CSotD: Mysteries of the Seven Seas
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The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee on the gap between sustainability and marketing.
When I was first married and back at college finishing up my degree — my grandfather having pointed out that I would waste less time doing that than I would waste in the future explaining why I hadn't — we rented a house next door to Howard Johnson's.
The humor in the picture derives from the idea that, being vegetarian that year, HoJo's All-You-Can-Eat promos offered little we could cash in on, but I remember marveling at the time that such a large chain of restaurants could make such an offer, not of chicken, since I figured you could just raise more chickens, but of fish and clam strips, which relied on the oceans.
The difference between 21 and 63 being that I have since learned that the adage, "If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is," has much wider and looser applications.
If, for instance, you wonder how big the oceans must be to sustain all that bargain-priced fish, well, the answer is "bigger than they actually are."
Last week, in talking about the dubious DNA meat scandals, I noted this NPR report on problems with the system of rating seafood by sustainability, and also offered this song about the personal impact on the Maritimes of the closing down of the Atlantic cod industry due to massive overfishing on the Grand Banks.
I still get up before the day breaks
I still walk down to the shore
I watch the sun rise from the eastern ocean
But I don't sail to meet it anymore.
How could they have let this happen?
We saw it coming years ago
The greedy ships kept getting bigger and bigger
And the sonar told them where to go
So the other day, I went by the co-op to pick up some curry paste and I walked past the fish counter to see if there was anything cheap I might add to the shrimp I already had, but there wasn't, and, in fact, the prices seemed higher than usual.
And certainly higher than at the for-profit stores in town, which made me think about the intersection of responsibility and economics. The co-op is a pretty big place with generally competitive prices, like a Whole Foods store except it walks the walk, which is to say, it's nothing at all like Whole Foods.
Such a gap in price suggests a reason, and probably one I can't afford to think about too much.
All this talk of sustainability is good and necessary, but when I go to the farmer's market and see that, among the candles and beads and suchlike irrelevant groovy frippery, are five-dollar-a-dozen eggs and carrots priced to match, I don't feel included in the social movement.
And yet, as much as that airy elitism repels me, I'm still sincerely conflicted when it comes to things like fish and coffee, where the personal responsibility issues are genuine but my wallet also has some matters of sustainability to contend with.
Now, those prices in the picture — $1.69 for all-you-can-eat chicken and $1.49 for all-you-can-eat fish — need to be viewed in context: The minimum wage was $1.60 an hour. But an all-you-can-eat sit-down dinner, with sides of potatoes and slaw, for the current minimum wage of $7.25, would still be one helluva bargain.
Back then, the notion that people with full-time jobs should be able to live on their earnings was not particularly controversial, mind you.
It's also worth noting that HoJo's required you to clean your plate before you got a refill, and that refill would include more potatoes and cole slaw in addition to the fish or chicken. Home cooking, indeed, complete with a grumpy mom enforcing the rules!
And more than that has changed: The square thing that Edison is being offered for a dollar is probably ersatz minced preformed extruded fish product rather than an actual fillet of an identifiable deceased animal.
Nor is it the quarter-inch-thick slice of fish with thin, crispy breading that was served back in them thar days. Most "fish sticks" and "fish fillets" today seem to be more or less deep-fried fish-flavored wheat goo.
Take heart, little fellow: No fish were harmed in the making of this sandwich! Consider it a blow in favor of sustainability.
So, do you want the damn thing or not?
And now, here with an opposing viewpoint (and nutritional information):
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