"What Exactly is it That I'm Eating?"

[robert brown]

As much as we can ask questions to determine if a fish is farmed or wild, frozen or fresh or “fresh frozen”; a chicken farmed or free-range; or a sorbet made industrially or on the premises, do we still get to find out what I have come to call “the provenance of food”?

As every buyer of art and antiques knows, good provenance adds value. In food it is similar. Yet, it seems that we have to take on good faith that a “day boat” piece of seafood is from the boat that day and hasn’t been compromised on the boat or at the fishery, while in transit or at the wholesale market.

In the area of fruits, vegetables, herbs and spices, the going gets rougher. The packaging or the waiter can tell us the origin, but the chance of finding out what happened to the specimen in question becomes more problematic. In many cases we can never find out, and it may not always matter; but when somehow is seeking access to the entire truth, it is likely instead to be a matter of “caveat emptor”.

How does the origin of edibles affect your enjoyment of them? What do you avoid because you don't know or like where it comes from, where it has been, or how it has been handled? What do you look for, and what questions do you ask to help you when buying food or ordering in a restaurant? How forthcoming do you think the produce and restaurant world is, in general? How could disclosure and descriptions regarding the provenance of food best be improved in stores and restaurants?

[g.johnson]

That the provenance of a piece of art affects its value is a damning criticism of the art market. It implies that the worth of the piece is not determined by its quality but by the reputation of the artist. It indicates a lack of nerve on the part of buyers – they’re not confident that they can identify quality*. That said, if you buy a Rembrandt, it’s less likely you’ll acquire a dud than if you buy a no-name.

Similarly with food. If the consumer isn’t confident he can identify a good scallop, he looks for reassurance that it’s good and buzzwords like ‘diver’ give him that reassurance. But again, artisanal cheese is generally better than mass produced, day boat fish is generally better than factory fished. So if, for some reason, one is unable to sample the stuff, one goes with the product that seems most likely to be high quality.

*Or cynicism – they’re buying as an investment

[Nick]

It comes down to a matter of trust and your own good judgement. Your own good judgement has to include so many things that it would be impossible to go into here. Perhaps foremost, it would be as much knowledge as you can gather, historical experience, and common sense. People can say anything, packages can represent themselves in anyway the scriptwriter presents them on the package.

Your trust (or lack of it), and knowledge (or lack of it) includes everyone from grower, through processor and distributor, purchasing agent, people handling the products all along the line, and finally, if it's a restaurant, your cook and server.

That said, a day boat will get you no better fish than a "trip" boat - if the people on the day boat don't take care of their catch. It's the same in agriculture whether it's meat, fruit, or vegetables. It's all in the people who have come before you in this long line of producing and distributing.

The shorter you can make that line, the better.

[msp]

Let's flip the opening concept of this thread on it's side for a minute.

A researcher in upstate new York (A Demus) was working with inner city kids, trying to determine why they made such poor food choices and how their nutrition might be improved.

One day, she brought a bunch of foodstuffs into the classroom. She set out on a table in front of the room the ingredients for pizza, which the kids ate regularly: a small bunch of fresh oregano, a spoonful of yeast, a pile of flour, a bunch of tomatoes, a bunch of basil, and several links of uncooked sausage. Then she asked the class of 8 and 9 year olds to name the foods before them. Not one child could name all of them-- very few kids named more than the tomatoes and flour.

Years later, I was in the fields of a farm with a bunch of NYC and NJ inner city kids as part of a James Beard program to teach kids about food and nutrition. The farmers took us in the field with their pocket knives ready (perhaps the one thing these kids recognized!)...and helped the kids pick turnips. The farmer took one of the turnips and showed the kids how to peel it, then handed out slivers so the kids could taste. They asked for seconds and thirds. One little boy said to me he'd never tasted anything that good before. Hours later, I met one of the mothers. She told me it was the first time her child had ever had a fresh vegetable.

To me, that is more pressing a discussion than whether the scallops are day boat or trip boat...which is not to say the scallop question and others like it don't have merit. They do, when we keep them in perspective.

