Behind the Price
My column in today's food section focuses on something Ellen Ruppell Shell, author of the new book "Cheap," says about the changes a product undergoes when it achieves a radically different -- in this case, lower -- price point:
"Shrimp today are not like shrimp of the past," says Shell. The transformation of the production process has created a materially different product, albeit one still called "shrimp." The taste is different, the nutrition is different, the accompanying chemicals are different, the impact on the environment is different, the economies it supports are different, the waters it lived in are different, the food it consumed is different.
Shell argues that it is a conceptual mistake to understand an item that has gone through such massive price and production changes as "an exact analogue" to its costlier predecessor. "It's not a good chair," she says, "it's a good cheap chair. It's not a good shrimp, it's a good cheap shrimp." Anyone who has eaten a fresh summer tomato and a supermarket's winter imitation will know what Shell means.
You can obviously go too far with that line of reasoning. A cheap shirt and an expensive shirt both cover your torso. An heirloom apple and a supermarket varietal both fill your stomach. But radically changing the production process to achieve much lower prices also changes the final product in important ways, and that new understanding rarely muscles in on our existing conception of the good. The column tracks the uncommonly low prices for lobsters right now and the sustained drop in the price of shrimp over the last decade or so. The lobster story is a happy one. The shrimp story is more complex. You can read the column here.
By
Ezra Klein
|
August 19, 2009; 12:05 PM ET
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Posted by: bdballard | August 19, 2009 12:20 PM | Report abuse
Kind of like how healthcare that's plentiful enough for everyone is not "an exact analogue" to truly good care.
And all this time, you've basically been telling us the tomatoes are better than they have to be.
Posted by: whoisjohngaltcom | August 19, 2009 12:24 PM | Report abuse
other countries have cheaper tomatoes with tomato outcomes equal or superior to ours.
Posted by: bdballard | August 19, 2009 12:45 PM | Report abuse
Having grown up with a parent in the apple industry, I'm not sure I've had an "heirloom" apple. Sure, I've had the traditional varieties (red delicious, golden delicious), but there's no comparison between those and the newer varieties (Fugi, Braeburn, Gala). The newer varieties blow the old ones out of the water. I actually had a golden this week for the first time in a long time. It was ok...I guess.
Posted by: MosBen | August 19, 2009 12:46 PM | Report abuse
Ezra, how can you write a column about shrimp without mentioning the most delicious shrimp ever - Louisiana wild Gulf shrimp? Or how Chinese imported shrimp are decimating our local industry - which, yes, actually goes out and catches shrimp from boats? Or how Katrina, Rita, Gustav, and Ike have basically bankrupted Louisiana fisherman and there's little to no assistance available?
Get outside the damn beltway and research the issue. These things don't just matter from a consumer perspective, but from a cultural and economic one, for other parts of the US. Meanwhile, whenever you order shrimp in a restaurant, ask where they came from. If they're not from Louisiana, don't order shrimp. Simple as that.
Posted by: alpelican | August 19, 2009 12:52 PM | Report abuse
> Having grown up with a parent in the apple
> industry, I'm not sure I've had an
> "heirloom" apple. Sure, I've had the
> traditional varieties (red delicious,
> golden delicious), but there's no
> comparison between those and the newer
> varieties (Fugi, Braeburn, Gala). The
> newer varieties blow the old ones out of
> the water. I actually had a golden this
> week for the first time in a long time. It
> was ok...I guess.
Are you serious? We try to buy the best commercial apples available, and travel to local orchards to get specific varieties close to the tree as they come into season. But twice in my life I have attended a heirloom apple tasting and was knocked to the ground both times: those gnarly, funny-colored apples tasted easily 10x better, and possibly 100x better, than the best apples from even small local family commercial orchards. Of course they don't travel, they don't last long, and they are only available in very small quantities but they are incredibly good. You have seriously never tasted such?
sPh
Posted by: sphealey | August 19, 2009 1:01 PM | Report abuse
"Sure, I've had the traditional varieties (red delicious, golden delicious), but there's no comparison between those and the newer varieties (Fugi, Braeburn, Gala)."
You're comparing the newer commercial cultivars to the older standardized ones that have been grown for looks and yield and shelf time. As sphealy suggests, Ezra's thinking about the people who grow Black Oxfords and Virginia Beautys and Green Pippins and Maggie Bonums -- russeted and freckled and bumpy fruit that don't suit the supermarket displays, but which do taste like apples.
The cultivation of apples -- by grafts onto rootstock -- is by definition a fiddling with nature, which, if left to its own devices would give you 30-foot trees, each with its own unique fruit. But even commercial apple orchards -- the apple industry, if you like -- has seen the need to grow winter keepers diminish as retailers source standard cultivars from the southern hemisphere. If you can't give it a PUK, it ain't going on the shelf.
Posted by: pseudonymousinnc | August 19, 2009 1:44 PM | Report abuse
"A cheap shirt and an expensive shirt both cover your torso. An heirloom apple and a supermarket varietal both fill your stomach."
The difference is that cheap shirts cover a lot more torsos for the same money, and supermarket apples fill a lot more stomachs. And those shrimp that Rupell is disparaging are available to a lot more people than her elegant shrimp of the past. One has to wonder whether that's what's really bothering her.
Posted by: tomtildrum | August 19, 2009 2:41 PM | Report abuse
Oops. Shell, not Ruppell.
Posted by: tomtildrum | August 19, 2009 2:44 PM | Report abuse
Well, I'm certainly open to being proven wrong. Apple season's coming up, so maybe I'll hit a farmer's market and see what the fuss is all about.
I'm sure part of the problem is that I grew up in apple country USA, Eastern Washington State, so there really aren't a ton of small-time farmers any more.
Still...mmmmm, Fuji apple....
Posted by: MosBen | August 19, 2009 2:54 PM | Report abuse
Oh, I will say, however, that the commercial apples I've seen on the East Coast since I moved here (your Empires, and such) are just piss poor. My fiancee insists on buying an East Coast variety every once in a while and they're just horrible.
Posted by: MosBen | August 19, 2009 2:55 PM | Report abuse
No argument on that, MosBen.
It's bizarre, though, that grocery stores in or around apple-growing regions on the east coast generally get their Grannies and McIntoshes and Fujis from WA. The local apples generally go to the juicer or the sauce factory, because the yield isn't enough to guarantee shelf stock for half the year.
Posted by: pseudonymousinnc | August 19, 2009 4:41 PM | Report abuse
There's more to the shrimp issue than just price and quality. With reasonable regulation, traditional shrimp fisheries are sustainable and minimally destructive to the environment. Plus, if you live on the Gulf Coast, local. Compare that to shrimp artificially raised in what used to be a mangrove swamp in Thailand, harvested, frozen, and flown halfway around the world.
Posted by: tl_houston | August 19, 2009 5:21 PM | Report abuse
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"vine ripened tomatoes on the stem" is product with a similar price and quality history -- tomatoes sold that way used to be tasty and somewhat unique, now they're cheaper and more available, but usually of McDonald's tastefree and hard quality.