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Soy sauce is one of the most important ingredients in Japanese cooking, but chances are you've never tasted the real thing
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- Title
- Is Japan losing its umami?
- Authors
- Eliot Stein & Mari Shibata
One of my favorite lines in "The Good Place" is a scene where Eleanor asks Michael why so many Frozen Yogurt places in faux heaven instead of ice-cream parlors? He responds "There's something really endearing in the way that humans can take something great and ruin it a little so that they can have more of it." (Spoiler: it turns out it's not heaven, it's secretly hell and that was more of a subtle commentary about how everything is kind of crappy when all you have is empty consumerism).
Apparently it's true of soy sauce too. I guess one of the deals with modernity/industrial production was the make everything a bit crappier, but way cheaper. The rich always had access to the same quality, well-made goods as before but the traditional production methods and craftsmanship went out of reach of everyone else. You especially see it in the food cultures of places that were colonized. Mexico still has a rich and varied culinary tradition, but in the rural parts of Mexico and anywhere South of it the diets are all processed, canned, or slathered in mayonnaise.
I'm not really sure what the solution is. I wondered if maybe automation would make it practical to subsidize hand-made or artisan producers of goods, even just by creating a Universal Basic Income, but it seems like our economic and political system is too geared towards maximizing the quantity of stuff available to us rather than our quality of life overall.
Historically, quality artisanal luxury items (i.e. non-essential products) were never really in the reach of the masses unless they had the ability to make it themselves incredibly cheaply. This was as true in Ancient Greece and Rome with Garum (for the rich) vs. Allec (for the poor) production as it is today with the various grades of "real" vs "fake" Soy sauces.
And if anything, IMO "regular" people nowadays have far more readily available access to reasonably affordable quality artisinal products (if they truly want them instead of the industrialized "knock offs"), like at no other time in history! It's just that when the far, far cheaper option is arguably as good but for a fraction of the price, why bother?
I'm thinking less about individuals accessing them and more about food culture. Individuals can get these things, but they're still acts of personal consumption rather than a way of doing things. Even with the artisan thing, a lot of what's available is more selling an aesthetic of being artisanal over actually having the heritage behind it.
It doesn't really become part of the food culture the way, for example, my family's yogurt starter that we brought from India is. I know there are families with bread yeast that they pass down the same way. It's not about having access to consume a thing, it's more about how our food (and material culture generally) connects us to each other and our personal/family history. The artisanship isn't the important part, the value comes from the fact that it connects us to something beyond just a market or tradable commodities.
What you see as a loss in food culture, I think of as us simply having incredibly broadened it instead. Sure, families making and maintaining their own yogurt or yeast cultures may no longer be commonplace, but that's simply because those are no longer valuable commodities and their end products (even high quality artisanal ones) are affordably acquired without us individually having to put all the time and effort into producing them ourselves.
And all that time and effort saved on people having to rely on home production for their needs is what has also allowed us to further specialize our knowledge, education and roles in society. Admittedly many/most of them away from food production, which the vast majority of humanity used to have to partake in to some degree, out of necessity. However that relatively newly acquired ability for us to highly specialize is also precisely why we were able to develop the technology necessary for us to communicate with one another from potentially across the world in an instant, as we're doing right now. And personally, nostalgia aside, I firmly believe the overall net gains from that have far outweighed any losses, even to food culture.
E.g. One of my favorite cooking channels, Townsends, focuses primarily on 18th century English and American recipes and cooking. Nearly everything they cook (other than "special occasion" food) is incredibly, incredibly plain fare with very little seasoning. And not because their palettes were necessarily any less refined than ours but simply because the vast majority of households, even the moderately well-off ones simply couldn't afford to purchase those items. Even salt, pepper and sugar was a relatively prized commodity back then.
Compare that to now, where I can drive down the street and go to a completely authentic Japanese Sushi restaurant, or only a few minutes further away to a "quantity over quality" all-you-can-eat one. Or have proper jerk Chicken from the local Jamaican family restaurant or instead have Eritrean across the street. Etc. Etc. Etc. Even our pantries these days are minor miracles, stocked full of products from all around the world that only the wealthiest in those regions used to have available to them.
