politics

2 penny sausages

maki — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 14:45:38 +0200

Asda, a UK supermarket chain (and a wholly owned division of Wal-Mart), spurred no doubt by recent news about scarily rising food prices, has launched an attention grabbing product: the 2 p sausage. You do have to buy it in packs of 8, but a pack is still just 16p. In US cents that’s about 4 cents a sausage.

The sausages have been reduced, from 56p per package of 8. Even at that price the thought of what might go into such a cheap sausage makes me shudder. At 2p per sausage, it makes my stomach take a queasy flop.

Surely there are better ways of eating frugally than stuffing yourself with lumps of dubious chopped up mystery meat? (I love a really good sausage, but bad sausages are a very different matter.) If you’re in the UK, have you tried the 2p sausages, or would you consider trying them?

Elsewhere in the world, you can have a $175 burger topped with gold leaf and foie gras, which may not even be that good. Something’s off kilter somewhere.

Reflections on the food prices poll results

maki — Mon, 05 May 2008 15:43:50 +0200

The food prices poll has just concluded, and the results show that 43% of the people who votes are ‘very concerned’ and 45% are ‘a little concerned’ about rising food prices. That is quite a lot indeed.

I’ve been thinking of ways in which our household food budget can go on a diet. Given that we are rather passionate about good food around here, there are compromises we are not willing to make. But there are lots we can do without feeling like we are depriving ourselves too.

Eat out less. This is an easy one really, because I feel that we can eat better food at home both taste wise and health wise. So no more eating out for eating out’s sake. We don’t want to give up going to really good restaurants, but we’ll put them in the “entertainment” column, not within the “food” column.
Stop impulse buying those tempting ‘gourmet’ treats. This is a bit more difficult for me - I find it hard to resist that jar of extra special preserves or mustard, not to mention all those delcious looking cheeses and hams and such that are on offer at speciality markets. I feel rather guilty when looking at all those barely opened jars in the fridge though.
Don’t buy prepackaged supermarket foods. This is also easy - most premade food is less than stellar.
Buy food that is as close to its original form as possible. The most food is processed, the more it costs. A box of cereal costs far more than plain oatmeal. Flavored rice mixes are way more expensive than plain rice.
Less meat and fish, more vegetarian proteins. I don’t want to compromise on the quality of the meat we get (for instance, we like to get Poulet de Bresse or at least a St. Sever quality chicken for roasting, which is about twice the price of a regular chicken), but I’m happy with eating less of it and using more vegetable proteins like beans.
Buy only what we really need. This is the most important thing - too often I buy too many vegetables or something, and some of it ends up going bad and getting thrown out.

What things can you think of doing, or are doing already, to painlessly cut down on food spending?

New poll: Rising food prices and you

maki — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 21:38:56 +0200

(Skip the rambling and go directly to the poll)

The news is quite disturbing these days. Soaring food prices, food riots in Haiti, rice hoarding by some exporters of rice. Do you worry about rising food prices?

We eat a lot of rice at our house as you might expect, so news like rice prices hitting an all-time high today are a bit disturbing. We’ve already seen bread getting more expensive.

Still, I’m not getting overly worked up about it, because I know that we can afford rice even if it doubled in prices, and the same for bread or butter or whatever else is affected. It may make us adjust our eating patterns a bit though. If things get really out of hand, I may implement one or more of the following:

buy less processed foods (though we don’t buy much anyway)
eat out less (ditto)
eat less meat and fish, eat more vegetable proteins
watch out more for sales at the supermarkets
buy less snacks (especially the bane of my existence, milk chocolate)
deal better with leftovers!
reduce amounts (our waistlines could use it anyway…)
economize elsewhere

Being a household of two working adults / no kids though, I know that we have it way easy, and chances are we won’t have to economize that much.

What about you? Are you concerned about food prices? Do you plan to do anything? Take the new poll….

(Related: Slate has an article today about how, despite rising food prices all over the world, a “happy hedonism still dominates the food media”. This is pretty true. I think this is because the Food section of most major papers is lumped into the Style category, together with fashion, interior design, travel and so on. Most articles in mainstream media outlets about food are about dining out at restaurants, exotic and (more often than not) expensive ingredients, and the like.

The writer is rather mixing up her apples and oranges though.
On the one hand she focuses on how newspapers focus on the luxury end of the food market, but brings up several books from the past about frugal and budget eating. Those still exist, and magazines (especially those aimed at women) often feature money-saving tips.

