Welcome to FERN’s Friday Feed (#FFF), where we share the stories from this week that made us stop and think.
A wasp walks into a bar
PBS
For 10,000 years, beermakers only had two kinds of yeast in their arsenal — ale yeast and lager yeast — neither of which added any flavor. But now, a lab at North Carolina State University has isolated a new kind of yeast from the wings of a wasp. It’s not as bizarre a place to look as it sounds, though, since pollinators are attracted to flowers by the smell of fermented sugars. That fermentation can rub off, in this case in the form of a yeast that offers a whole new range of flavors, including sour beers that are ready in weeks, when they normally take months or years, and honey-flavored beers that don’t need any actual honey.
It’s lonely being a vegetarian on the Fourth of July
MarketWatch
On average Americans consume roughly 194 pounds of meat a year, and they certainly don’t take a break from their carnivorous ways on the Fourth of July. According to the market-research group Nielsen, “people spent more than $800 million on beef during the two weeks leading up to the July 4 weekend, followed by $371 million on chicken and $218 million on pork. Shrimp ($85 million) and salmon ($48 million) also made the chart,” says MarketWatch, surmising that low beef prices fueled part of that demand. Only 3 percent of Americans are vegetarian or vegan.
Didn’t you see the sign? Only Italian food in Italy.
Eater
Since 2009, cities across Italy have imposed bans on “foreign” foods and “ethnic shops.” Other countries, like France, which has barred ketchup from school lunches, are taking a similar approach. But most deny that the measures have anything to do with xenophobia, simply a desire to keep traditional food customs from being diluted by curry stands and kebab stalls. Yet, according to a 2007 Pew survey, 73 percent of Italians believed immigrants had a “negative impact on the country,” says Eater, pointing out that what’s considered Italian cuisine is itself the product of immigration. Spaghetti, for instance, arrived with Muslims in the Middle Ages, while the tomatoes in marinara trace back to South America.
Maine farmers can ditch the regs
Bangor Daily News
As of last month, communities in Maine can pass an ordinance allowing food producers to bypass state safety regulations if they sell their products directly to the consumer. That’s a major boon for small meat and dairy farmers who either have to drive hours to reach a state-approved slaughterhouse or invest thousands of dollars in expensive state-approved equipment on the farm. “This law and the ordinance are not intended to create a retail market that simply circumvents the rules of food safety,” says Richard Loring King, a food sovereignty advocate. “It’s to rejuvenate traditional local foodways where communities provided for themselves in an atmosphere of trust, not unlike having friends over to share a meal.”
What farm kids in Cameroon can teach the rest of us about self-control
NPR
Psychologists started using the “marshmallow test” in the 1960s to study self-control in children, telling kids that they can either have one marshmallow now or wait a little bit and have two. Most children can’t stand the delay. They squirm, whine and even talk aloud to distract themselves, before lunging for the treat. But in the first test conducted outside of a Western culture, Cameroonian kids from the subsistence farming group Nso practically meditated while they waited, calmly waiting on average twice as long as the German children in the experiment. Nso parents are strict, requiring their kids to help with younger siblings and to tend the village crops. All that hard work could be why nearly 70 percent of Cameroonian children made it through the full 10 minutes to earn the second treat, while only 30 percent of German kids did.
Sign up for the FERN Newsletter below and receive FERN’s Friday Feed in your email