Hence my view of "broadened, not lost". ;)
Commodities aren't really culture, they're just consumption. Culture is something you participate in and it connects you to something larger than yourself. Conceptualizing everything as just the fleeting consumption of an object is kind of empty. It doesn't really connect you to anything other than the market. There's no real sense of heritage or sincere appreciation behind it. In fact, most people probably don't even know how to appreciate the stuff they're consuming. There was an article I read sometime during the financial crash about how the luxury market has changed over the past ~50 years, particularly in clothing. It pointed out how a generation or two ago, just about everyone either knew how to sew or knew people who knew how to sew. So they were informed enough to actually look at a luxury coat and recognize if it was put together well or if it used good materials or not. Nowadays, your regular person is so far removed from the actual production of these things that they have no idea. We can look at the reputation of a brand and some aethetic cues about marketing, but that's all we've got to go on. So luxury goods became less about actual quality and more about percieved quality.
You can see this sort of dissociation of consumption from actual appreciation when you watch that Marie Kondo show. All of the subjects of the show got to the point where they needed a professional tidying expert because they so caught up in the acquisition and retention of things that they lost sight of the actual value/utility of those things. Kondo's whole shtick is trying to condition/reprogram people to become more sensitive to what they like and why. So you can get more stuff, but the stuff means less than ever.
We've long ago passed the point of diminishing returns on increasing efficiency and choice in this way. I think people are looking for something else now, but the culture and production system isn't set up to provide it, so we just try to buy something that can be a workable substitute because we don't know how to get the real thing anymore.
I'm a big fan of Townsends, but I think I come away with something different. For one thing, I'm Indian and only like, a generation removed from a lifestyle not that different from the stuff there. When I was a kid my grandparents didn't have electricity, running water, or even a bathroom in the house. We had to use a latrine out back. And back then India still had a closed economy so most of the food was local. When my dad was a kid it was even more rustic. They didn't even really eat white rice at home, it was a special occasion food. Townsends is actually kind of nostalgic.
Granted, India was the origin of a lot of those spices so salt, pepper, and spices weren't quite so dear as they would have been in 18th century America. But even then, the idea isn't about raw ingredients, it's about what kind of culture you develop around how to use them. India, Thailand, Vietnam, and China all got the chili pepper at around the same time from the same sources but they all went in radically different directions with them. I don't see that happening as much now, stuff gets routinized and standardized too quickly. It comes and goes as a fad before it can really tightly develop into a unique cultural thing.
Edit: I've been trying to find that article but it seems like Google is pretty worthless at finding any kind of specific ephemera that's more than a couple of years old. I think it might have been in The Atlantic or Slate but I'm not sure. If anyone finds it please send it over!
I feel like you've gone a bit off-course and are now simply trying to paint anything modern and manufactured by some third party, instead of directly by the end-user, as purely an exchange of commodities and empty act of consumption while ignoring the fact that exact same process has been going on worldwide since civilization began, even in the regions and time periods you are trying to portray as somehow more valuable than todays. The patrons of the local Thai-Japanese fusion restaurant down my street are not non-participants in the culture here, or any less (or more) connected to it as the local diner was 100 or 1000 years ago to their own, nor is the modern clothes shopper.
Yes, less people are directly involved in production and maintenance of the goods they use, and overall some appreciation of quality has been lost in the process, as well as from the necessities of increasing supply to meet modern demands. And yes, the world's cultures are generally becoming a bit more homogeneous as a result of this more rapid exchange of information, people and goods, but the particular melange of these elements in our own local areas is still unique, still developing continuously and IMO no less valuable or appreciated by the locals than the more distinct, regionally restricted ones of the past that you're clearly longing for.
However I would argue that you're looking at that past through heavily rose-tinted glasses, and the only time travel I would really be interested in is going forwards, since the past was generally much worse for everyone involved, in almost every aspect and every meaningful metric, compared to today.
p.s. Even though I disagree with you, I do still appreciate reading your perspective and seeing the passion you have about the subject. :)
There is a lot to unpack here. For one thing, I already pointed out that I'm in closer proximity to living under the supposedly squalid conditions of the past than most. I'd wager it's just as possible that you're viewing the past through whatever the opposite of rose-tint is. Are poop-tinted glasses a thing?
This feels like kind of a thought-terminating cliche though. I never said anything about time travel or about things, on balance, being better or worse today. This is all baggage you're bringing into the discussion from elsewhere.
In fact, there are a lot of assumptions and value statements you've baked in with a comment like this. By conflating all criticisms of modernity with wanting to roll back the clock you're functionally saying that the current state of affairs is the only way the world could have been, that no better world-states were possible and no mistakes could possibly have been made in creating the systems and culture we have today. This further implies that the priorities and values of the past, which put us on our current path, should have more weight in deciding what tradeoffs we and our future descendants should live with than the values of people in the present do.