Be that as it may, I have a feeling that people who like to read about food are divided into two camps: those who like the fantasy and luxury aspects of it (fantastic high end restaurants, exotic and rare ingredients, travel to far-flung places to taste ‘authentic’ fare) and those who want to know how to cook new things, improve their skills or their health, and so on. (There are also a lot of people who just like to collect recipes, rather like hoarding baseball trading cards, whether they actually use them or not.) Major newspapers mainly cater to the first type of people I think, with a nod to the second type. And, the first type of people are the ones that the advertisers love, a fact that the author of the Slate article does bring up. Food blogs also cater to one or the other camp mostly. I think Just Hungry and Just Bento cater mostly to group no. 2, with occasional forays into no. 1. That is mainly a reflection of my/our interests.

Wow that was a long digression!)

Poll: Do you worry about rising food prices, and how to deal with the situation?

maki — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 21:37:06 +0200

The World Food Programme's new head

maki — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 17:37:33 +0200

I rarely get political on this blog, because…well this is a blog about food, and I hate all the strife that surrounds political discussions. However, this article about the new head of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP link) made me pause - especially since this is the organization for which the Menu For Hope III event raised money.

I’m not saying that the WFP won’t continue to do good work under this new head - but, her background makes me want to pound my head on my desk. Hard.

Food Stamp Budget post followup

maki — Wed, 16 May 2007 17:31:26 +0200

Following up to my previous post about food stamp budget experiments:

Rebecca has left a comment, where she points out she is following the USDA Thrifty Meal Plan, on which food stamp benefits are based. This is where her budget figure of $74 per week for 2 people (not $74 per day as I erroneously typed…that’s sort of generous!) comes from, which comes out to $5.30 per day per person.

Actually another blogger did a month-long Thrifty Meal Plan experiment 2 years ago, though she did not stipulate organic/local as Rebecca is doing. Half Changed World ate on the Thrifty Food plan for a month (followup posts are here, here, here, here and the final wrapup.) She had the additional challenge of feeding her two small children, including one who was (is) a picky eater, as well as her husband.

(It seems quite illogical to me that the food budget or food stamp allocation is the same for all people, whether it’s a tiny baby or a growing hungry teenager. But I guess that’s government for you.)

A few more links:

Some conservative political blogs have called the various politicians’ food stamp experiments to be lies since people actually get more food assistance. I disagree with calling the politicos liars - they are politicians, and out to make a (valid) point. Just as a matter of interest however, there are several other food assistance programs available from the federal government. There may be more from individual states, but that varies so much that I haven’t researched this in depth.

The USDA has issued a recipe and meal planning booklet (publication year 2006) called Recipes and Tips for Thrifty, Healthy Meals (PDF). At the moment that link produces a 404 though, so until it returns (hopefully it will) you can search for the document on Google and view the cached version. It has some budgeting tips that can be useful for anyone, such as making a list before going grocery shopping, planning meals ahead, batch cooking and “planned leftovers”.

What they do in Switzerland

I was rather curious as to how other countries dealt with the problem of feeding the poor, especially where I live now. In Switzerland welfare programs are managed at the canton level (cantons are sort of like states in the US but with more autonomy). People below the poverty line get financial and other assistance, but nothing like food stamps per se. Instead, eligible people are issued ID cards so that they can buy food at designated charity groceries at a discount, or for a very nominal fee. Here is a story about such a supermarket in Zürich. From another Swissinfo article, it seems the charity supermarkets fill the role that is filled by food banks and food pantries in the U.S. - the big difference being that the people still have to pay for the groceries.

(It’s important to note that Switzerland has a very low percentage of people living under the official poverty line: as of 2005, that number is 6.9% nationwide, compared to 15.4% for the UK, and 21.9% for the United States. (source) In other words, the ‘poverty problem’ in proportion to the general population is much smaller.)

Canned ravioli days

Reading the USDA Thrifty Meals document mentioned above reminded me of a brief period when I was sometimes really hungry. Back in my early 20s, I was living on my own and very broke. After paying rent, transportation, utilities and such, my disposable income was around $250. It was my first time living alone, so I didn’t really know how to cook for one - my previous cooking had been for the family and I was used to making amounts that were much larger than I needed for just myself. And, having grown up in a rather food-centric home it wasn’t easy to be budget conscious. So, I sent away for a ‘budget meal planning’ booklet from the government, very similar to the one here. (Remember when the address to write to for stuff from the government was in Pueblo, Colorado? I wonder if it still is.) Once I got the booklet, the shopping and planning tips were useful but I couldn’t even bring myself to try to recipes. They all sounded grey-brown and tasteless. The choice of meat was turkey, especially ground turkey, which I have always hated.

