This article is transferred from the author | Zhang Lushi
After the epidemic, it feels that the British people's attitude towards food is more tolerant, and the reasons behind it are explored, in addition to factors such as deliciousness and nutrition, perhaps also from the insecurity of life.
During the COVID-19 lockdown in London, I got into the habit of shopping for vegetables online.
Earlier this year, I started trying to order fruits and vegetables from a website called Oddbox, which has two founders: Deepak is from India; Emilie is from France and grew up watching her grandparents grow potatoes. The duo, who currently live in England, have always felt that it is a bit unrealistic that supermarkets are selling flawless fruits and vegetables, so they start investigating where the crooked dates have gone.
The results are staggering: more than 3 million tonnes of fruit and vegetables are thrown away before they leave the garden, and "too big", "too small" and "too many" can be reasons for "imperfection". Speaking of which, when I visit supermarkets and farmers' markets with my British friends, we do tend to choose smooth, symmetrical fruits. Recently, when I talked to a friend about this topic, he thought about it and thought it was a purely aesthetic influence: "We grew up watching TV, and the apples that appeared in the advertisements were round and smooth. And I remember that since childhood, the elders have said that "the uglier the apple, the sweeter it is." Even without the specific premise that "unassuming fruit means a higher degree of pristine", I still have reservations about fruits that are too perfect.
When Oddbox appeared in my field of vision, I noticed that Emilie and Deepak had spoken out about the source of my "prejudice": without human intervention, food would have been grown in a variety of forms. Their investigation found that the development of the British food system has reached the point where it is better to sacrifice the earth's resources to achieve a uniform quality of vegetables and fruits. Several major supermarket chains in the UK have long-term cooperation with vegetable growers and suppliers, and in order to achieve uniformity in the appearance of vegetables and fruits, it is inevitable to add cosmetic pesticides to crops. Pesticide Action Network UK (PAN) released a random inspection of 10 supermarkets in the UK last year, showing that 17 pesticide residues can be detected in food on supermarket shelves. Of course, the food referred to here is not only the fresh vegetables and fruits grown in the Uk, but also the rice and flour grains and oils imported from all over the world. Each supermarket has its own pesticide residue testing method, of which only M&S is slightly more transparent to consumers. Most supermarkets find pesticide residues in which foods, whether there are pesticide residues exceeding the standard, and how much they exceed the standard, these problems are never announced to the public.
However, in recent years, several other supermarkets in the UK have also begun to take action, such as Morrisons Supermarket launched the "Naturally Wonky" food line, Sainsbury's supermarket launched the "Imperfectly Tasty" line, putting fruits and vegetables of different sizes, spots on the skin and other unassuming fruits and vegetables on the shelves. While reducing waste, it also reduces the intervention of non-essential pesticides such as cosmetic pesticides. According to a survey conducted last October, Tesco's "Perfectly Imperfect" food line has "saved" 50 million servings of fruits and vegetables in the five years since its launch.
Farmers' market is a giant melon with affordable prices
On the one hand, a large number of seasonal vegetables and fruits rot in the ground because they do not meet supermarket standards, and on the other hand, the British people are accustomed to buying blackberries when they walk into the supermarket in January and Brussels sprout in June. Such an out-of-season supply of vegetables and fruits is certainly not unfamiliar to cities in various countries today, but the new generation of independent institutions, including Oddbox, are more inclined to return to the "natural way". When I sign up on Oddbox, I receive a box of fruits and vegetables every week. You can choose the component size, but the symbol is random. If you don't want to receive any varieties, you can check three on the website in advance.
Founders Deepak and Emilie buy weekly from vegetable farmers everywhere, packing vegetables and fruits that are not wanted in supermarkets. Oddbox was already ranked among Forward Fooding's "FoodTech 500" two years ago, a collaborative platform for promoting innovation through food tech data intelligence and collaboration between businesses and startups, but this is an effort to address food waste. For me, the pesticide residue problem is still not very clear. One way to go to farmers' markets, which once or twice a week stall in different parts of London, are generally distribution centers for organic fruits and vegetables and ingredients that advertise pesticide-free cultivation. But the price is also one or two times higher than that of supermarkets. For years, I've been visiting the market near my home every week.