I don't think any of this really holds up very well under scrutiny. Just because modernity brought good things doesn't mean we didn't pay a price to get them, and I definitely don't think it follows that the only way to build a future is to double-down on whatever built the present.
To bring it back to my actual point, I was saying that there are valuable things that have been lost in a culture that prioritizes conspicuous consumption of commodities but fails to imbue purpose or meaning to peoples' lives or actions in the process (example).
There is a common pattern among abused or deprived children where they learn a certain set of skills and attitudes that help them survive their early environments but actually wind up being destructive in later phases of their lives. The instinct for flattery and avoiding trouble under an abusive parent can lead to anxiety and problems communicating with a spouse. Just because refining our ability to bring tons of stuff to market was useful at one point doesn't mean that it will continue to be a useful trade-off to keep making in the future. At some point you might just decide to say we're good on paperclips. No more, thank you..
This is only unarguable if you primarily value materialistic and hedonic elements of well being. A person who prizes ascetic virtues, for example, would likely find the modern world pretty damaging to people's spiritual well being. Besides, most of the stuff that makes the modern day better than the past has less to do with access to twitter and weird fruits from the other side of the globe, and more to do with stuff like vaccines and access to education.
There is another baked-in assumption you bring to a comment like this where you sort of collapse humanity into a giant, monolithic group and make the well-being of the monolith the object of concern rather than the individuals in it. There are plenty of people who feel unmoored, directionless, and confused by the world as it is now because the pace of change and social dislocation has been disorienting and social norms and institutions haven't kept up to give them a sense of purpose and place. Your sense of your own well-being depends on the context you live in. This manifests in a variety of bad political outcomes, from gangs in bad neighborhoods to terrorists in weak states to fascist authoritarians in developed countries. Presumably a little girl being corralled into a concentration camp and injected with psychotropic drugs on the US border would prefer to trade places with her ancestor, even if they were a short-lived serf on a hacienda somewhere. All the material comforts in the world are merely theoretical constructs for her as they aren't doing her any good.
That is entirely possible... and if so, I apologize but "I don't see that happening as much now, stuff gets routinized and standardized too quickly. It comes and goes as a fad before it can really tightly develop into a unique cultural thing." does seem to be implying that at least as far as cultural development is concerned, you view things as distinctly worse off today than in the past, which is largely what I was addressing in my comment.
I strongly disagree with that statement. Have a play around on gapminder.org (change the axis metrics and then hit play). Everything from life expectancy, infant mortality rates, literacy, education levels, poverty, gender equality, sanitation, etc. have all been steadily improving for the last 100 years at least and likely much longer than that. And that's not viewing the past with poop-tinted glasses, it's objective analysis of well-sourced statistical data.
And how were those technological achievements accomplished? I would argue that improvements in food (in quality, quantity and diversity) taking away the need for so many people being employed in production of those basic necessities and thus allowing for more specialized roles in society, is a significant contributing factor to the increased rate of innovation and technological progress.
BTW, I am not saying the present is perfect nor that we can't learn from what was actually done better in the past, but I don't think taking the worst case scenarios you can think of in the present and comparing those to the best case scenarios from the distant past make a compelling argument.
That's a nice read (although I hated the slideshow format), and really got me thinking....Capitalism destroys everything good in the world.
The logic usually works like this:
"Hey let's take this great thing and sell it to mass market"
"Hmm, we need to cut some corners to increase shelf life/produce more/increase profit margin, but it's OK, cause the end product is only 0.1% worse"
"Great we made more money! How can we repeat step 2 to make even more money?"
Repeat that second step thousands upon thousands of times for almost every product in Western society, and 100+ years later, almost everything we buy is terrible, produces massive amounts of waste, and worst of all, the techniques to create quality goods are dying off with those who last used them.
Almost everything is made with as little material of the lowest possible quality, by a combo of machines and slaves. Clothing in particular suffers from this immensely. Electronics, cars, and other big purchases are designed almost exclusively to force consumers into an endless re-purchase cycle, instead of trying to maximize longevity and quality (not to mention other factors such as being easy to repair, reuse, or recycle).
Food doesn't taste as good as it's used to, for a wide variety of reasons, but probably the biggest reason is the mass industrialization of the entire food chain, with plants being bred and grown primarily to increase yield, all other qualities be damned.
