Food Science

A Japanese museum showcases the science of food, including

the quality control aspect of mass-produced food, and only that aspect. McDonald’s food has to taste the same every time you have it, wherever you are. In a way, they are one of the most conscientious at maintaining this level of standards – so they are the best example to show this aspect of food science. ... They have colour chips for lettuce, you know? So if a lettuce leaf is between shades one and three, you cannot use it. All the lettuce needs to be from colours four and five, or else you cannot use it. ...

the physics of texture, and chocolate has a lot of innovation when it comes to texture: melting points and tongue-feel, and some have bubbles and different shapes. There’s a lot of physics going on there. ...

MSG (monosodium glutamate) [is] an extract of sugar cane. ... this totem explains how it’s made, and shows that it is 100% made of natural ingredients. The process is chemical, of course – if you’re extracting molecules, that’s scientific. It’s up to you still if you want to use it or not, but it is extracted from natural products, so the question is about what is natural and what is not, and whether “natural” foods are always safe.

Successes: Uruguay Dairy

IPS reports: Uruguay "cruderos" sell fresh, unprocessed milk ("leche crudo" --> "crudero") at the city limits. The problem is they are far too small to make it worth processing and too far from a processor. The city government of Durazno teamed up with a private milk processor, Nutri'sima, to open a plant closer to the cruderos in 2008. The government provided additional training and some capital equipment to the farmers. The plant then buys their milk, processes it, and sells it on to supermarkets, gaining the dairymen access to more markets, lifting them out of the informal sector, and improving food quality. They hope to get the farmers access to freezers also so they can bring the milk in every other day instead of daily to decreasing transportation costs. If my unreliable Spanish is right, this is the plant in question:

Claudia Jeannette Pérez, president of the association of former "cruderos" from the areas surrounding the city of Durazno, explained that they used to sell raw milk, artisanal cheeses, eggs and vegetables "door to door, in shops and in the local open air markets."

Today, all that has changed.

They no longer live below the poverty line, and there are now proper hygiene conditions on their small farms, which must live up to certain standards in order to sell their milk to the pasteurisation plant.

Furthermore, they now have access to running water - essential to maintaining production levels and standards - and many also have electricity.

And while they continue to live in the impoverished outskirts of cities and towns, "now we feel respected; we feel like we are part of society," said another small dairy farmer.

The one thing the article doesn't mention is how the poor on the outskirts of the city are getting their milk now that the cruderos aren't riding through every morning to sell cheaper milk.

Hat tip: Poverty News

Waste Not

It's easy in environmentalism to take on the obvious concerns and forget the bigger picture. Food miles is one example. The complaint is against how far food travels because every mile is another bit of gasoline in shipping. However, it takes fewer greenhouse gasses to produce some foods in season in New Zealand and then ship them around the world to England rather than produce them in greenhouses in England out of season. In those cases, food miles is simply the wrong focus.

Freakonomics provides another example: wasted food produces more global warming than food packaging does, both fill up landfills, and yet the outcry is against the packaging that prevents food wastage in the first place:

According to the Cucumber Growers’ Association, just 1.5 grams of plastic wrap extends a cuke’s shelf life from 3 to 14 days, all the while protecting it from “dirty hands.” Another study found that apples packed in a shrink wrapped tray cut down on fruit damage (and discard) by 27 percent. Similar numbers have been found for potatoes and grapes. ...

when it comes to saving energy and reducing greenhouse gas emissions, our behavior in the kitchen far outweighs the environmental impact of whatever packaging happens to surround the product. Consumers toss out vastly more pounds of food than we do packaging—about six times as much. ...

All of which is to say: if you’re truly eager to take on the waste inherent in our food systems, you’d be better off reforming your own habits at home—say, by buying more strategically, minimizing waste, and eating less—before taking on the institutional packaging practices of disembodied food distributers.