Since the lifting of the epidemic, the UK has begun to inflate, and everyone is gradually reducing the cost of consumption. Faced with all the problems, if you have a garden at home, growing your own vegetables may be a good recipe. I recently built a greenhouse at home, and my mother's first reaction to the "greenhouse" in Guangzhou was "out-of-season vegetables." I was actually deeply influenced by her philosophy of "not eating from time to time", and I could only explain to her, who had never set foot in England, that the autumn and winter in London were very long, the temperature in early spring was unstable, and at the beginning of spring ploughing, seeds and seedlings were safer in the greenhouse. When the danger of the April frost has completely passed, the seedlings will be moved to the ground to receive sunlight and rain.
On the topic of "cherishing food", in fact, from the perspective of different culinary cultures, whether it is a British family or a British catering institution today, their habit of dividing fish and meat into which is edible and which is not edible may be regarded as "waste of food" in the eyes of people familiar with Chinese culinary culture. For example, when I first came to live in London many years ago, I found that the fish sold in restaurants and supermarkets was only shaved bones, and the heads and tails of the fish were all thrown away. At that time, I went to the farmers market in Blackheath every week, and once in a while I asked the fresh fish stall owner, "Do you have any leftover scraps?" "As a result, every week he saw me like he received a secret code, turned around and went into the shed to take out two fish bones, including the head and tail of the fish, without money." Anyway, no one wants to throw it away. Occasionally, pig trotters are seen in the market, and two pig trotters are 1 pound, which is close to free. Cantonese dim sum "chicken claws" are not uncommon in London Chinese restaurants, but except for some superfoods, chicken feet are basically not sold in the British market. Figures at the end of last year show that the United Kingdom kills 1 billion chickens a year, most of the chicken feet are thrown away, and a small part will be made into dog food along with the chicken gizzards and chicken livers that are also not on the British table. In British food customs, chicken breast is the most delicious, so the price is also the most expensive part of a chicken. The same goes for duck. I remember eating out several times, ordering the whole duck, and only the duck breast was served on the table, and the legs and wings were thrown away.
The same situation is still playing out in restaurants today. But I also read about a survey launched by the Food Foundation earlier this year that showed that 1 million adults in the UK have been empty every day in the past few months due to the rising cost of living. It's a little bit ironic. But that is already gradually changing. Eating at Native, a new restaurant under London Bridge two years ago, was the first time I've seen roasted grouse with paws on the table in a London restaurant. The hostess, Imogen, who grew up in a large family of siblings and knew how to cherish grain and was familiar with picking ingredients in the countryside, said that she would go to them and explain to them that "this is part of the animal" when she met customers who were not used to seeing chicken feet. She told ivan, a young chef, that the tavern was influenced by Noma, a famous shop in Copenhagen: they wanted to be as "zero waste" as possible and to use every scrap of good fish and meat.
Noma is a creative restaurant co-founded in 2004 by René Redzepi, a Chef from Macedonia and based in Copenhagen, and has been named "World's Best Restaurant" by The Restaurant magazine, the european authoritative food critic, for four consecutive years since 2010. Restaurants that moved to new locations reopened after the pandemic and returned to the top of the list again last year. René, the second generation of Danish immigrants, led the "New Nordic Cooking" boom that swept across Europe and even the world, and the afterglow is still lingering. I met René in Copenhagen in 2014 and ate his sauce made with pickled grasshoppers and I'll never forget it.
René Redzepi, co-founder of the creative restaurant Noma
René told me that while traveling in Thailand, Mexico, and Brazil, he noticed that ants tasted a bit of lemongrass: "Thousands of people there eat ants every day, and I said to myself: Why don't you try to stop being a self-righteous Nordic?" Maybe we're missing out on the good stuff — they're smart enough to eat bad things. René also said that people resist reptiles on the soil, but they are used to the appearance of shrimp, so it is no problem: "Shrimp are actually the bottom of the biological chain, eating all kinds of garbage." Lobsters are also eating everything at the bottom of the sea, saying that it is not too much to say that it is a cockroach in the sea, but it is much more expensive than cockroaches. ”
I remember seeing René come out and just happen to see a few graffiti on the façade of a building not far from Noma: "Your Trash, My Treasure." The culinary world is indeed full of cultural collisions of "ru's honey, other arsenic". Today we can be more tolerant of the variety of food, in addition to the delicious and nutritious factors, perhaps coupled with the insecurity of life. After all, Scotland's traditional dish haggis has always been made of sheep offal, and it wasn't until modern times that there was a "civilized version" and a vegetarian version without guts. At the beginning of the 20th century, britain's economic downturn was also born with "steak and kidney pie", which was mixed with cheap beef and sheep kidneys in the pie, but this pie has not become obsolete to this day.