Yet, it is us, the consumers, who are blamed for the massive waste in our society. It is the individual's fault for not recycling the plastic container their beverage came in...not the massive mega-corp's fault for making millions and billions of these containers. It is the individual's fault for wasting purchased food, not the grocery store that throws away tons of perfectly good food instead of giving it to those in need.
I know this went on a tangent, but the point is ultimately this: If we hope to retain a modicum of quality in our lives, Capitalism needs to be replaced....soon.
I'm pretty left by default, but I'm always skeptical about putting it this way so absolutely. It used to be people can't afford shit, period. You had one pair of pants, a shirt, and some porridge for dinner. That was your life. Now you have some obscure specialty cooking product from Japan. Maybe it tastes 20% less mellow than the real thing, but you got soy sauce, now. The alternative is no soy sauce.
Maybe that's bullshit and maybe if companies were X% less greedy, we could have better quality. But I don't really see how capitalism really is to blame, here. You can still buy the good stuff online (which you couldn't either, 20 years ago), it just costs as much as it used to – which most people can't afford.
I'll elaborate on my clothing example, keeping it purely within the last 20 years. I'm sure other people have similiar stories they could add.
I still own and wear multiple T-shirts that I purchased from before 2005, for approximately $10-$15. I would guesstimate they get worn and washed at least 2 times a month on average over the past 17 years (more early on, less now). The colors have faded a little, but the screening is still mostly in tact, there are no holes in the clothing, no loose stitches/threads/etc.
T-shirts I have purchased after 2005 (at roughly the same price point) have largely had to be replaced due to the fact they easily fall apart, develop holes faster, and generally feel thinner and more fragile. I don't buy T-shirts anymore, as the quality in the last 3 years especially has plummeted.
This has become even more apparent in the last year, when purchasing baby clothes. Clothes available at retail stores (especially for babies) are now so thin and poorly made that they fall apart in < 3 months of weekly wear.
This is ultimately caused by the constant pressure for companies to become more and more profitable. It's not enough anymore for a company to continuously make $10 million+ profits a year, forever. They must increase profits every quarter, and if they don't, they will be punished. If a company increases it's annual profits from $10 million to $15 million, it is not congratulated, it is saddled with the expectation that the following year, they make $20 million.
There's only two ways to continually make more profits: Raise prices, or lower costs. Rising prices on everything is just inflation (which only hurts the poor), and lowering costs is shorthand for lowering quality. The current state of Capitalism only cares about profits, so everything has become a race to the bottom.
Fair point.
Capitalism destroys everything good in the world?
We can lament that the average quality of soy sauce in the world is lower now and blame that on Capitalism, but more people have access to soy sauce now than in any time in history. And it's the vast majority of people who want to pay $1 per bottle of soy sauce instead of $40 per bottle that's to blame for the state of the soy sauce industry, not some corporate conspiracy to deprive the people of good soy sauce. But what's so bad about the state of the soy sauce industry? There is cheap soy sauce for those who want it, and there is expensive traditional soy sauce for those who want it. What has been destroyed here by capitalism? Everyone can get what they want at a price that reflects the cost.
What's the alternative? Government mandate that all Soy Sauce be made the traditional way and anyone who violates it goes to jail or pays a fine? That's how you get stagnation and Soy Sauce that no one can afford. Add price controls to it so people can afford it? That's how you get a disconnect between supply and demand, and you get the situation where almost no one has any soy sauce at all.
The reality that this article points out is that we don't have soy sauce....not really anyway. We have a cheap imitation that goes by the name soy sauce. This is not unique to just soy sauce, but several products that are not actually what they claim. Most Wasabi is really just food-colored horseradish.
What is ultimately being lost, is that the methods of crafting quality goods are dying off, as they are deemed to be "unprofitable" long term. Boots that used to last a lifetime if properly repaired when needed, will probably never be made again. And the point is not that someone should go to jail for this, but rather that maybe us as a society needs to recognize that quality is perhaps more important than quantity.
