reheat the items. While such tips in doggie bags would help solve part of the food-waste problem, shouldn’t it be self-evidence when the food is no longer good and how it should be reheated?”
Let’s just start with an easy one: French fries. Arguably, you shouldn’t be eating them in the first place, and what a surprise that any made it into a doggie bag, but let’s say you got those fries home. How should you reheat them? In order: a deep fat fryer, if you own one, an air fryer if you own one, a convection oven if you own one, a toaster oven if you own one, etc. Don’t bother with the microwave, that’s just nasty. I’ve had no luck reheating them in a pan on the stove, but some people say that it works for them. And that’s approximately the simplest food ever. Most people don’t even bother to bring fries home because it doesn’t occur to them to reheat fries other than in a microwave, which is, again, the worst idea ever.
So, NO, people don’t know how to reheat food. And we know that, because 43% of respondents to a survey on restaurant leftovers said they wanted instructions. They TOLD you they didn’t know.
Next up: the self-evidence of spoilage. Periodically, NIH and similar survey people in various countries to get a sense of just what kind of risky business people get up to when storing and eating leftovers at home (whether produced at home or from elsewhere). They are rarely impressed by typical practice. So, why should anyone assume that people in general know? This is learned, just like everything else.
“We squander more food than our ancestors. If their ghosts could talk, they’d call us wasteful.”
Yeah, well, they’d say it with an envious tone. And some of them probably became ghosts as a result of eating bad food — the loss of smell in the elderly along with their frugality (whether necessary or the habit of a long lifetime) is legendary for leading to illness. (Go ahead: google anosmia elderly food poisoning — you’d be amazed how everyone knows this except possibly this author.)
Dude worked at a McDonald’s for a while for research. Notes few people ordered the regular hamburger or cheeseburger (my husband orders two of the former, typically, as a way of working around onion issues). Lots of people ordering the McDouble (which is interesting — it’s basically slightly less meat than a quarter pounder, if I remember the patty sizing standard correctly), at a much better price point at that point in time. Seems _entirely_ unaware that back when people ordered the regular burgers (because all those fancy big burgers were still in the future), they ate a _bag_ of them. Same thing with the waffles. You eat _a_ waffle now, if you own a “Belgian” waffle iron. The waffle irons of our past you ate more than one waffle. Same thing has happened with pancakes and a bunch of other things. I’m sure this isn’t universal, but it’s really easy to misrepresent the past.
One way you can tell the book isn’t new: Brian Wansink is mentioned lovingly, respectfully, with no caveats. Brian Wansink is Poster Boy for P-Hacking right now. Which basically calls into question all of the book that is derived from Wansink’s work.
Google Brian Wansink P-hacking Joy of Cooking. Go ahead. I’ll wait.
“Food was just not wasted in the 1930s. Not when nearly everyone was struggling just to survive.” Yeah. We’re going to just ignore that year when the AAA (no, not the car organization) destroyed hundreds of thousands of pigs because the price was too low, in an effort to support prices to keep farmers from going under.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_Adjustment_Act
Bon Appetit!
If you write a book with the theory that everything worked better in the past, and you really only pay attention to what end consumers can do to change things, you’re gonna miss things like this.
no subject
Date: 2018-05-04 05:00 pm (UTC)Reasonable!
Date: 2018-05-04 06:50 pm (UTC)This is one of the reasons I find the author’s focus on What the End Consumer Can Do unspeakably maddening. The problem does not lie with the end consumer. The problem either lies in straight up overproduction across the board OR it lies in inappropriate matching of peak production with consumption. Let me explain a bit about those two possibilities, and which it is matters a lot in terms of what intervention we engage in — and the end consumer can do very little about this at all.
If the problem lies in universal overproduction, specifically, producers making too much and more of everything because the _price_ of what they are making is very low, then the solution lies in some kind of quota system (a la OPEC, or what we did for a while post New Deal). Basically, STOP the overproduction, because commodity producers who make very little on things because of overproduction generally speaking (as in ALWAYS sadly) will make even more to increase their total take. (I know, crazy!) Further reducing demand (by reducing waste) will not fix this problem, and might actually make it worse.
If the problem lies in a demand / supply mismatch, then the solution is considerably more complex and historically impossible, but potentially solvable now with smartphones / shopping list generators / recipes supplied with a season focus / meal kits / etc. Basically, there are a very few weeks a year when, say, there is asparagus, and during those weeks there is a lot. So you can fix the pricing / waste issue by making sure that absolutely everyone who can stand asparagus remembers to eat it a few times during that week. And then does not waste their precious time shopping for it when it is not available. Ditto for a lot of things. Basically, unwind our imposition of No Season for Anything, which was the old skool solution to dealing with the cognitive load of keeping track of what was currently in season when the fields were literally never visible to you (thousands of miles away type of thing).
Anyway. You are reasonable. He is definitely coming across like an ass. I suspect — altho I don’t know — that the grocer and bakery he described didn’t really keep everything fully stocked right up until close when they tossed it. They were, after all, taking notes about how much of what they threw away, which hopefully went into some calculation of how many to stock on future days.
ETA: Whoops! Meant to say, to the extent that JIT approaches have not been fully deployed in groceries, they should be. Plenty of restaurants are baking bread for customers as they sit down at the table; stores ought to be able to do something similar, especially as we move more and more towards shop online / pick up at store (or have delivered). That’s a _huge_ window into what people will be wanting later, and we should use that information.
ETAYA: the book came out before smartphones, so I don’t blame him for that. [ETA Still More: seriously? You want to complain about my smartphone dates? Sure. Go ahead. Just make sure you calculate in the 2-3 years where the text is complete before it is actually published. Still want to complain? OK. Fine. Complain. But it isn’t like smartphones had the kind of penetration and apps connected to delivery services when he was writing this that exist now when I’m writing my complaints).
Also, my sister has been exploring the space of imperfect / n day old food space, and has received bread partway through its shelf life that was fine. This is, again, stuff that is treated as worth nothing by the store getting rid of it, but some other company is salvaging that value and delivering it to customers for the delivery value. Things to think about.