Podcasts

Making Mr Song’s Cheese China appreciated cheese and dairy long before it was decided they couldn’t

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Two water buffalo ink on silk scroll by Gao Qifeng

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:42 — 23.6MB)

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Miranda Brown successfully stretches Mr Song's string cheese
Miranda Brown successfully stretches Mr Song’s string cheese
I’ve long believed that the reason there is no milk or cheese in Chinese food culture today is because ethnic Chinese people are likely to be lactose intolerant. But that may well be an oversimplification. In looking at old texts, Professor Miranda Brown of Michigan University discovered recipes and advice on butter, milk and cheeses. So she set about trying to make the cheeses, with some success. As for intolerance, yes, a study in 1984 concluded that 92% of Han Chinese exhibit “primary adult lactose malabsorption”. Nevertheless, milk consumption is growing rapidly in China and the genetic basis of intolerance may be more complicated than a simple, single gene.

Notes

  1. Miranda Brown is @Dong_Muda on Twitter. She wrote about Making Mr. Song’s Cheeses and in more detail about the cheeses and dairy in an article in Gastronomica which may be behind a paywall. She also has a recipe for cheese wontons.
  2. Her colleague, Alice Yao, recorded an interview on The problematic history of lactase persistence research but her host, the Human Biology Association, doesn’t really get podcasting.
  3. Here is the transcript.
  4. Banner image from Two Water Buffaloes by Gao Qifeng (1889–1933), from the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

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Podcasts

What Price Chicken Wings? The economics of production in fixed proportions

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Sesame coated chicken wing held in chopsticks above a plate of similar wings

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 22:27 — 20.6MB)

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Professor Wally Thurman
Wally Thurman

Time was when chicken wings were barely a thing, appendages that nobody much wanted to eat. Chickens were bred to deliver big breasts and wings were an afterthought until the advent of Buffalo wings in the 1960s. Now, and especially in the run-up to the Superbowl and March Madness, wings are in much greater demand than breasts, which is reflected in much higher prices for wings.

I wanted to understand how the market copes with changing demand for the different parts of the whole bird, so I turned to Professor Wally Thurman, of the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at North Carolina State University.

Notes

  1. Purdue University (no relation to Perdue chicken) published a nice piece back in June 2001 explaining the complications that arise because Chicken Wings Come From Actual Chickens.
  2. Of course I skated over the true history of Buffalo wings. If Calvin Trillin can’t get to the bottom of the story, who am I even to try?
  3. In our conversation, we touched briefly on “wing-like things,” made from lower-cost breast meat. Just last week, I read about a class action lawsuit brought against a restaurant chain by a man who suffered “a financial injury” because he truly believed he had bought wings that had been deboned, rather than pieces of breast meat cunningly cut to resemble a wing. Nice try.
  4. Here is the transcript.
  5. Cover image adapted from Wikimedia Commons. Banner image from Ang Sarap.

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Podcasts

Patrik Johansson, the Butter Viking Not quite his grandmother’s butter

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Decorated butter handmade by the Butter Viking

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 23:05 — 21.2MB)

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Dall-E's rendering of "A viking made of butter"

Ten years ago, the first episode of Eat This Podcast featured Ben Reade talking about some butter that he had buried in a Swedish bog, the better to understand the bog butter occasionally unearthed in Ireland (and elsewhere). The butter for that experiment was made by Patrik Johansson, using methods taught him by his grandmother, lightly churned with some modern food science. The result is a product that can be found only at a few fine restaurants. That is unlikely ever to change, as Patrik says he couldn’t possibly scale up production.

We talked about that, and much else besides.

Notes

  1. You can follow Patrik Johansson on Instagram.
  2. Here’s the episode on bog butter
  3. And here is the transcript.
  4. Drum roll by MissloonerVoiceOver255

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Podcasts

Food Security in Egypt “Twenty loaves of bread for the cost of a cigarette”

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A boy holds up a loaf of bread while making a peace symbol at Tahrir Square in 2011

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:02 — 26.9MB)

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Portrait of Jessica Barnes
Jessica Barnes
Egypt spends about 3% of its budget subsidising bread for about three-quarters of its population. Threats to that subsidy provoke massive civil unrest, helping to topple the regime in 2011. As a result, bread and wheat are fundamental to the government’s security and that of the people of Egypt. Wheat yields in Egypt are among the highest in Africa, but they are no match for the population, which is why Egypt is the biggest buyer of wheat on the global market. Even when government raises the price it will pay for local wheat, the farmers who grow it prefer to keep their harvest — for their own family food security — rather than sell it to promote the government’s security.

These are just some of the challenges Jessica Barnes brings to light in her new book, Staple Security: Bread and Wheat in Egypt.

Sheaves of harvested wheat in the foreground with a row of date palms behind

Notes

  1. Staple Security: Bread and Wheat in Egypt is published by Duke University Press.
  2. Music by Ramy Essam.
  3. You may be interested in an episode I did back in 2014: Food prices and social unrest
  4. Transcript available here.
  5. Cover photo by Hossam el-Hamalawy. Banner photo “courtesy Middle East Confidential”.

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Podcasts

Fully Tested Tuna How much mercury is in that tin of tuna?

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A bluefin tuna leaps clear of the water off the coast of California

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 20:25 — 18.8MB)

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Sean Wittenberg
Sean Wittenberg, Safe Catch CEO
There is an awful lot of disagreement on the subject of mercury in fish and shellfish and how harmful it might be to people. That’s especially true for tuna, which are top predators that accumulate mercury from all the fish they eat over their long lives. Many countries, including the USA, offer guidelines about how much tuna it is “safe” to eat, but there are problems with that. First, not all tuna is tested for mercury. And second, some individual fish contain way more mercury than others. Safe Catch is a relative newcomer to canned tuna, with a unique selling point: it tests every single fish, and to a standard 10 times more stringent than the level at which the FDA might take action.

Sean Wittenberg, CEO of Safe Catch, told me how his company came about and how it operates.

Notes

  1. Safe Catch’s website.
  2. Transcript, thanks to my generous supporters.
  3. Astonishing tuna photograph by Tom Benson on flickr

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