food politics

Paan

Since I had asked about them, after dinner yesterday our hosts took me to a small stand and bought me a paan, which looks like herbs wrapped in a green leaf with some tin foil on. It seems such a curious thing but I had been too cautious to try one on my own.

The basic technique is to put the rather large leaf role into your mouth and chew until it slowly disappears. It is not easy work and the whole process of eating took up to ten minutes.

It is a rather strange taste sensation with an early soapy aftertaste but the long aftertaste is one of a fresh mouth.

According to wikipedia the paan is fillings wrapped in a triangular package using leaves of the Betel pepper (Piper betle) and held together with a toothpick or a cloveâ?¦The paan is chewed as a palate cleanser and a breath freshener…Paan filling is generally a mixture of various spices, fruits, and sugar. Paan makers may use mukhwas or tobacco as an ingredient to their paan fillings. Although many types of paan contain Betel nuts as a filling, many other types do not.
Apparantly there has been talk of banning the paan since it has been linked to causing oral cancer.

Posted on by mklang

The academic importance of a cheese sandwich

This is the second full day at the meeting and it is actually hard to stay sharp during the meeting. It is soon six pm and my brain is grinding to a halt. My theory is that my body is suffering from a cheese sandwich deficiency. Since arriving the food has been exciting, exotic Indian food. But the problem with artificial stimulants such as these is that they do not provide a stable base for harsh academic work. Oh, the all day meeting is among the harshest of academic work. It vaguely resembles Vogon poetry*.

So I think this trip really proves the thesis that academic work requires cheese sandwiches.

This may be a controversial statement and some radical academics may claim that the results have been effected by the new experience of Mumbai, 30C heat, lack of sleep and residual jetlag, or the fact that my rss reader does not work here (proxy problems) so I have not read blogs for a week.

The fools! What do they know?
—

*If you donâ??t understand the reference try this

Posted on by mklang

Whats Cooking? Norms Based Property Regimes

Somehow, somewhere along the line our society has decided that certain types of intellectual endeavour were worth protecting and encouraging. Not all types. Just some. Through brilliant social positioning and political lobbying these intellectual endeavours have achieved the status of property. (For more on this read No Trespassing â?? Eva Hemmungs Wirtén).

Stop! Think! Property. Property is usually considered amongst the human rights. The focus on property right occasionally risked upsetting the balance of rights and encroaching on other rights. This led Martin Luther King to write:

Property is intended to serve life, and no matter how much we surround it with rights and respect, it has no personal being. It is part of the earth man walks on. It is not man.

Despite the fact that intellectual property protection as we understand it today is not as old as many believe, we have managed to raise it to an eternal value. This is to say we believe that this is the way that it always has been. Implicit with this idea comes the follow-up thought that changing this is not worth the effort.

The interesting thing is that there are many types of knowledge that is not protected by intellectual property. Some of these are not valuable but others are extremely valuable.

A personâ??s honour is something that may be painstakingly built up over a lifetime within the community group. Whether this person is a diamond trader or part of a criminal organisation this is a valuable commodity, which is unprotected. Defamation law attempts to cover certain parts â?? but this protection has nowhere near the far-reaching effects of intellectual property.

A farmerâ??s knowledge over the terrain and weather, a craftsmanâ??s knowledge of tools and materials and a teachers experience are all valuable commodities in the daily life of these people.

My current favourite example comes from an article by Emmanuelle Fauchart and Eric von Hippel (his books are available online free) about the value of the knowledge of French chefs. Especially in their struggle to gain and maintain Michelin stars.

A star in the Michelin Guide is a valuable commodity. It makes and breaks restaurants and the career of chefs. It has also been the source of some scandals (wikipedia).

The question the article poses is why when the commodity is so valuable donâ??t chefs copy each other? Rather than innovate and surpass their competitors why not emulate? There is no law, no intellectual property in food dishes. Despite the fact that they are highly creative. The answer, according to Fauchart and von Hippel lies in â??norms basedâ?? intellectual property systems.

What we see is regulation by advanced group norms that allow the group to:

â?¦specify the nature and extent of rights that a group member can assert to intellectual property. They also include procedures for the claiming of intellectual property rights, and community-accepted types of sanctions for violators.

This is a thought-provoking article. We need more work in this vein to be able to show that the present intellectual property regime is far from being the only game in town.

Posted on by mklang

Sexist Coop Konsum

Coop Konsum is launching an advertising campaign which uses images of vegetables shaped as suggestive female body parts. Their sexist attitude is made even more hypocritical since their message (according to them) is that beauty comes from within (a message which is included on the posters)…

 

 

According to Coop Konsum the campaign is a part in a strategy to present itself as a healthy store which helps its customers choose healthy foods. How come they need to be sexist to be health conscious? Why do they feel the need to lower one standard in order to attempt to raise another? And why does the whole thing feel like a scam â?? maybe because they keep selling the same amount of unhealthy products as they always didâ?¦
Coop writes about their campaign here.

(via Media Culpa)

Posted on by mklang

Meatrix II

Its food politics and awareness served up by Sustainable Table in the form of animated flash films. Sustainable Table wants to make consumers aware of the problems with factory farming and to promote sustainable food.
The followup of the brilliant Meatrix movie is out now. Watch the new movie here!

In an age characterized by mechanization, there exists a large gap between our illusions about where food comes from and the stark reality of industrial meat and dairy production. Enter the Meatrix films. The Meatrix II: Revolting is the sequel to the original smash hit, the critically acclaimed exposé of industrial farming, The Meatrix. Simultaneously spoofing the popular Matrix films while educating consumers about the evils of factory farming, The Meatrix brings the concept of sustainability to a wide audience of mainstream consumers. With a growing audience of over 10 million viewers worldwide, translations into over 25 languages, as well as a 2005 Webby Award, the Meatrix has been an incredibly successful tool for raising interest in Sustainable Tableâ??s unique goals and projects. www.themeatrix.com and www.themeatrix2.com

Check out their earlier movie the Grocery Store Wars.

(via Peter Forsberg)

Posted on by mklang

Seeds of Change

A scary issue which I keep meaning to look more at is the politics and technology of food production, treatment, transportation and selling. Here is a very interesting documentary about GM foods from the University of Manitoba

Everyone has heard both the positives and negatives of genetically modified crops, from biotech companies like Monsanto and from environmental and consumer groups like Greenpeace, yet no one has actually heard from those who actually grow the food we eat – the farmers.

The film can be downloaded from the film website.

The film Seeds of Change is a seventy-minute documentary film made by University of Manitoba (U of M) professor Stéphane McLachlan, U of M PhD student Ian Mauro, and independent videographer Jim Sanders, is a balanced yet hard-hitting exposé of the controversy surrounding genetically modified crops and how they have changed the face of agriculture in western Canada.

Posted on by mklang