When I read the title of this thread, I thought it was about the more basic question of ensuring that we all are aware of what we put in our mouths. As a culture, we generally have little knowledge of the value of the foods we eat: their value to our bodies, to their own source (earth, water, etc). The result is poor nutrition and often a focus on food as a source of pleasure and comfort, absent from its inherent value to our environment and as human fuel.

This is not a rejection of food as a celebratory symbol, or food consumed only for sensual pleasure. Both are (within reason) lusciously enlivening reasons to eat...

But it bodes well for all of us to keep it in perspective by realizing how many kids in the US have no idea that KFC comes from real, live chickens, those funny looking birds with feathers. Or that tomato sauce starts with that fresh fruit that grows on a vine, or that bacon comes from a pig, corn comes from tall stalks, beans grow in the ground...

Edited January 9, 2003 by msp (log)

[wingding]

As a chef who purchases fruit,which I then use,and sometimes identify on the menu,here's some perspective.First;there's produce that I buy directly from the farmer-hopefully picked ripe,hopefully the weather has been good and provided optimum conditions for tasty fruit.If it's local,but tasteless,I can't justify using it.Secondly,there are specialized purveyors of fancy and exotic produce,who get produce regionally,or sometimes from all over the world.One has to be really careful here;there's a lot of pretty,shiny,expensive fruit that has been bred to look great,but doesn't taste like much.If I don't like it,I send it back to the wholesaler.Thirdly,there are purveyors who shop the regional wholesale markets like Hunts' Point .I can call them,and ask them to shop the market for me for particular fruits.I ask them where they're coming from,and I can make some judgements on whether I want them based on their source.I taste them when they arrive,and if they aren't good,back they go...This is how I've developed long term working relationships with growers and purveyors.I've tried to learn and taste as much as I can,I ask a lot of questions,and eventually they know what I'm looking for,and what I expect from them.As a professional,it's my job,and my responsibility,to do this-for most people who are just shopping for groceries,it requires time and energy that few people seem to have anymore.

[Jonathan Day]

That the provenance of a piece of art affects its value is a damning criticism of the art market. It implies that the worth of the piece is not determined by its quality but by the reputation of the artist. It indicates a lack of nerve on the part of buyers – they’re not confident that they can identify quality*. That said, if you buy a Rembrandt, it’s less likely you’ll acquire a dud than if you buy a no-name.

Similarly with food. If the consumer isn’t confident he can identify a good scallop, he looks for reassurance that it’s good and buzzwords like ‘diver’ give him that reassurance.  But again, artisanal cheese is generally better than mass produced, day boat fish is generally better than factory fished. So if, for some reason, one is unable to sample the stuff, one goes with the product that seems most likely to be high quality.

*Or cynicism – they’re buying as an investment

Some of the more interesting work in economics has been done on problems of information asymmetries between buyers and sellers. The 2001 Nobel prize went to George Akerlof (Berkeley), Mike Spence (Stanford) and Joe Stiglitz (Columbia) for work in this area.

Assume, like good economists, that the seller (e.g. of a used car) and buyer are both opportunistic, out to pick one another's pockets if they can get away with it. Interestingly, the economic terms of art here are culinary: the seller knows whether the car is a lemon or a cream-puff but the buyer cannot, no matter how clever or confident she is.

Without going into the maths, the outcome in a situation where buyers cannot distinguish lemons, average quality cars or cream-puffs is that the average price offered for used cars will fall, and owners of good used cars will not sell. This is a so-called adverse selection problem. Similar examples are everywhere, e.g. in insurance.

People get around these problems through all sorts of means, including signalling: for example, the seller who knows she is offering a cream-puff could signal this private information by raising the price and offering a warranty. People invest large sums in degrees (e.g. Harvard MBA) not just to acquire technical knowledge but to send a signal that they survived a rigorous selection process and that the individual possesses talent, motivation, etc..

Brands are also powerful signals; a well known brand indicates that the seller has invested large sums in its reputation, and that it may be unwilling to deliberately offer an inferior product if this risks damage to the brand.

