6 ms·

That suitcase of rice story though, I'm finding it problematic lol. - First of all a 95% increase in the price of rice means it less than doubled which is no b

That suitcase of rice story though, I'm finding it problematic lol. - First of all a 95% increase in the price of rice means it less than doubled which is no big deal. - I think maybe you meant it 20x'ed ? If so I will just eat corn until it comes down (my house eats 100kg of rice in a month) - Can a suitcase of rice even get through customs?

TheDong 7mo ago
Indeed it's a roughly 2x increase (5kg supermarket bag from 2000 jpy to 4000). Whether that's a big deal or not depends on the person, their finances, how much rice the family eats, etc etc.
- thaumasiotes 7mo ago
  > Whether that's a big deal or not depends on the person, their finances, how much rice the family eats, etc etc. There's a nasty interaction among those concerns: as the basic staple food of the diet, rice is consumed in larger amounts by poorer people who can't afford real food, like meat. Which means that a spike in the price of rice is effectively targeted at people who can't afford to substitute other foods.
  - TurdF3rguson 7mo ago
    Corn is still cheaper. If you're really poor in Asia you're eating corn (and complaining about it).
    - thaumasiotes 7mo ago
      If you go into a Chinese supermarket, it will quickly become apparent that the default cooking oil is corn oil. I find this an interesting contrast with the United States, where the default cooking oil is Canola oil (if you're a person looking to cook your own food; this is the sense in which the Chinese default is corn oil) or soybean oil (if you're a company looking to sell packaged food in grocery stores). As far as I'm aware, traditional China would have had sesame oil and maybe soybean oil, and certainly not corn oil. The advantage of corn oil must be the price. But if corn oil is so cheap, why does the cheapest oil available in the US seem to be soybean oil?
      - riskable 7mo ago
        China has a minimum purchase price of corn that's set by the government in order to maintain food stocks. It's also part of a larger jobs program (that I don't know much about). China also imports 80% of its soybeans which means it's based on the rising/falling prices of oil and whatnot. In the US, soybeans are a very important crop that's fed to livestock and also used in biodiesel production. There's enormous soybean "crush" infrastructure in the US to support the biodiesel market and the side effect of this results in tons of extra soybean oil. It ultimately ends up with soybean oil being cheap compared to everything else.
        thaumasiotes 7mo ago
        OK... but I have followup questions. Why does the minimum purchase price of corn in China not make corn oil, a derivative product, more expensive? Why does the low price of soybean oil in the United States not make soybean oil cheaper in China? If the reason corn oil is cheap in China is that it's imported separately from the grain and therefore immune to the price floor... wouldn't that imply that corn oil is also cheaper outside China?
    - numpad0 7mo ago
      Corn??? I don't think corn in bulk is cheaply available in Japan at all. There's a mention in Wikipedia of a Chinese-Mongolian corn meal porridge thing but it looks pretty local.
      - TurdF3rguson 7mo ago
        It's available but it's culturally considered a grain that you feed to livestock rather than humans. I mostly feel the same way about it TBH.
  - numpad0 7mo ago
    I think Japanese rice-centric framing of meals is also of note, it's not universal across East Asia - I mean, allegedly, bowl of rice next to ramen is meme worthy to people from China, but it's just a menu item in Japan.
    - thaumasiotes 7mo ago
