Over the last week a series of events.
1. POTUS GWB (President Of The United States George Walker Bush) states that there is a worldwide food crisis and cites one of the causes to be Indians and Chinese people consuming way too much food!
2. This blog sees a related post, which tried to rationalize the fact that the food crisis might have more to do with the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer, what with the world being run like a large capitalistic company!
3. A lot of Mommy bloggers pick up this issue (as does the Government of India, the general public, Indian Media) and are all unified in being alarmed at the way the west points fingers at countries with a high population!
4. My comment on Costco Wholesale food purchases gets misread! The real question that begged attention was "Would you actually spend more to waste less?". It was not a rhetorical question as the situation exists in real life when you get more food for less money when you buy in bulk!
Now that all those things have been set in context... Let me get on to my unified theory of food conservation.
Unlike the theory of Energy conservation or momementum conservation, food has to be taken in two different contexts. The perishables and the non perishables.
If you try to apply this theory to the jar of "naarthanga oorugai" that my grandma made 20 odd years ago, which I still eat with my thayir saadham, it will fail! (that was a citron pickle with rice in yogurt!).
The theory does work in general for perishables, be it a banana or a chicken!
In simple terms, Food conservation is limited temporally within a finite space at nominal cost.
In simpler terms, you can save food for a very short period of time within a certain geographic location without having to spend any additional money.
Case Study 1: The Pilsbury Frozen Spring Onion Paratha- something the whole family loves to have for breakfast on saturday morning. It is available in plenty now at the local Indian grocery stores (it was in short supply and nowhere to be found for almost 5 months!). The conservation of this type of food would need an expensive refrigeration system that might make it very expensive in hot places. It also requires a fast and cold distribution system, or the parathas all stick to each other and the whole thing becomes a lump of dough! I am sure smart readers of this blog will find a way to make something out of the dough and create a new dish (do let me know your recipes.. I myself have tried many things when that has happened to us, without success).
In order to "not waste" frozen foods, a lot of energy is expended. In terms of culinary economics, frozen foods (especially frozen meat) would probably rank high on the "absolutely do not waste" category.
Case study 2 : The Banana. My favorite fruit. As I mentioned before, we get 1 pound for a dollar at the local grocery store or three pounds for two dollars at the wholesale Costco. Why the local grocery store does not just buy from Costco and sell the bananas at the same price is beyond me. But that is where economics rears its ugly head again on the "food conservation" part!
Look at the choices below:
less food at maximum cost - Celebrity stunt on world hunger day etc.
less food at minimum cost - poor people who have no choice
less food at no cost - poor people who are being donated food
more food at maximum cost - retailers, people who have money to spend
more food at minimum cost - wholesale - the option for cost conscious households
more food at no cost - free loaders
(the above statement is a generalizaiton in hopes that I may represent the average person, aka cost conscious household).
Given a choice any person raised in capitalism, would want to maximize his return and would naturally pick the more food for less money option. If one store gives you three mangoes for a Rupee and another gives you four for a Rupee, you want four. (There, there.. I know I am still living in the past and you got three mangoes for a rupee in the early eighties!) The few ways to conserve this type of perishable are:
1. Buy in bulk and distribute. (you buy 3 lbs for 2 bucks and split it with two other families. This works if you are in good economic terms with those other families and you have crystal clear accounting! otherwise this option causes a lot of unnecessary headache!)
2. Buy in bulk, use what you can, find alternate applications for the food during its perishing cycle. eg. bake banana nut bread, freeze the goop, etc. You can do it with banana's but you cannot do it with Cheese, Eggs (they give you 30 eggs wholesale for the price of 12 retail! go figure that one out!), milk, spinach, bread, bagels (12 for 3 dollars vs 6 for 3 dollars retail), onions, potato, strawberries (to name all the items that we have sent to the garbage at one point or other over the last ten years because we could not finish it as a family).
Case study 3 : "Amul butter". Every now and then we buy a packet of amul butter or amul cheese to make a sandwich. This happens every time Mochu comes in my dream and I am eating his cheese sandwich outside the BHU gates! By god, he knew exactly how to make a cheese sandwich. Now this item will be pushed to the inner depths of the fridge over time as more frequent items jostle for prime time attention on the frontlines in the refrigerator. Eventually, the mother in law will come back from India in a few months, do a fridge clean up, find the spoilt cheese or butter and give me and San a lecture we will never forget (sorry, make that a lecture we will never forget till the next time Mochu comes in my dream and makes a cheese sandwich).
The best way to avoid this is to consume it as frequently as possible so the "out of sight, out of mind" thing doesnt go into play!
There is also this small matter of GWB pointing fingers at India and China because they have more people. The logic here is that more people consume more food, more affluent people consume even more food and because there is a growing middle class in India and China, there is an implication that their per capita consumption is higher now.
It is a free world. So if there are more people in India and China who can now afford more food, that should be okay with captalistic countries. After all, per capita gas consumption is probably very high in the US. Can India blame the US for the global rise in oil prices because oil is being used disproportionately in the US? I am sure there is less gas for people in India and China because Americans are not fuel conscious!
Much like oil, arable land is a natural resource that is not distributed evenly across the globe!
Food production is not always in line with the population and population density across countries!
Places which can afford more food, waste more. They probably value it less, because it is available in plenty and they can afford it! A bottle of water is much more valuable to a person crossing a dessert compared to a person who lives right next to a mountain spring.
In world news this week, Saudi Arabia is apparently purchasing agricultural land all over the planet. That way, they own the land, they own the crop and they control the food and can protect their people in the event of a global food shortage.
In local news this week, Indian stores are going to have no rice coming, in a month. So we got two bags of rice instead of one on the latest Indian store trip! We have seen our share of shortages, be it parathas, pulses at Diwali time, curry leaves or now rice!
Today's news is that India is going to export all the "ponni" rice it has to the Malaysian Government!! What the !*@# ? Why? Who makes this decision? Why Malaysia? Is India selling to the highest bidder?
The other interesting rumor is that most of the agricultural land in Tamilnadu, is controlled by Muslims with an affiliation to Qatar, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, etc. and that most of these lands are owned only by proxy! That is another scary thought.
Time to make a few decisions....
1. Start liking Tortillas and Taco Bell Quesadillas - Check
2. Start liking Pizza - Check
3. Enquire about the price of paddy fields and see if the entire family will pitch in to buy some arable land instead of that flat(apartment), they keep bringing up in every conversation during our India trip - add to list
4. Buy two bags of rice, instead of one on next Indian store trip - Check
5. Find out if GWB does really have rice as part of his diet. I probably eat more rice in a week than the man does in a year, rice shortage or otherwise, because it is my staple diet - add to list
6. Find that press story that covers Indian Villager complaint along the lines of "I have no chicken to eat because GWB ate 150 chickens last year. All I ate was one!"
The world only gets more interesting by the day!
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Thursday, September 18, 2008 at 10:21PM