Taste the world
Last time I
told you a lot about animal welfare and climate change… When originally this
was all supposed to be about food while we’re travelling. So let’s get into it
once more!
The same
way food plays such an import role in my life, it does in everybody else’s, and
it does in a culture. When you think of Italy, doesn't it make you think about
pizza, pasta and ice cream? Germany and beer and bread? France and croissants,
crepes, snails and frogs? China and chopsticks? You get the picture. The “food”
section is always the first one I read in a travel guide. What are the normal
eating times in a country? In Thailand, for example, people will have breakfast
and dinner whenever, but they are very strict on their twelve-o-clock lunch.
What are typical dishes? What are the local vegetables and fruits? What is the
typical drink?
And then I
will let people tell me more. And set out to find all and try these things.
When I leave Estonia, I always take some dark rye bread with me. After coming
back from Myanmar I started adding way more garlic to my food than the average
German. I keep wondering how I could become sixteen before having my first
brownie – but I had it in the US (just like my first donut and pancakes with
maple syrup). I now cook “momos”, a Nepalese street food with my mom a couple
of times a year. And in Thailand, I became an ice tea addict.
How do the
people eat? In many Asian countries, “noisy” eating with smacking and burping
are a sign that you like it, while in Europe this is quite impolite. Not asking
for more food after you have finished your plate also is a sign that you didn’t
like it in countries like Nepal, while in others, clearing your plate
completely might mean that it wasn’t enough. I also enjoy eating with the local
tools: the Nepalese and Indian techniques to eat with your fingers are not the
same! My mother taught me how to eat with chopsticks as a child, so I could
properly eat the Chinese food she had “brought” back from China. In Thailand,
chopsticks are only used for the noodles in a soup, everything else is eaten
with a spoon and the fork is mainly used to push the food on the spoon, like we
do it with fork and knife in Germany. Italians will never use a spoon for their
spaghetti.
For more
information on food traditions around the world, you might find some more
information here: https://theculturetrip.com/
One more
issue I want to mention: Palm oil. While pretty much all of the products that
we find in the supermarket contain it, Asia is actually the continent that uses
is the most – for cooking, for example. Because it is cheap.
Ten percent
of global cropland is oil palms, and this space has to come from somewhere –
85% of the global palm oil supply comes from Malaysia and Indonesia, where rain
forests have to make space. The oil palm plantations destroy the habitat for
many animals, and the very real threat of extinction of the Sumatran tiger, the
Sumatran rhino and the orangutan can be directly linked to growing oil palms.
Producing
the palm oil also contributes to global warming.
Palm oil is
not only found in most Asian processed foods, in Europe and the US as well, 70
percent of personal care items contain one or more palm oil derivates – and the
problem is spotting them: there are about 200 ingredients in common products
like soap and lotion that contain palm oil, but in only 10 percent of the cases
the term “palm oil” can be found on the ingredients list.
In an
average supermarket, you will find 47 000 products. Apart from palm oil,
two more ingredients can be found in almost all of them: corn and soy. Basically
no processed food like ice cream, pizza, ketchup, chips, candy, peanut butter
and so on can go without one or both of those. Again, it’s not easy to spot
them on the ingredients list, as they are disguised in names like sorbic acid,
maltodextrin, lecithin and many more. Soy can even be found in things like
cigarettes, lotion, and drugs. And it’s also used in biofuel, because, like corn,
it’s cheap.
So what is
my problem with soy?
Now I’m not
talking about tofu here. About 2 percent of the global soy production is for
human consumption as tofu, tempeh, and the like. The other 98 percent go into
processed foods and, mainly, into animal feed. This is not how these animals
would normally eat – more on animal welfare here.
Growing soy needs land. Valuable land. As tofu contains lots of water, from 1
kilogram of soy, you can make 2kg of tofu – but he same amount will give you
only 300g of pork. Soy monocultures are mostly built up in areas that used to
be rain forest, our biggest storage of CO2. When we cut down that
forest, we set the CO2 free, fueling the climate change. So does the
transport: 90 million tons of soy are being exported from Brazil only every
year, for example.
 |
| rainforest turning into soy monocultures (photo: robinwood.de) |
Interpreting
their study, British scientists found that vegans produce half the amount of
greenhouse gases of meat eaters, even when they consume tofu from Brazilian soy
beans.
Three
quarters of soy from Brazil is genetically modified as so called “Roundup ready”
soy, globally, it’s 90 percent. Corn also has a “Roundup Ready” version.
Roundup is the infamous pesticide glyphosate by the company Bayer-Monsanto. It
kills pretty much everything: unwanted plants, vermin, and technically also the
soy, if it weren’t for the genetic modification. Thus, it can be assumed that
it isn’t too healthy for us humans either. Monsanto doesn’t only have the
patent on the pesticide, but also on the GMO soy and corn. Patents on life. It
means, farmers are not allowed to keep the seeds for the next season, but have to
buy them from Monsanto again each year.
In areas
where a lot of soy and corn is being grown, and thus lots of glyphosate (and
other pesticides) are being used, an increasing number of cancer cases, heart
diseases and thyroid illnesses could be found. Birth defects and the normally
very rare amyotrophic lateral sclerosis appear more frequently in these soy
producing regions. As glyphosate is usually sprayed from the air, people breath
it in, but as it drains into the ground, it also gets into the ground water.
When I
moved into my temporary home here in Thailand, the previous inhabitant had left
a pack of instant noodles. I knew when it had been put there, but I feared that
the next person would not, and eventually somebody would throw it away because
they didn’t know how long this had been here, if it was still good and why it
was left in the first place. A year ago, I could have been this person.
Now, I
looked at this and thought: So bad. A big plastic bag holding twenty tiny
plastic wraps. And the food inside is made out of flour, palm oil, and sugar
(and 5% other ingredients, like corn starch, slat and stabilizers..). It was
something I just wouldn’t buy.
And then I
ate the instant noodles so that they wouldn’t be thrown away.
Because
worse than eating palm oil or animal products, or food that is packaged in
plastic or has been transported a long distance – is to throw it away.
In the US
alone, 12.7 billion kilos of food are being tossed every year, food that was
still good. More on that here.
By the way:
the links that bring you to Amazon (books and movies) are so called affiliate
links. It means that if you buy something following that link, I will earn a
few cents, but for you it isn’t more expensive than normally. So if you’ve been
thinking about getting that book, I’d be happy if you support this blog
(writing it needs lots of green tea ;-)
Find great
vegetarian/vegan food wherever you are: happycow.net
Recommended
for deliciousness and more:
Pick up
Limes (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCq2E1mIwUKMWzCA4liA_XGQ)
and https://www.pickuplimes.com/
Sources:
The
Guardian long read: How the world got hooked on palm oil (https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/feb/19/palm-oil-ingredient-biscuits-shampoo-environmental)
https://www.bravebird.de/blog/umweltbewusstes-essen-warum-lokale-speisen-auf-reisen-so-wichtig-sind/
tagesschau.de vom 27.7.18
https://www.bravebird.de/blog/umweltbewusstes-essen-warum-lokale-speisen-auf-reisen-so-wichtig-sind/
Garbology
Food Inc.
That Sugar Film
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