      > I mean, allegedly, bowl of rice next to ramen is meme worthy to people from China I can't personally attest to that, but it certainly makes sense. Rice meals vs noodle meals are a fairly fundamental split in Chinese cuisine. (It doesn't make rice any less of a staple food.)
  - callmeal 7mo ago
    >rice is consumed in larger amounts by poorer people who can't afford real food Um, rice is real food too, right?
  - bgnn 7mo ago
    Wait. Dod I read this right? Are you saying rice isn't real food but meat is? I understand most cultures over-appreciate meat, but treating a premium carb source like rice lowly is a surprise.
    - thaumasiotes 7mo ago
      Why? Rice is what you eat if you can't afford anything better. This parallels every other culture - the staple food will keep you alive, but if you have any money, you'll eat something better than that. You know how "bread and water" is considered a terrible diet that only prisoners eat, and then only because they're not given a choice? (And how modern prisoners get a much better diet?)
      - TheDong 7mo ago
        It's much more nuanced than that. Bread and water is prisoner food, but avocado toast and cream-cheese bagels at the corner bodega are considered mid-to-upper-class fare. Pasta (also wheat) can range from kraft mac-and-cheese (poor-coded) to hand-made pasta with pesto sauce. Rice and tea (ochazuke) is historically the "bread and water" equivalent in Japan, but people of every socioeconomic class still eat rice and miso soup for breakfast, eat rice balls (onigiri) regularly, and generally eat a diet with a lot of rice. Even though rice is the staple food of Japan, I'd actually argue that instant ramen is much more poor-coded these days than even ochazuke. I wouldn't be surprised if the middle class and lower class eat more-or-less identical quantities of rice.
        thaumasiotes 7mo ago
        > It's much more nuanced than that. > Bread and water is prisoner food, but avocado toast and cream-cheese bagels at the corner bodega are considered mid-to-upper-class fare. That's not an example of nuance. An expensive fruit and a heavily-processed cheese are much higher-grade food than bread is. > Pasta (also wheat) can range from kraft mac-and-cheese (poor-coded) to hand-made pasta with pesto sauce. Same thing; cheese is a high-grade food, and even pesto is chock full of fat. > Even though rice is the staple food of Japan, I'd actually argue that instant ramen is much more poor-coded these days than even ochazuke. And this is a statement that even the poorest people in Japan aren't so poor that they have to subsist on rice. There's no question about which of instant ramen or ochazuke is a better meal. Instant ramen comes with tons of spices, fats, salt, some vegetables, and even a little meat.
lostlogin 7mo ago
> my house eats 100kg of rice in a month What’s the maths on that? A cup of rice would seem a fair bit for a person for a meal. A cup is about 200g. That’s 500 portions a month. 5.5 people for 3 meals a day?
- TurdF3rguson 7mo ago
  It fluctuates but on average maybe 5 humans and 10 dogs.
  - lostlogin 7mo ago
    That’s an amazing volume.
  - PowerElectronix 7mo ago
    You give rice to the dogs, too?
    - callmeal 7mo ago
      Yup - family dogs eat what we do. Funny story - my mom's dog will not eat rice unless there's also fish (leftover bones will do). Rice+fish - bowl is cleaned up. Rice+meat - only the meat is picked and eaten.
    - TurdF3rguson 7mo ago
      Read the ingredients on a can of dog food, there's either rice or corn in it. They prefer rice.
- AussieWog93 7mo ago
  A lot of Asian households are multi-generational, so the maths definitely checks out there. I'm putting my money on more people (8-10) but eating less than 200g per meal (1/2 cup uncooked, ~100g for most people) EDIT, just saw sibling, that's impressive for 5 people, unless the dogs eat a lot of rice too.
  - 7mo ago

