Assorted Articles about Covid-19 and Food

They’ve been doing this kind of thing for years - mafia, corrupt dictators, etc. It’s how they get the “little people” on their side and to turn a blind eye to the fact that they’re actually exploiting and ruining their communities. But, hey, I gave you a turkey.

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Note to folks trying to think of ways to give - food banks don’t need your old canned goods, they need money.

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Amen.

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About the UK but many of the same issues are here, too.

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I ache for the families, and for their herds. I hate waste, and I hate suffering.

This is heartbreaking and will only get worse; I have no idea what the food landscape will look like whenever we emerge (whatever that will entail) from the current reality.

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An interview with Dan Barber of Blue Hill at Stone Barns.

"Restaurants have a cultural imprint on what it means to be alive. Restaurants are this place of connection and community and excitement and decadence that is very powerful. That was most pronounced in the last decade. To have them shuttered now and then shackled when they come out of it, I think it will be very difficult to bring that back.

Recently, local food—or food from smaller, independent farms and restaurants—had been gaining in popularity. How could this crisis change that? The world of processed Big Food was about to fall apart. There was a new era that was much less centralized and much more regional. Now everyone is staying home. There’s a return to efficient food, food that you can eat without thinking about it. Big Food is saying, “We’re back, and we’re not going to lose it this time.” That, to me, is a disaster."

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In juxtaposition to the interview with Dan Barber …

I’m skeptical that people who don’t eat “Big Food” are changing our habits. The alternative distribution system from which I get almost all my food can’t keep up with the added demand. I always buy most of my food direct from local producers, and the percentage has gone up in the month since the shelter-in-place orders went into effect.

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"When more is clear and restaurants do return, one guideline that experts are likely to agree upon is limiting restaurant capacities to allow for better physical distancing. “The restaurant industry and bar industry are going to have to work closely with public health officials regarding spacing, which is now guided mostly by fire safety rules rather than public safety measures,” Baral says. The World Health Organization echoes the call for these distancing measures at restaurants in guidance geared toward the hospitality sector.

This possible new normal for the U.S. is already underway in areas that experienced COVID-19 before North America, such as China. There, restaurateur Jean-Georges Vongerichten reopened his businesses in Shanghai and Guangzhou at the end of March. “When you walk into the restaurant, it’s all government rules — there are a lot of restrictions,” says Vongerichten. “Taking the temperature from all the chefs, taking temperature from the customers as well; no table bigger than four, spaced six to eight feet between tables. Nobody touches money, so people go to an app for the restaurant on their phone, the waiter just brings wine, water, and food.

“It’s very limited, restricted, but it seems to be working,” Vongerichten says. Business in China is back about 40 or 50 percent, he estimates. But the strangest change is the sound: Nobody talks to anybody, and it’s deathly quiet in the dining room."

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Since they believe a very large percentage of people who have the virus are asymptomatic carriers, I don’t understand the point of taking people’s temperatures as a barometer of illness. Maybe someone can enlighten me?

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It is yet not known how many people are asymptomatic - there are many different studies published now but many with significant flaws (selection bias etc). Until we don’t know better numbers it just safer to measure temp to get at least those with fever which seems to be the most common sign of infection.

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It’ll keep out the people who are symptomatic.

Germany should soon have solid statistics on what percentage of people there have antibodies but never had symptoms.

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“You’re being asked to change your business model overnight,” Jacobson said. “It’s like you’re a parent, and suddenly someone waved a magic wand and said, ‘Your previous toddler human child is now an armadillo. Figure it out.’ ”

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"Riyad looked around the room, gauging the mood. This restaurant was his life’s work. He’d learned to cook these meals in his grandmothers’ kitchens and in the “tribe houses” of his hometown in Raqqa, Syria. Now his grandmothers were dead, his native city destroyed by war. But his restaurant still stood, and with it a piece of his tribe’s culture, finding new life thousands of miles away in a Tennessee strip mall. But with the virus in the air, business was eroding. The restaurant was bringing in 23 percent of projected weekly revenue. “The ship was sinking slowly,” he would tell me later. “We were choking. Going underwater.”

That night, he looked around at his employees. They ranged in age from their early 20s to their 50s. A few were white, native Hendersonvillians. Others were immigrants from Jordan and Ecuador and Mexico and elsewhere. “This is my new tribe,” he likes to say about himself and his staff. Together, they’d built a restaurant consistently named the best in their mostly white and conservative suburban county. But now, he looked around the room and he saw that they were afraid. Of illness. Of unemployment. Of how the virus could destroy life in so many cruel and unpredictable ways."

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Really enjoyed this interview

“I was treating his farm like a grocery store and it was idiotic…what I recognized in a moment was this is bananas. I’m here celebrated as a farm-to-table chef and I’m only celebrating one aspect of the farm.”

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Slate used to be about writing. What are they so busy with these days that they can’t transcribe an interview?

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I’m so mad I just noticed this because I spent time transcribing different parts to share with a friend!

But there’s a view transcript button with a red underline :expressionless:

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Thanks. I don’t think that was there two hours ago.