or search for 'martin cadwell -caldwell' Take note of the position of the minus sign to eliminate caldwell returns or search for 'martin cadwell blog' in your browser.
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[ 6 minute read ]
Now we are cooking?
I am so naïve. I thought people in the modern day, in the UK, ate the food on their plates and in the fridge, larder or cellar, garden, or locally by the road, before they buy more of the same in a shop. Don't people plan what they are going to eat during the next two weeks or month?
I spoke to someone from Japan a while ago and his response to a question on the low level of obesity in Japan was:
'We only eat 85% of what we think we want to eat.'
Which I think means that he is saying that typically, Japanese people eat only 85% of what is on their plate or in their bowl. Yet, I think there is at least one suppressed premise, because I think throwing food away in Japan would be frowned upon. So, perhaps he really meant that they cook food, and put what they want to eat in bowls and plates minus 15% OR (although there does not need to be a binary meaning) they provide portions to individuals according to how much they normally eat, by applying common-sense and heuristics, and anything that is not then eaten gets to go in the fridge, or is combined into the next meal of the day. All that from a single sentence might include a lot of speculation and if and buts, and there is clearly room for a lot of error (mine), but doesn't that make sense?
He did clarify his statement a bit:
'We don't eat until we feel full; like we don't, or can't, eat any more [food]'
That seems to imply then that they leave food to be returned to the kitchen. But, I believe a lot of Asian people use a number of bowls and plates to separate their food and pick and combine from each as they go along. This, crucially means that one item in their meal does not get contaminated with another, and each can be preserved for later use.
In the UK and with modern eating habits, Baked Beans gets on the mashed potato, which in turn has been tainted with the innards of a Chicken and Mushroom pie (which may or may not have had extra gravy made from a packet poured on it). Difficult to see how to salvage the mashed potato, Baked Beans and pie gravy mess, and a third of a Chicken and Mushroom pie, isn't it? I think leaving 85% of what is on our plates to go back to the kitchen to be salvaged and made into something else is difficult. If the mashed potato was served separately, however, then it could be made into Bubble and Squeak later, especially if any cabbage from yesterday that was not eaten and had been served separately, was also in the fridge.
Something that comes to mind is that most of us don't have big enough tables to be able to place separate items of a meal in separate serving bowls. Here is how only 85% of what we want to eat can be accessed AND all of the food left in the serving bowls can be salvaged for later meals. The chicken or roast beef is no longer carved at the table; and why should it be? Supermarkets commodified meat decades ago.(commodify - to make into a commodity, sometimes at the expense of its intrinsic value). Now we buy seven or eight pork chops in a plastic box-type tray from a supermarket, instead of buying pork loin to our preferred size, to suit our needs, from the butcher. Why? A 'pork loin cut' from a butcher can be cut to any size and sliced, at the butchers, to a desired thickness. If my family has three members at home, then I could have bought three thin pork chops from the butcher, which would ensure that none of it gets left on the plate and that no chops remain in the fridge to be overlooked for a few days and goes 'bad'. You see, seven is not divisible by any number except one and itself because it is a prime number, and eight is divisible only by one and any even number, which means that there cannot be three, five or six family members at home, unless the cook is prepared to dice one or two chops and put them into a curry or do something else with them, like making pork kebabs. You can look at any commodified meat unit in the supermarket and discover that it rarely fits most families needs (I don't think I have ever seen less than seven pork loin chop units in one container in a supermarket, unless a smaller number was more expensive - it is economically better to buy more).
In one of my local post office shops I saw boxes of three mince pies and nine mince pies, as well as twelve and fifteen mince pies. Shoppers could almost buy exactly the right amount for a small family or for a family get-together without overeating that extra one.
What we have ended up with is tons and tons of good food thrown away AND Jane-Plan and many other expensive small meal portion businesses. Why? Isn't the solution to avoiding obesity and spending lots of money on small meal portions from these businesses, AND avoiding food waste; to buy less food in supermarkets in the first place? Isn't the result a better holiday with saved money with a beach-body? Oh! I forgot; people can't cook, or they don't have the time. I think the solution to both of these problems lies in technology.
If we have internet capability we can learn to cook OR if we have internet capability we don't have enough time to cook; you choose.
One of my neighbours is a teacher and is absent from the home for about eleven hours a day. With sleeping, preparation for sleep and ablutions, I estimate there is only two and a half to three hours free time each day. This person has enough time to cook a full Sunday roast every day, but not to eat it. Of course, a teacher also has homework, so only has enough time to cook and clean up afterwards for one hour each day - the time it takes to prepare and cook a curry, or make a pizza and peel potatoes and cut and cook chips from scratch. This teacher has someone else at home (I did include 'fortunately' in the last sentence and then deleted it). But that is another story.
