Category: Markets

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Nomenclatura

The NYT reports that most cultures use the same categories to classify plants, such as trees, vines, herbs, bushes. People also consistently use two-word combinations for specific organisms within a larger group. At least that is what Cecil Brown found after studying 188 languages. It would be interesting to compare the kinds of labels used for crops and crop varieties across cultures. Has anyone done that?

The article also says that we are “losing the ability to order and name and therefore losing a connection to and a place in the living world.” The other day, Jacob commented on “Los tomates ya no saben a nada” by saying that he has “had more and less tasty Spanish tomatoes this summer. The thing is that you can’t “see” taste when you buy (the variety is not indicated)” ((There are of course many tomatoes that look very unlike the next one, but perhaps these haven’t made it to the Spanish retailers yet; or the difference he tasted had little to do with varieties)).

Should we try to get more variety names in shops, markets, restaurants? The slow/organic/local food movement puts a lot of emphasis on where things are grown, but less on what is grown. Also think Starbucks & co.: coffee from Sumatra, Ethiopia, Antigua; but what variety? And why always arabica? Can’t they serve a nice barako? ((You can get a good barako coffee or ice cream in Cafeño in San Juan, Batangas, Phillipines. And on the way back to Manila have a pako salad at Kusina Salud.))

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Nibbles: Dogs squared, Afghanistan’s poppies, Rice at IRRI, Book on sapodilla chicle in Mexico, Opuntia, Trees

  • DNA survey of African village dogs reveals as much diversity as in East Asian village dogs, undermines current ideas about where domestication took place.
  • Fossil doubles age of dog domestication.
  • “When children felt like buying candy, they ran into their father’s fields and returned with a few grams of opium folded inside a leaf.”
  • “The rice, a traditional variety called kintoman, came from my grandfather’s farm. It had an inviting aroma, tasty, puffy and sweet. Unfortunately, it is rarely planted today.”
  • “An era of synthetic gums ushered in the near death of their profession, and there are only a handful of men that still make a living by passing their days in the jungle collecting chicle latex…The generational changes in this boom-and-bust lifestyle reflect a pattern that has occurred with numerous extractive economies…”
  • Morocco markets prickly pear cactus products.
  • TreeAid says that sustainable agriculture depends on, well, trees.
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Traditional tattoo dye to go mainstream

The report in FoodNavigator seemed pretty boring at first sight:

EcoFlora has developed a natural, acid-stable blue coloring for foods, beverages and cosmetics and it says the creation of a sustainable supply chain differentiates it from other colors on the market.

But then I googled the plant involved (“edible jagua fruit, which grows in the Chocó rainforest” of Colombia). It turns out jagua is Genipa americana, which is cultivated for its edible fruit, but also has other traditional uses.

South American Indians bathe their legs in the clear liquid obtained from the fruit. The liquid has an astringent effect. When the liquid oxidizes, it stains the skin black. These stains are permanent, but only color the top few layers of skin, and thus disappear after about a fortnight, when the skin is naturally shed. As South Americans Indians went into battle, they used to paint themselves with Genipa juice and annatto.

The active compound is called genipin. Apparently, there’s been a “recent explosion in the popularity of Jagua body art.”

There’s nothing in the FoodNavigator piece about where the idea for this “natural, acid-stable blue coloring for foods, beverages and cosmetics” ultimately came from. However…

EcoFlora says it is committed to working with some of the poorest communities in the region to harvest the fruit in a manner which is environmentally sustainable and beneficial to the local economy.

Well, that’s something, I suppose.

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More organic meta-analysis

Never rains but it pours. Hardly had I finished writing about the dismantling of the “conservation agriculture” narrative, that news is out of a serious going over for (part of) the organic agriculture one as well.

An independent review commissioned by the Food Standards Agency (FSA) shows that there are no important differences in the nutrition content, or any additional health benefits, of organic food when compared with conventionally produced food. The focus of the review was the nutritional content of foodstuffs.

Only about a third of the 162 studies from the past 50 years considered in the meta-analysis saw “a small number of differences in nutrition between organic and conventionally produced food but not large enough to be of any public health relevance.” Studies such as this one, presumably.

This follows a meta-analysis by the American Council on Science and Health which came to a similarly skeptical conclusion. That report was criticized in some quarters. And apparently the Soil Association has expressed some reservations about this latest study and called for better research. We can all go along with that, I think..

LATER. Reaction to the report from Civil Eats, US Food Policy and The Organic Centre. Bottom line is perhaps put best by Parke Wilde:

It is wisest to make your decisions about organic and conventional food primarily based on your assessment of the environmental considerations. The nutrient differences are not as decisive.