Food and Drink

Herve Gaymard. Remember the name of this philistine, moron, horrific Gaullist placeman and all-around fils de putain. I suspect that if the revolution comes and some semblance of humanity, civilisation and decency is restored to the moral cesspool that we see around us, your grandchildren will be encouraged to ceremonially burn him in effigy once a year, on a ritual fire made of oak chips. You might also want to make a note of the name of Denis Verdier, who revisionist historians of fify years’ hence may even suggest deserves more of the blame than the hated Gaymard.

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I’d planned to post on the obesity panic before Belle's latest , but no harm in making it theme of the day. I was reading John Ardagh’s Germany and the Germans and was interested to come across the following passage, which suggests that the current obesity panic in the US (and the UK) has a precedent in postwar German experience:

bq. For centuries the Germans were famous for their hefty appetites — and their waistlines proved the point. The fat-faced, beer-bellied Bavarian, two-litre tankard in hand before a plate pile high with _Wurst_ or dumplings, was a stock character and no far from reality. In pre-war days, poverty often dictated diets, and potatoes, bread and cakes were staple items of nutrition. In the 1950s this pattern changed dramatically as sheer greed steadily replaced subsistence eating. The _Wirtschaftswunder_ period was equally that of the notorious _”Fresswelle”_ (“wave of guzzling”), when a new-rich nation reacted against the deprivations of wartims by tucking in more avidly than ever before — and this time to a far richer diet. This continued until about the early 1970s, when alarming medical statistics appeared suggesting that 10 million Germans were overweight, including 25 per cent of children (spas began to offer cures for fat children).

Ardagh recounts that in the face of this panic the Germans did succeed in changing things, and that consumption of potatoes fell from 163 to 82 kilos per capita per annum between 1953 and 1987. Meanwhile consumption of fresh fruit and green vegetables went up over the same period.

Henry’s Harry’s post about his only proper job, and the tea breaks which it necessitated, reminded me of the finest weblog devoted to tea and biscuits: A Nice Cup of Tea and a Sit Down. This week’s biscuit of the week is is Lidl’s Choco Softies: “In the second of our Lidl’s inspired reviews we couldn’t come away with out my picking up a pack of Lidl’s own brand version of a German classic the Super Dickmann.” I honestly have no idea what any of these things are, but nonetheless it is a very charming site.

Now that Easter is coming, it’s time to focus on what matters: Marshmallow Peeps. This special, nauseating American food product may be a more worthless candy than the apparently styrofoam-based Circus Peanuts. Nah, Peeps are #2; the Circus Peanuts are the worst. But did you know you can pay top dollar for gourmet passion-fruit flavored Peeps in NYC? Or that with a little Martha-like craftiness you can decorate an entire office with Peeps? Here’s my special fun-filled Peeps trick: put a marshmallow Peep in the microwave (on a plate) and set for one minute. It’s a flaming orgy of sadistic Peeps-destruction! Mel Gibson’s got nothing on me (though I doubt the edifying spectacle will cause anyone to confess to murder.)

Following on from Chris’s post on the ethics of ritual slaughter, I thought I’d put up a link to one of the best things I read last year in the Guardian, on the ins and outs of the Halal meat industry. Suffice it to say that the definition of “Halal”, as with so many regulatory issues in the food industry, is a somewhat fluid concept, subject to the same sorts fo industry lobbying and regulatory capture as any other (reading between the lines, I pick up that the real problem for the halal industry is that if you don’t stun animals before slaughter, then they tend to kick around a bit, damaging the meat and leading to wastage costs which cannot always be passed on to the consumer).

Suffice it to say that if you really believe that it is a grave sin for you to eat meat which was not killed in the precise manner prevalent in Mecca around 622 CE, then it is probably not a good idea to go shopping for stuff branded “Halal” in the UK. It looks to me as if vegetarianism is the only religiously safe option for fundamentalist Muslims in the UK. For non-fundamentalists who understand that the strict traditional approach is not consistent with the realities of a modern abbattoir, then surely there can be no principled objection to starting up a debate about what compromises can reasonably be expected between religion and animal welfare.

I have no comparable information easily accessible online about the Kosher meat industry, but kosher/non-kosher scandals are a staple of the North London local press, so I would guess that similar arguments go through …

Invisible Adjunct generated a long discussion by asking why Americans don’t have vinegar with their fries. (They do, in fact, in the Northwest). My favourite hypothesis is this:

bq. Almost all the vinegar in the US has been supplanted by factory-made industrial acetic acid solution crap (“white vinegar”). Even the mass-market “apple cider vinegar” is factory-made crap made by mixing the white stuff with apple juice. As a result, most US residents will simply have no idea what vinegar really is. They have to go to a real pub (rare), or some other extraordinary place like Zingerman’s Deli in Ann Arbor ( http://www.zingermans.com ), to get real vinegar these days. Therefore anybody who tries it with the vinegar one can buy will deeply regret it.

This is analagous with my combined hypotheses about why Americans don’t like fruitcake and Brits don’t like Bagels. American fruitcake is a terrifying concoction of food colouring and formaldehyde, that no-one in their right minds would want to have in the house, whereas British fruitcake is a rich and exotic mingling of booze, dried fruits, sugar and fat. Its just a different item. Similarly bagels — bagels in the UK are normally dried out old pieces of cardboard, as opposed to the wonderful moist morsels one can easily find here in the US (and my east coast friends tell me I’ve never even had real bagels.

The Romans are debating whether it is appropriate to have a Chinatown in Rome. I have spent plenty of time in the area around Piazza Vittorio, and it seems to me that hard-working Chinese people running businesses that are open all hours are obviously an asset to a crummy neighborhood (even if you have to walk “miles to get mortadella”, as one resident complains. Yes, or, er, blocks and blocks, right down to the Piazza itself, where every morning there is a big open air market with excellent butchers and salume, as well as magnificent fresh vegetables. Cry me a fiume, Italian lady.) Still, I think the Romans should embrace the possibility of a Chinatown if it means there will be any good Chinese retaurants in Rome, because they all suck now. Italians eat in a way very alien to the modern urban American: they only eat the food from their own region, and only those dishes that are appropriate to the season. (Though in Rome itself there are a few restaurants from other regions, like the delicious Pugliese restautant Tram Tram.) In principle I approve of this type of thing, deep spiritual connections to the land and so forth. After three weeks of pasta all’amatriciana every day in the winter, however, one starts to ask questions like, how about Thai? Hey, some Mexican would be good about now. Mmmm, tacos al pastor.

UPDATE: John just got back from Rome two weeks ago, and he says they closed down all those market stalls in the Piazza Vittorio because they allegedly weren’t sanitary. If I lived in the Esquilino I’d be protesting that in the streets instead of worrying about the Yellow Peril.