All this is of course highly simplified, both from the economic models and even more so from the real world, where signals arrive with a lot of noise and there are gradations of goods other than "lemon" and "cream-puff". Nonetheless I see similar examples in restaurants. Poîlane bread is wonderful, but some restaurants could offer fine products of their own. But the Poîlane brand tells me, as a "buyer" who doesn't have an advance opportunity to test the bread before taking it, that it will be good. In London, many restaurants identify on menus that their cheeses have come either from Neal's Yard or La Fromagerie. This is a signalling device. In these cases, the cheesemongers are also acting as "screeners", making their money by bridging the asymmetric information between buyer and seller.

[Simon Majumdar]

The whole notion of provenance has moved away from a small group of enthusiasts following their meal back to its source just as one would discuss the origins of a great wine to being a rather cynical marketing ploy used by restaurants and supermarkets alike

Traceable origins has become synonymous with quality. It is, of course, nothing of the sort. I would argue that all great ingredients can be traced back to a great supplier, but not all sourced food is great

Every US mid level restaurant menu is littered with ingredients whose sources are described by the wait staff in great detail ;where each tomato came from, the breed of the beef, the provenance of the foie ( did anything good ever come out of The Hudson Valley?) This persuades the general diner that what they are eating is not mass produced but has been lovingly hand reared by the couple in a rockwell painting. In the majority of cases that is just not true

In the UK it is the same in our all powerful supermarkets. So now we have the bizarre sight of "vine tomatoes" being sold at hugely inflated prices in spite of the fact they still come from Holland and are still grown hydroponically (sp?) In restaurants the provenance of an ingredient has allowed dishes to be sold at vast mark ups ( Smiths of Smithfield charge upwards of £25 for a 10oz steak & chips because they can name the cow it came from ) Again people , who accept a basic principle that quality costs, are being made to pay over the odds on the basis of some specious history.

None of this is to argue that great food coming from great suppliers who care as much ( never more, these are BUSINESSES never forget ) about the quality of their produce as they do about their margins is not a thing of beauty and should not be sought out by all who want real food, but the cynical way in which "real food’ is being marketed both by restaurants and markets is a genuine threat

S

[Fat Guy]

"How does the origin of edibles affect your enjoyment of them?"

I'd like to say not at all. Or at least I'd like to say that I can judge the quality of something I'm eating without reference to externalities. It seems to me this baseline judgment is a critical starting-point.

I'd like to say that after I determine actual quality, only then do I start looking at other issues and letting things like sentiment (e.g., if I've visited the vineyard where my wine originated) or politics (e.g., a desire for organic produce) enter the enjoyment equation.

I can't honestly say all of the above -- I've been tripped up in too many blind tastings to be so confident -- but it's how I aspire to taste and think about food.

[Jonathan Day]

now we have the bizarre sight of "vine tomatoes" being sold at hugely inflated prices in spite of the fact they still come from Holland and are still grown hydroponically

Marketers do a lot of work on so-called "saliency", i.e. features of a product that make it stand out or that are unusually important to the consumer. In foods, I believe a lot of these have to do with attempts to signal origin (e.g. free-range eggs, vine tomatoes, etc.).

Some species of vine tomatoes are doubly deceptive, because they have a stronger than normal aroma (some of which seems to come from the attached stem) in the market but a weaker aroma and taste when the stems are removed. So there are two salient signals, visual and aromatic (or is it olfactory) that lead the consumer to conclude, incorrectly, that the product is of more "natural" origin and will therefore taste better than a non-vine tomato.