And while it is not a global conspiracy per-se, it is more of a willful ignorance of maintaining a quality product, because the motivations are purely to generate a profit, at all other expenses. I will provide a tremendous (non-food) example:
https://www.edmunds.com/car-news/gm-expands-ignition-switch-recall-to-14-million-vehicles-in-us.html
Over 14 million vehicles had to be recalled due to an ignition switch problem. What that article doesn't mention, is that the fix for this particular recall (which has at least 13 documented deaths attributed to it), is a ~$0.57 part that was covered up by GM for nearly a decade. On vehicles that retailed for over $15,000. Here is more detail on that:
https://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/cost-fix-faulty-gm-ignition-switch-57-cents-congress-article-1.1742342
But what was the ultimate consequence of GM being responsible for 13 deaths, and risking millions of lives, all in the name of a minuscule increase to annual profits? Nothing.
That is a disingenuous mischaracterization caused by an extremely elitist viewpoint. To say that 99% of soy sauce on the market is fake is insulting to anyone with any investment in Japanese food culture. Cheap soy sauce is still soy sauce. It's the same ingredients being prepared the same way. The only difference is that they are not fermented as long and they use a specific, controlled bacteria instead of the naturally occurring bacteria in the casks.
While I have no doubt in my mind that the sauce this person makes is extremely high quality, the fact that he is basically the last person still making it this way speaks more to how unnecessary this process is.
But that's exactly the point. Changing those two characteristics fundamentally alters what the product is. Wasabi is a perfect example. Most of what is marketed as Wasabi isn't really wasabi, because it is horseradish, which is cheaper to grow/produce in mass quantities. I like horseradish, I eat plenty of it, I have no objections to cooking with it or using it as a condiment. I have a problem with companies adding food coloring to it and re-branding it as Wasabi, when by definition, Wasabi is created from a completely different plant. It reeks of deception and exploitation...and now it's so ingrained into the mass consciousness that real wasabi probably wouldn't be recognized as such to a layperson. And that's a damn shame.
Wasabi is a more legitimate complaint. They different plants. But soy sauce is soy sauce. It's made with the same ingredients and processes. By your own argument, virtually every commercial beer, cheese, bread, and yogurt is fake. Keep in mind that the cultures these producers are using are basically the same types of bacteria they always have been using. The big difference is that with this technique, they are in an otherwise sterile environment, so there is no possibility of anyone getting sick from being poisoned by the other bacteria that might have gotten in. Because of this level of control, you could argue that commercial soy sauce is more traditional than artisanal soy sauce: commercial soy sauce can be made with the same type of bacteria every time, whereas the bacteria in the artisanal soy sauce is constantly mutating and evolving.
To address this point specifically....yes this is exactly what needs to be done. Institute regulations that if someone wants to sell soy sauce, it must adhere to certain minimum standards. Anybody not meeting those standards has to change the name of their product (probably to something like Imitation Soy Sauce). Did you know there are multitudes of regulations like this that already exist? Bourbon for example, must meet a large number of regulations in order to be sold as bourbon. Because without those regulations in place, bourbon isn't really significantly different from any other distilled liquor.
How is the example of Bourbon an example of a good regulation? It's just rent-seeking by existing Bourbon makers to gain money at the expense of ignorant consumers via the power of government.
I guess you could say that there should be regulations that things sold as "Soy Sauce" should actually be Soy Sauce, but then you are left with who gets to decide that? The article says that most Soy Sauce sold is only fermented for 4 months instead of 2 years and in steel barrels instead of wooden ones, and that most soy sauce is like cheap wine compared to the most expensive fancy wine. That sounds like still "Soy Sauce" to me, just cheap Soy Sauce. It's the food snobs and the people who want to sell expensive Soy Sauce that would want to pass a regulation reducing their competition. The consumers obviously want the cheap stuff because they are buying it while the expensive stuff is still available with little demand. I would rather let people vote with their wallets and decide rather than a bureaucrat or politician in the pocket of "the traditional Soy Sauce makers lobby."
Because it sets a floor for how low the quality is allowed to sink. And that barrier is already fairly low...as there are plenty of cheaply available bourbons.
How would all of the wine drinkers of today feel if in 50 years, 99.99% of all wine manufactured is awful boxed wine, and all other wines sold for $1,000 a bottle? "Wine used to be delicious, plentiful, and affordable" would be the article written on the internet, and the people who agree with that article might say "We should regulate to insure good wine becomes plentiful again." And the counter-argument made to the supporter sounds something like: "Boxed wine is 99.99% of all wine sold today and is technically wine, therefore the techniques of making wine in the past were inferior, therefore everything is fine and regulation is not needed."
I don't mean to defend capitalism as I agree that it's not sustainable, but you do paint a very black/white picture.