Hat Tip: The .Plan

A useful nutrition website

Nutrition Data lets you input a food and it tells you a plethora of information. It gives you a standard nutrition label; plots the food on a scale of filling vs. nutritious; plots the food on a triangle showing where the calories in the food come from (carbs, fat, protein); estimates the glycemic load (useful for South Beach Dieters); a 5-star rating for weight-loss vs. weight-gain; shows a pinwheel for each of the micronutrients it has; another pinwheel for the amino acids (proteins) it has; and several other nutrition scores for completeness. Quite extensive.

Two examples:
The raw, unpeeled cucumber I'm having with lunch, for instance, is filling and nutritious, gets ***** for weight loss, and 79/100 for micronutrient completeness. It's whopping 45 calories in the entire thing come very largely from carbs, but it has a glycemic load of 3 (so I should try to limit myself to no more than 33 cucumbers per day ... I think I can manage). It has remarkably high levels of Vitamin K (which sounds right out of a sci-fi movie), and is a decent supply of Vitamin C, potassium, magnesium, and manganese.

My broiled porkchop, by contrast, gets only ** for weight loss, is medium-filling and somewhat nutritious. 69% of its 200 calories are protein, the rest fat, but it has a glycemic load of 0. While the cucumber had an amino acid score of 63, the pork chop scores 151. My pork chop gives me a lot of selenium, niacin, thiamin, B6, and phosphorous, and good amounts of potassium, zinc, sodium, riboflavin, and B12; It's also high in cholesterol for a completeness score of 38 - half of the cucumber.

Lit in Review: Livestock

One of the things I have looked forward to in starting a work blog was writing up brief summaries of some of the research others' have done with comments. In part I hope to provide a service for others, bringing you a summary of recent research. In part though it's a convenient place for me to keep my notes about research I've read so when I scratch my head trying to remember who said what, I've got my notes most readily available and searchable for my own benefit. Please feel free to debate particular papers or to bring more on a particular topic to my attention.

Review of Agricultural Economics Fall 2009: Livestock articles

"The Economics of Dairy Anaerobic Digestion with Coproduct Marketing" by Bishop and Shumway. Descriptive, single firm. One of the solutions to the pollution livestock produce is to install some machines to turn methane into electricity (anaerobic digestion technology). But is this economical? The authors find that the main private benefits in the first two years of operation for dairy farms in Washington state come from producing and selling electricity to public utilities and in receiving payments for turning other people's organic waste [salmon carcasses, cheese whey, inedible eggs] into electricity. Average profits for running these machines were $75k and $140k in year 1 and 2, but they cost $1.1mil to set up. The authors emphasize that location - proximity to coproduct markets - matters. Regulations would need to be changed to synch up the incentives of farm-energy-producers and public utilities. - Note for Chapter 8. (picture: CalPoly anaerobic lagoon, from Wiki)

"Agricultural Trade among NAFTA Countries: A Case Study of US Meat Exports" by Henneberry and Mutondo. Demand analysis, 1995-2005. US meat exports doubled to both Canada and Mexico since NAFTA [correlation is not causation] and account for 40% of beef, 35% of pork, and 17% of US poultry exports 2002-05. This is despite the 2003 BSE outbreak and increased competition from other countries. Poultry and beef from your own country are substitutes if you don't account for country of origin and complements if you do (Yang and Koo, 1994), so the distinction matters in demand analysis. Canadian meat buyers are not very price sensitive to US meat prices, so increasing meat prices likely means increasing revenues from Canada, but the opposite is true for Mexico. - Meatpacking book

"Costs of Adopting a [HACCP] system: Case Study of a Chinese Poultry Processing Firm" by Wang, Yuan, and Gale. Descriptive, single firm - Beijing Dafa. As part of its accession to the WTO, China has pushed to improve exported meat quality since Dec 2001. Setup cost the firm $4.2mil or 2% of gross income, with ongoing monthly costs of $0.3mil - half of that is sanitation. Benefits were characterized as long-term, strategic, and intangible [reduced inferior and adulterated products, improved reputation, consumer loyalty, and product consistency, and increased exports]. The authors are concerned that the costs may be very difficult for small, domestic producers to recoup, who would likely face higher costs and less ability to increase prices to make up for it. - Meatpacking book