Commodify Your Life
All my posts: https://learn1.open.ac.uk/mod/oublog/view.php?u=zw219551
or search for 'martin cadwell -caldwell' Take note of the position of the minus sign to eliminate caldwell returns or search for 'martin cadwell blog' in your browser.
I am not on YouTube or social media
[ 6 minute read ]
Now we are cooking?
I am so naïve. I thought people in the modern day, in the UK, ate the food on their plates and in the fridge, larder or cellar, garden, or locally by the road, before they buy more of the same in a shop. Don't people plan what they are going to eat during the next two weeks or month?
I spoke to someone from Japan a while ago and his response to a question on the low level of obesity in Japan was:
'We only eat 85% of what we think we want to eat.'
Which I think means that he is saying that typically, Japanese people eat only 85% of what is on their plate or in their bowl. Yet, I think there is at least one suppressed premise, because I think throwing food away in Japan would be frowned upon. So, perhaps he really meant that they cook food, and put what they want to eat in bowls and plates minus 15% OR (although there does not need to be a binary meaning) they provide portions to individuals according to how much they normally eat, by applying common-sense and heuristics, and anything that is not then eaten gets to go in the fridge, or is combined into the next meal of the day. All that from a single sentence might include a lot of speculation and if and buts, and there is clearly room for a lot of error (mine), but doesn't that make sense?
He did clarify his statement a bit:
'We don't eat until we feel full; like we don't, or can't, eat any more [food]'
That seems to imply then that they leave food to be returned to the kitchen. But, I believe a lot of Asian people use a number of bowls and plates to separate their food and pick and combine from each as they go along. This, crucially means that one item in their meal does not get contaminated with another, and each can be preserved for later use.
In the UK and with modern eating habits, Baked Beans gets on the mashed potato, which in turn has been tainted with the innards of a Chicken and Mushroom pie (which may or may not have had extra gravy made from a packet poured on it). Difficult to see how to salvage the mashed potato, Baked Beans and pie gravy mess, and a third of a Chicken and Mushroom pie, isn't it? I think leaving 85% of what is on our plates to go back to the kitchen to be salvaged and made into something else is difficult. If the mashed potato was served separately, however, then it could be made into Bubble and Squeak later, especially if any cabbage from yesterday that was not eaten and had been served separately, was also in the fridge.
Something that comes to mind is that most of us don't have big enough tables to be able to place separate items of a meal in separate serving bowls. Here is how only 85% of what we want to eat can be accessed AND all of the food left in the serving bowls can be salvaged for later meals. The chicken or roast beef is no longer carved at the table; and why should it be? Supermarkets commodified meat decades ago.(commodify - to make into a commodity, sometimes at the expense of its intrinsic value). Now we buy seven or eight pork chops in a plastic box-type tray from a supermarket, instead of buying pork loin to our preferred size, to suit our needs, from the butcher. Why? A 'pork loin cut' from a butcher can be cut to any size and sliced, at the butchers, to a desired thickness. If my family has three members at home, then I could have bought three thin pork chops from the butcher, which would ensure that none of it gets left on the plate and that no chops remain in the fridge to be overlooked for a few days and goes 'bad'. You see, seven is not divisible by any number except one and itself because it is a prime number, and eight is divisible only by one and any even number, which means that there cannot be three, five or six family members at home, unless the cook is prepared to dice one or two chops and put them into a curry or do something else with them, like making pork kebabs. You can look at any commodified meat unit in the supermarket and discover that it rarely fits most families needs (I don't think I have ever seen less than seven pork loin chop units in one container in a supermarket, unless a smaller number was more expensive - it is economically better to buy more).
In one of my local post office shops I saw boxes of three mince pies and nine mince pies, as well as twelve and fifteen mince pies. Shoppers could almost buy exactly the right amount for a small family or for a family get-together without overeating that extra one.
What we have ended up with is tons and tons of good food thrown away AND Jane-Plan and many other expensive small meal portion businesses. Why? Isn't the solution to avoiding obesity and spending lots of money on small meal portions from these businesses, AND avoiding food waste; to buy less food in supermarkets in the first place? Isn't the result a better holiday with saved money with a beach-body? Oh! I forgot; people can't cook, or they don't have the time. I think the solution to both of these problems lies in technology.
If we have internet capability we can learn to cook OR if we have internet capability we don't have enough time to cook; you choose.
One of my neighbours is a teacher and is absent from the home for about eleven hours a day. With sleeping, preparation for sleep and ablutions, I estimate there is only two and a half to three hours free time each day. This person has enough time to cook a full Sunday roast every day, but not to eat it. Of course, a teacher also has homework, so only has enough time to cook and clean up afterwards for one hour each day - the time it takes to prepare and cook a curry, or make a pizza and peel potatoes and cut and cook chips from scratch. This teacher has someone else at home (I did include 'fortunately' in the last sentence and then deleted it). But that is another story.