I'm just saying, it's both corporations that produce plastic containers and the people that buy that stuff. It's both consumers wasting food(or eating more than they need) and stores throwing away food. Sure, there's definitely cases where it's one of either party, or a third party, but still.
Who's to blame? Who need to change their behavior? If both parties keep pointing fingers at the other, there's no progress to be made. It'll devolve into a shitfight, the consumer is right and the big bad corporate dudes should act or vice versa. Instead, I believe they should work together, somehow.
For example, I fix electronics for fun, together with many other volunteers. We get a lot of one specific device, which always breaks in the same spot. We've contacted the supplier, explained the issue and recommended a different part with better specs. They actually updated that specific part to a better version so the product lasts a lot longer. There's definitely companies out there that care about these things.
A consumer probably doesn't want to switch to alternatives to plastic packaging, since those usually aren't as cheap or as convenient as plastic. Washing a cotton grocery bag instead of grabbing a new plastic one every time is effort. Separating trash instead of just dumping it in one bin? Convenience doesn't pair with effort very well.
Another relevant thing is how much people care: A lot of people think trash is just mixed together anyway, or don't care about the environment or don't believe it'll affect them during their lifetime. Raising awareness and perhaps even providing very clear, concrete examples of what might happen may help in changing people's perspectives. Realistically though, it probably just takes a big climate/environmental disaster to happen to make people realize the issue at hand.
To summarize, I think the problem is more nuanced and should be dealt with from both(all?) sides of the argument, be it consumer, producer or government, instead of pointing fingers at each other, demanding them to ban plastics or something like it. I really don't see the system change anytime soon, or at least not at the pace that you would like to see it. (next question: what even is the better option? I'll not go there since I don't really know enough on that subject.)
I would say the answer to this point is simple: You have to force change from the top-down, at the most central point. Which of these two options is actually accomplished in a reasonable time frame?
Educating people on sustainability is nice, but it's ultimately like herding cats. You can't expect 300+ million people to all do the right thing all the time. You can however, easily regulate the producers of the offending product to prevent it's distribution to the public. Telling the public to change their individual behaviors is like saying "it is your responsibility to not use lead-based paint in your home," while allowing manufacturers to continue to make only lead-based paint.
That's because it is. I've worked at both a landfill and a recycling processing facility before...recycling most products is a tremendous waste of energy. The only materials that are remotely energy-efficient to recycle are metals. And that's super important when most of our energy is coming from fossil fuels. Plastic recycling is mostly a scam to justify why it's "ok" to continue making plastic. Glass containers that get reused multiple times (opposed to recycling them), are infinitely more sustainable long term than either aluminum cans or any form of plastic. The reason this is not being done today is because regulations that mandated the collection and reuse of containers by manufacturers were repealed a long time ago.
I should have mentioned that I'm not American, the recycling and consumption systems over here (western Europe) probably greatly differ from what happens in the USA. As such, my standpoint is based on how I perceive the issue from this coast, where trash is sorted and repurposed a lot better and many companies actually do care about their waste and what the public wants.
Neither of which, I think. Outright banning a packaging option likely takes a long time as well.
Agreed. I'd like to say that the consumers can send a message by not buying those products, but that usually means they have to buy more expensive products and boycotting products hardly makes a dent in the problem anyway. Likely doesn't have much effect.
In any case, I sadly don't have the answer to the problem, and I'll have to leave that to those who are out there, actively discussing this with involved parties.
We're getting pretty off-topic at this point, but I think it's a really interesting wrinkle that (at least, according to this book), "the entire anti-litter movement was initiated by a consortium of industry groups who wanted to divert the nation’s attention away from even more radical legislation to control the amount of waste these companies were putting out.
I'm a little more on @vord's side that the problem needs to be addressed on the manufacturer end, but they seem to have already managed to pull a pretty tricky move in basically using propaganda to convince consumers that these are their issues to address.
The problem with this is that I do try. I do put in the effort to recycle, to use fewer plastics (my big thing right now is remembering to bring my bags to the store), to buy things only when I really need them and to make them last, to eat more local and no animal products. I'm doing my part, and corporations still don't do shit. So I find the argument that "both sides need to work together" disingenuous, since a lot of people on our side, the normal people side, are already doing everything we can. It's time for corporations to get off their asses.
By the way, I'm not mad at you. I'm sorry if I got a little intense about it. It's just --- I'm really worried about the future and it's frustrating that it feels like I'm doing all this work and so many people just aren't. And you are absolutely right -- we should all do our part. It's just, like I said -- I feel like I'm doing mine. I need the people who really command pollution power to step up and do theirs, too.