[cabrales]

Below are several additional preliminary thoughts in support of the relevance of the provenance of food products:

(1) Relationship to Terroir; provenance as factor defining the product in certain instances. Just as the geography in which grapes are nurtured affects what wine results, a particular vegetable or animal is capable of being nurtured by the soil/water, weather and other climate aspects and traditions of a geographic region. Thus, white asparagus from Bourgeuil (spelling; one of the items Jean Bardet was sued over a few years ago) could, by reason of having been grown in that region, acquire characteristics that distinguish it from other white asparagus. Those distinguishing characteristics (to the extent they exist), for diners who are sufficiently concerned about them, could render white asparagus from Bourgeuil a completely different product in those diners' eyes than white asparagus even from other parts of France. Some geographic regions have intrinsic characteristics that are better suited for certain breeds of an animal or certain crops.

Note I am not asserting that all products with a provenance have distinguishing characteristics from their siblings. Merely that some do. When a living item (including vegetables) draws its nourishment and otherwise interacts with its surroundings, it can be profoundly affected by them.

Brittany lobster is an entirely different product for me from Scottish, Maine or Canadian lobsters. These are all types of lobsters, but from a gastronomic perspective, there are palpable differences. So in this case, the indication that the lobsters are from Brittany is not just a signal -- it defines a discrete product. Of course, within Brittany/Normandy, there are still different regions (e.g., islands of Chausey) for Brittany lobsters that some view as preferable. Similarly, fleur de sel from Ile de Re (spelling), say, has qualities that are different from fleur de sel from the Camargue in Southern France.

To summarize, in certain cases, provenance is not a question of marketing or perception or even of freshness relative to the point of capture/harvesting. It can be a shorthand for fundamental differences in products' characteristics that may have great relevance for gastronomic purposes.

(2) Environmental/Societal/Food Safety/Other Personal Concerns Certain diners may believe in environmental/societal principles that cause them to avoid food products obtained in a certain manner. For example, there are some fishing practices that tend to be more destructive of other oceanlife and the ocean environment than others, and labelling fish as having been caught in a certain way may assure an interested diner that undesired practices have been avoided. A diner who is very concerned about the marine environment may derive greater utility from fish caught in a certain way, because of her personal values system.

Similarly, a health-focused diner might be concerned about the amount of chemicals that her food has been subjected to, and may wish to be assured (e.g., by purchasing organic produce) that her food has not been unduly sprayed with pesticides, has not been the subject of genetic modification and is as "natural" as possible.

(3) Signal Not of Product Quality, but of Restaurant Quality Other members have addressed the signalling effects of provenance on the nature of the food products labelled with such provenance. Yet unexplored are the signalling effects a restaurant can furnish by serving food products with good perceived provenance. The restaurant might be signalling that its cuisine is sufficiently refined, and the standards of its chef sufficiently rigorous, to warrant the utilization of products with provenance. If a restaurant is mediocre, it might not be able to utilize the products in a way that highlights their special qualities. Thus, by using products with provenance that are more expensive and that, all other things being equal (e.g., price charged to clients), would reduce profits, a cuisinier could be viewed as signalling one or more of the following: (a) he cares a great deal about his cuisine and will utilize the best products in connection therewith, (b) his culinary technique is sufficiently developed to permit him to handle products bearing provenance, and© his clients are discerning and can largely tell the difference.

Consider this example. If (a) a restaurant's clients were not aware of (at least the perceived) differences between, say black truffles from Perigord and black truffles from Southern France and (b) Perigord truffles are more expensive, other things being equal, the restaurant would probably not purchase Perigord truffles and so state on its menu. Therefore, a restaurant that does advertise Perigord truffles on its menu might be signalling that its client niche is sophisticated enough to potentially appreciate the difference. (Note I have yet to figure out the taste differences among French black truffles.)

Edited January 9, 2003 by cabrales (log)

[Jonathan Day]

"How does the origin of edibles affect your enjoyment of them?"

I'd like to say not at all. Or at least I'd like to say that I can judge the quality of something I'm eating without reference to externalities.

Switch the sign of this idea from positive to negative.

Lots of people will (pre)judge the enjoyment of something by learning where it comes from on the beast (e.g. kidneys, brains, tripe), or the fact that it is a vegetable (cardoons, salsify) that they have not seen before, or being able "to see what it was before it went into the kitchen", e.g. a roast pigeon served with head still on. Crosnes (a tuberous vegetable) look a bit like fat grubs before they are cooked, and even after unless they are puréed. They can still be tasty.