TheDong 7mo ago

Indeed it's a roughly 2x increase (5kg supermarket bag from 2000 jpy to 4000). Whether that's a big deal or not depends on the person, their finances, how much rice the family eats, etc etc.

thaumasiotes 7mo ago
> Whether that's a big deal or not depends on the person, their finances, how much rice the family eats, etc etc. There's a nasty interaction among those concerns: as the basic staple food of the diet, rice is consumed in larger amounts by poorer people who can't afford real food, like meat. Which means that a spike in the price of rice is effectively targeted at people who can't afford to substitute other foods.
- TurdF3rguson 7mo ago
  Corn is still cheaper. If you're really poor in Asia you're eating corn (and complaining about it).
  - thaumasiotes 7mo ago
    If you go into a Chinese supermarket, it will quickly become apparent that the default cooking oil is corn oil. I find this an interesting contrast with the United States, where the default cooking oil is Canola oil (if you're a person looking to cook your own food; this is the sense in which the Chinese default is corn oil) or soybean oil (if you're a company looking to sell packaged food in grocery stores). As far as I'm aware, traditional China would have had sesame oil and maybe soybean oil, and certainly not corn oil. The advantage of corn oil must be the price. But if corn oil is so cheap, why does the cheapest oil available in the US seem to be soybean oil?
    - riskable 7mo ago
      China has a minimum purchase price of corn that's set by the government in order to maintain food stocks. It's also part of a larger jobs program (that I don't know much about). China also imports 80% of its soybeans which means it's based on the rising/falling prices of oil and whatnot. In the US, soybeans are a very important crop that's fed to livestock and also used in biodiesel production. There's enormous soybean "crush" infrastructure in the US to support the biodiesel market and the side effect of this results in tons of extra soybean oil. It ultimately ends up with soybean oil being cheap compared to everything else.
      - thaumasiotes 7mo ago
        OK... but I have followup questions. Why does the minimum purchase price of corn in China not make corn oil, a derivative product, more expensive? Why does the low price of soybean oil in the United States not make soybean oil cheaper in China? If the reason corn oil is cheap in China is that it's imported separately from the grain and therefore immune to the price floor... wouldn't that imply that corn oil is also cheaper outside China?
  - numpad0 7mo ago
    Corn??? I don't think corn in bulk is cheaply available in Japan at all. There's a mention in Wikipedia of a Chinese-Mongolian corn meal porridge thing but it looks pretty local.
    - TurdF3rguson 7mo ago
      It's available but it's culturally considered a grain that you feed to livestock rather than humans. I mostly feel the same way about it TBH.
- numpad0 7mo ago
  I think Japanese rice-centric framing of meals is also of note, it's not universal across East Asia - I mean, allegedly, bowl of rice next to ramen is meme worthy to people from China, but it's just a menu item in Japan.
  - thaumasiotes 7mo ago
    > I mean, allegedly, bowl of rice next to ramen is meme worthy to people from China I can't personally attest to that, but it certainly makes sense. Rice meals vs noodle meals are a fairly fundamental split in Chinese cuisine. (It doesn't make rice any less of a staple food.)
- callmeal 7mo ago
  >rice is consumed in larger amounts by poorer people who can't afford real food Um, rice is real food too, right?
- bgnn 7mo ago
  Wait. Dod I read this right? Are you saying rice isn't real food but meat is? I understand most cultures over-appreciate meat, but treating a premium carb source like rice lowly is a surprise.
  - thaumasiotes 7mo ago
    Why? Rice is what you eat if you can't afford anything better. This parallels every other culture - the staple food will keep you alive, but if you have any money, you'll eat something better than that. You know how "bread and water" is considered a terrible diet that only prisoners eat, and then only because they're not given a choice? (And how modern prisoners get a much better diet?)
    - TheDong 7mo ago
      It's much more nuanced than that. Bread and water is prisoner food, but avocado toast and cream-cheese bagels at the corner bodega are considered mid-to-upper-class fare. Pasta (also wheat) can range from kraft mac-and-cheese (poor-coded) to hand-made pasta with pesto sauce. Rice and tea (ochazuke) is historically the "bread and water" equivalent in Japan, but people of every socioeconomic class still eat rice and miso soup for breakfast, eat rice balls (onigiri) regularly, and generally eat a diet with a lot of rice. Even though rice is the staple food of Japan, I'd actually argue that instant ramen is much more poor-coded these days than even ochazuke. I wouldn't be surprised if the middle class and lower class eat more-or-less identical quantities of rice.
      - thaumasiotes 7mo ago
        > It's much more nuanced than that. > Bread and water is prisoner food, but avocado toast and cream-cheese bagels at the corner bodega are considered mid-to-upper-class fare. That's not an example of nuance. An expensive fruit and a heavily-processed cheese are much higher-grade food than bread is. > Pasta (also wheat) can range from kraft mac-and-cheese (poor-coded) to hand-made pasta with pesto sauce. Same thing; cheese is a high-grade food, and even pesto is chock full of fat. > Even though rice is the staple food of Japan, I'd actually argue that instant ramen is much more poor-coded these days than even ochazuke. And this is a statement that even the poorest people in Japan aren't so poor that they have to subsist on rice. There's no question about which of instant ramen or ochazuke is a better meal. Instant ramen comes with tons of spices, fats, salt, some vegetables, and even a little meat.

lostlogin 7mo ago

> my house eats 100kg of rice in a month What’s the maths on that? A cup of rice would seem a fair bit for a person for a meal. A cup is about 200g. That’s 500 portions a month. 5.5 people for 3 meals a day?

TurdF3rguson 7mo ago
It fluctuates but on average maybe 5 humans and 10 dogs.
- lostlogin 7mo ago
  That’s an amazing volume.
- PowerElectronix 7mo ago
  You give rice to the dogs, too?
  - callmeal 7mo ago
    Yup - family dogs eat what we do. Funny story - my mom's dog will not eat rice unless there's also fish (leftover bones will do). Rice+fish - bowl is cleaned up. Rice+meat - only the meat is picked and eaten.
  - TurdF3rguson 7mo ago
    Read the ingredients on a can of dog food, there's either rice or corn in it. They prefer rice.
AussieWog93 7mo ago
A lot of Asian households are multi-generational, so the maths definitely checks out there. I'm putting my money on more people (8-10) but eating less than 200g per meal (1/2 cup uncooked, ~100g for most people) EDIT, just saw sibling, that's impressive for 5 people, unless the dogs eat a lot of rice too.
- 7mo ago