Same, I try. But it feels so futile to see tons of people that don't. Though I know that more and more people pick up and try, even if it's just trying. You've got a point, but I don't know how the voice of that group of people can be heard by whoever's problem it might be.
I'm also not mad at anyone, just felt that I had to add some nuance to your statement ;) I too am worried, and even if a little optimistic, still not very sure if appropriate action will be taken before shit hits the fan.
Thanks for the nuance. I realized yesterday that I've been worrying so much about big issues like climate change and coming catastrophe that it's been affecting my mental health. I found myself planning out what I was going to do when the world ended, apocalyptic-movie style, and I realized that worrying like that does nothing. It's just my brain circling round and round, and I think my previous comment came out of that vortex.
You're right -- I'm not sure if we'll pull through either. But there's not much we can do ourselves, and getting stressed about stuff outside our control doesn't help anything. We can do what we can do, and what will be will be.
Here is the soy sauce they talk about in the article, available on Amazon. To save you a click, it's $59.99 for an 18 oz. bottle, or $3.33/ounce. Not affordable for most people, which is a shame. I'd love to try it sometime.
A little shoyu goes a long, long way and there are other, equally authentic brands that actually are affordable. E.g. Haku Mizunara at $23 for 375mL ($1.73/ounce).
Interesting, thanks. That's referred to as "a 2 year-old soy sauce that is further aged for 13 months in Japanese whisky barrels made from that same Mizunara (Japanese Oak) hard wood," whereas the Yamaroku is referred to as "Brewed And Aged For 4 Years With Ancient Method Of Using Kioke Wooden Barrels."
I'm not saying they're not equal (I haven't tasted either), but apparently it's like buying a 12-year aged Scotch vs. something aged longer. I really don't need to be spending the money right now, but man, I'm tempted. I love Japanese cooking.
The wood is the most important factor in this case. The fact that the barrels are a specific kind does not really matter much. The key is that the wood provides a good place for the bacteria to grow even when the barrel has been drained. Stainless steel is used for the opposite reason: it has no pores and can be completely sanitized fairly easily, allowing factories to use specific cultures of bacteria.
The Yamaroku may be better because of the age, but I don't know enough about the processes involved in soy sauce.
Yeah, I have never had the really expensive shoyu, only the moderately expensive stuff, so can't really speak to the differences there. However I do spend way, way more on my favorite brand of red miso paste (3 year fermentation) and imported bonito flakes than I probably should, so I know the feeling of that temptation intimately (as does my bank account). But as a miso soup and ramen lover it's totally worth it though. :P
Ooh, I've been looking for a good miso paste—got a link? I have one that I buy, but it's more or less a "store brand", sadly. I've been on the verge of thinking that I'll just need to ferment my own to get a good flavor.
Sure, although it's from a local family producer here in Southern Ontario, Canada, so I don't know if it's possible to find it anywhere outside the region. :(
http://www.traditionmiso.com/
It's about 0.5 liters (0,532324), btw. That's a lot of money, but I'd probably get more out of it than expensive Whiskey or something. Still just a little too steep, though.
Yes it is. That's the problem at hand. To break the first 3 down (as I don't eat enough yogurt to discuss in any detail), from a USA-centric perspective.
Certainly yes, I would classify the big 3 brands as fake beer (Bud, Coors, Miller). These beers are how I would imagine beer tastes in the Matrix.....bland, uninspired, and ultimately no tangible difference between them. Virtually any micro-brew in the USA can produce something that tastes better than what the mega-corps churn out.
One of the most popular cheeses in the USA is American Cheese. Much like soy sauce, it technically has all the same ingredients and processes. But any cheese aficionado will tell you, American Cheese is practically plastic in comparison to any other cheese. Another popular cheese Kraft's Parmesan Cheese, in the USA today contains significant quantities of cellulose (aka: processed wood pulp), in significant enough quantities that it cannot legally be sold as "Parmesan cheese" in Europe.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/larryolmsted/2012/11/19/the-dark-side-of-parmesan-cheese-what-you-dont-know-might-hurt-you/#562651594645
Have you ever had a good fresh loaf of bread from a local baker? It tastes exponentially better than almost any bread manufactured/sliced/bagged by machines. To call WonderBread a bread is a crime against bread.