My guess is that some of this disgust is based on the actual smelling and tasting experience, e.g. people who have an aversion to the taste of liver. The majority, I would assert, is based on mental associations that have nothing to do with sensory experience.

I sometimes call it "eating with the mind instead of the mouth", by which I mean letting preconceptions about how, e.g., duck tongues will taste rather than tasting them and judging by that. Children are, of course, very prone to this.

[Fat Guy]

Responding to Cabrales, who says, "Brittany lobster is an entirely different product for me from Scottish, Maine or Canadian lobsters. These are all types of lobsters, but from a gastronomic perspective, there are palpable differences. So in this case, the indication that the lobsters are from Brittany is not just a signal -- it defines a discrete product. Of course, within Brittany/Normandy, there are still different regions (e.g., islands of Chausey) for Brittany lobsters that some view as preferable. Similarly, fleur de sel from Ile de Re (spelling), say, has qualities that are different from fleur de sel from the Camargue in Southern France."

Perhaps it's necessary to distinguish further between two purposes of naming. Of course, a thing must be named in order for us to be able to talk about it in a meaningful way. It's quite amazing to me, for example, just how much emphasis is placed on naming things in basic philosophical texts. So lobster is lobster and chicken is chicken. It would be silly to do away with those name differences. The European and American lobster species are also different. Not as different as lobster and chicken, but different enough such that they need to have unique names.

But what happens when we get to Maine lobster versus Nova Scotia lobster? It seems to me the name in this situation takes on a different role. Because neither Maine nor Nova Scotia lobster exists at the level of lobster per se. They are the exact same species. There does not seem to be any identifiable "terroir" aspect to their flavor. Nobody can tell them apart by taste. One of the leading lobster marine biologists in the world told me in an interview that he can't tell the difference either by taste or by any tool in his lab (unless there happen to be stomach contents or trace elements linking an individual sample to a specific location, much as a crime scene investigator might look for).

Regardless, let's assume for the purposes of argument that there is zero objective difference on the level of the thing itself and that the only difference has to do with naming the place of origin. In that instance, one needs to acknowledge that part of the product's name is, in terms of actually describing the physical product, superfluous.

I've got no problem with anybody who wants to know that information for whatever reason, but it would be beneficial if everybody took the two faces of naming into account. For me, the difficulty arises when the external information -- the place of origin (when there is no "terroir" issue) or the lack of pesticides (if the chemicals in question do not affect taste) -- becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and is internalized as flavor information. At that point, naming the thing by its non-inherent properties becomes a hindrance rather than an aid to objective eating. I say this as someone who has been humbled by many, many blind tastings. I think it may be hard for those who have never participated in such tests to realize the limitations of their senses.

[macrosan]

Many interesting points have been made on the actual effect of provenance upon flavor, quality and desirability to the consumer. But the main value of provenance to me is to provide a means of assessing in advance of tasting whether or not I am likely to enjoy the food, and judging in advance whether or not I think it is good value.

The best example is wine. I am not a connoisseur, and I have no appreciable level of general knowledge of wine. So when I choose from a wine list, my preference is to order a specific wine that I have previously enjoyed, or failing that a generic or chateau that I have previously enjoyed. I then use price as my barometer for which is the best year available on the wine list that I am willing to afford.

With food, that is even more important. At least with wine you can be pretty certain that you will receive what you ordered - you get to see the label on the bottle, and to taste it unadulterated. With food, by the time it's cooked and dressed it could be visually unrecognizable and difficult to judge by taste, so the consumer is far more dependent upon trust in the restaurant. I cannot be alone in having experiences where the menu says (let's say) braised wild duck in plum sauce, and the dish presented tastes remarkably like regular battery-reared duck, but in fact as presented it's impossible to be certain. Sure, you can just conclude that you don't much like it and not order it again, or not go back to that restaurant, but that's too late in the context of enjoying the meal you just ordered !!!