Luckily, I lived at the time in a place (Flushing, Queens) where shopping cheaply for varied and exciting food was, and still is, quite easy, due to the ethnically varied population. So I was able to adjust my buying patterns and live pretty well on something like a $50 per week food budget (which included things like shampoo, soap and toilet paper), while ignoring ground turkey. This is when I first developed my love for Indian food incidentally, which has lots of inexpensive, tasty and cheering (spicy flavors, bright colors) food. Looking back, I think I can even say that this tight-budget period made me a better cook.

The thing with cooking for one though is that when you are tired, depressed or otherwise feeling out of it, you just don’t cook. (With others to cook for you force yourself to do it for their sake, or get another person to do it.) Now generally speaking I had a pretty good life, with friends and a job and family nearby to keep me cheerful, and I knew that my very tight finances would improve eventually. Besides, I was 20. And I had no dependents, except for my cat. But in those occasional down periods, what kept me going were, of course, pre-prepared foods. Especially canned ravioli and pasta. (Not Spaghetti-Os, the generic brand equivalents.) I don’t know what I would have done without the 3-for-a-dollar cans of ravioli. (You might think that I’d have gone for instant ramen, given my background, but I’d had it deeply ingrained in me by my mother that instant ramen = empty calories.)

My point here is though is that to cook regularly, every day, and to plan and budget and connive to get the best food possible on the table, it takes motivation and a positive attitude. When you are poor and feel stuck there, those things may be in shorter supply than cheap, unhealthy food. There’s also the matter of education about nutrition, cooking and budgeting, as Rebecca brings up.

Also see: You are what you grow, an op-ed piece by Michael Pollan that originally appeared in the NY Times. One thing it mentions is that the cheap, processed calories are so much cheaper than the fresh, healthy ones.

Food Stamp Budget experimenters

maki — Tue, 15 May 2007 19:39:13 +0200

[The following has been edited to correct some things from the original posting and add a couple of links. Serious Eats lists some more congresspeople participating.]

Last year the most popular food plan experiment was “eating local”. This year so far it seems to be “eating on a food stamp budget”. The main reason for this is upcoming debate on the 2007 farm bill. Bush administration is proposing to make big cuts in food assistance for the poor, a large part of which would mean cuts to the food stamp program. [Edit: as an anonymous commenter pointed out, that was a link to an article about the 2005 farm bill cuts.] (A NY Times editorial about the subject [Edit: this actually is about the 2007 Farm Bill :)].) So a number of politicians are doing the Food Stamp Budget Experiment at least in part to protest against this.

Here are the ones I’ve found so far (Note, some of these links were already posted to my del.icio.us, so my apologies for the duplicates if you follow that also.)

Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski seems to be the first one to start this.
Councilman Eric Gioia from Queens, NY has run out of money (on a $28 per week budget) and is now relying on food from a food pantry. Earlier, New York Magazine was quite snarky about his experiment, to which Joe Berg, executive director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger who is also participating in the experiment, replied. (A food pantry, for non-USens, is a non-government, usually charity-run place where people can go for food, which is donated in the form of actual food or money to buy food from the public. The NYCCAH mentioned above and America’s Second Harvest are examples of groups who run food pantries.)
Congresswoman Jo Ann Emerson from Missouri is trying it also, on a $3 per day budget.
So is Congressman James McGovern from Massachusetts. [Edit: His (and his wife’s) blog about the experience.] Emerson and McGovern are co-sponsoring a “Nutrition Bill”.
[Added on May 17th] Congressman Tim Ryan (Dem. Ohio) is also participating, and blogging about it.
Salt Lake (Utah) County Mayor Peter Corroon, Governor Jon Hunstman Jr. and State Representatives Jennifer Seelig and John Dougall (additional link)

All of these politicians seem to be sticking to the $3-a-day-per-person budget. As mentioned here previously, blogger Rebecca Blood is conducting a month-long experiment in this vein, though she’s allowing herself a $74 per day week budget (for two people), and adding the additional challenge of eating organic food. [Edit: see my followup post.] She seems to be doing quite well so far, eating lots of fresh vegetables, pulses and grains. On the other hand Councilman Eric Gioia, who went shopping with the assistance of a mother who had raised a family on food stamps, and bought things like ramen noodles, white bread (cheaper than whole wheat), canned tuna, peanut butter, isn’t doing very well. I suspect that more people who are actually in situations where they have to rely on food stamps shop more like the councilman than like Rebecca.

It does strike me that the councilman’s diet sounds suspiciously like that of a typical ‘starving’ student’s though, which is probably why a lot of the commenters on this Digg post seem to think it’s not a big deal.