Examples can be found for almost any food produced and distributed in the USA today. Cheap knockoffs are being passed off as the real thing, and customers are told "it's close enough who cares," while people who DO care have harder and harder times obtaining what used to be plentiful quality product, all because all the manufacturers and distributes switch to making the knockoff in order to maximize profits.
Mexican Coke tastes better than American Coke (at least it used to...not sure of current state). Because it uses cane sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup. The substitution was done because it lowered costs, and a low enough percent of customers cared. But that's how the endless cycle of quality degradation begins....a compromise to lower costs, that never gets reverted.
My capitalist friends like to tell me that Capitalism is the most efficient way to distribute goods and services (which I'll start another thread at some point to explain why that's bullshit)....but I contend that if "maximum efficiency" means "only the rich can eat food that tastes good" there's a major problem with the system.
You responded to the parent, not to me, but I'll still respond
There are individual problems with your arguments in all categories, but there is one overlapping mistake you make that spans them all in that you don't actually take how these products are made into account.
The mistake you make in regards to beer is that even microbrews are made in stainless steel vessels with purpose-made cultures, just like modern soy sauce is. It used to be made in wooden barrels like the artisanal soy sauce. To be honest, I know the least about beer because I can't stand the stuff. I'm sure there are some microbrews who use a mother bacteria they grow themselves, but frankly I don't care enough to look it up.
American cheese is not cheese. It's a food product created by emulsifying cheddar cheese with an oil. I remember reading a while back that the US has such strict requirements on safety, the FDA does not allow producers to sell cheese made from wooden barrels.
Both the US and the EU have very strict laws for labeling of products, but they are both different standards. American cheese, for example, has a handful of labels that depend on the exact formulation of the product. The fact that you cannot sell Kraft Parmesan cheese as Parmesan cheese in Europe does not mean that it is not cheese.
I have made my own bread before. I know how good it is - you are preaching to the choir. But just because it doesn't taste as good doesn't mean that Wonderbread is not bread. The only difference between wonderbread and homemade is that they have additional ingredients that make quality regular and increase the lifespan. Quite simply, no matter how you bake bread, it's never going to taste as good as fresh.
If you haven't noticed it, all your arguments boil down to you not liking the taste. And frankly, that's irrelevant. Plenty of people do like these flavors. That's why I called it an elitist opinion. What you are doing is akin to saying that black licorice is not as good as red licorice, therefore black licorice must be fake. It's a nonsensical standpoint to argue from.
And frankly I think Diet Coke is the best tasting cola beverage.
As someone that regularly enjoys mass produced goods, this is a little insulting, and misses the marks on facts.
For example, you've classified "virtually ever" beer as fake, calling out three major breweries, but then state that "Virtually any micro-brew in the USA can produce something that tastes better". This latter quote may be correct in a subjective sense, but you haven't justified calling the major ones fake. In fact, because there are many breweries putting out various quality products at different price points, beer is hardly a scarce or expensive commodity, and buyers of mass produced beers aren't being hoodwinked into it given alternatives.
On cheese, similarly. American cheese may be distasteful to some, but it's not even fake. It's more processed than many cheeses, but cheese is processed dairy. A similar argument applies to wonderbread: it's a beloved product even if some people don't prefer it, and I'm wondering what definition of bread you are using that can distinguish it from other types you consider legitimate.
In these cases, where each of these goods have readily available substitutes, consumers aren't being deceived into repeatedly buying cheaper goods, nor are they wrong for not buying higher-brow foods. It's not a race to cheapest-all-corners-cut: reducing costs and quality may result in hitting a sweet spot not seen in the market yet attracting new buyers, or miss the mark pushing existing buyers to alternatives. The assertion that quality is subject to one direction degradation is not true, and there are many
examplescounterexamples [edit].Assuming you are talking about American capitalism: saying that "only the rich can eat food that tastes good" needs a huge citation. In my limited research, good tasting food is readily available at a cheaper price than perhaps any time in history. Is the point that the food you are accustomed to is much more expensive than the food that tastes perfectly good to other people and wouldn't be affordable to them?
Maybe I've missed the point, but I think in many metrics we are in a golden age of food. It's a feature that because of modern processes I can buy Budlight, WonderBread, American Cheese, and cheap soy sauce and make good food that doesn't break the bank: in the past I wouldn't have that choice.
It still does, and it's popular enough now that it's practically just the sub-brand for sugar cane coke in the US.