FERN’s Friday Feed: Whither the microwave?
Welcome to FERN’s Friday Feed (#FFF), where we share the stories from this week that made us stop and think.
The microwave makes no sense
The Atlantic
“The microwave is a baffling contradiction: a universal, time-saving appliance that also seems trapped in time,” writes Jacob Sweet. “You can now easily find plenty of sleek and technologically advanced dynamic precision cookers, stand mixers, and coffee machines, among many other appliances. But somehow, the microwave, a device used in nearly every American home, has responded with a resigned shrug … [A] key reason microwaves have stagnated is that they have been optimized not for performance, but for price. A single … factory in Guangdong, China, reportedly produces the budget microwaves for Toshiba, Black+Decker, General Electric, Whirlpool, Panasonic, and many other brands. Even if changing a keypad or scaling back on dubiously useful buttons raises the microwave’s price by, say, $20, that difference could seem pointless to consumers who are, in large part, expecting the bare minimum.”
Climate-defying veggies of the future
The New York Times
“Plant breeders, by nature, are patient people. It can take them years or even decades to perfect a new variety of fruit or vegetable that tastes better, grows faster or stays fresh longer. But their work has taken on a new urgency in the face of an increasingly erratic climate,” writes Kim Severson. “Recent floods left more than a third of California’s table grapes rotting on the vine. Too much sunlight is burning apple crops. Pests that farmers never used to worry about are marching through lettuce fields. Breeding new crops that can thrive under these assaults is a long game. Solutions are likely to come from an array of research fronts that stretch from molecular gene-editing technology to mining the vast global collections of seeds that have been conserved for centuries.”
The mystery of salt
Knowable Magazine
“We’ve all heard of the five tastes our tongues can detect — sweet, sour, bitter, savory-umami and salty. But the real number is actually six,” writes Amber Dance, “because we have two separate salt-taste systems. One of them detects the attractive, relatively low levels of salt that make potato chips taste delicious. The other one registers high levels of salt — enough to make overly salted food offensive and deter overconsumption. Exactly how our taste buds sense the two kinds of saltiness is a mystery that’s taken some 40 years of scientific inquiry to unravel, and researchers haven’t solved all the details yet. In fact, the more they look at salt sensation, the weirder it gets.”
The last remaining Japanese American farmers
The Guardian
“Alan Hayashi’s 120-hectare … farm is an unassuming pillar of Arroyo Grande, a city on California’s central coast that’s covered by rolling vineyards and ancient oaks. Two vast fields, partitioned by an inland stretch of Highway 1, produce white strawberries, squash, beets, celery and two dozen other crops,” writes Claire Wang. “Four generations of Hayashi sons have grown up and worked on the farmland that Alan’s grandfather, Yeiju, leased in 1942 … The Hayashis are among the last remaining Japanese American farming families in a region once replete with them. Before the second world war, two-thirds of Japanese Americans on the West coast were working in agriculture, cultivating fruits and vegetables on coastal bluffs, arid ranches and defunct gold mines. The incarceration of Japanese Americans during the war led to enormous property losses that not only denied them the chance to build generational wealth — but also buried the vital role these family farmers played in transforming California into an agricultural juggernaut.”
Sushi, steak, and globalization at Iraq’s U.S.-themed buffet
Eater
“Every Friday at dinner time, a spry-looking Uncle Sam — stovepipe hat, stars-and-stripes suit, surprisingly brown beard — dances his way around the 11 sprawling buffet stations of ABC Restaurant. He twirls past a steakhouse featuring mounted longhorns, wagon wheels, and wood-paneled walls lined with U.S. license plates; a neon-accented diner serving fast food; and a McDonald’s-style playground. Children mob the costumed figure, squealing with delight. Parents laugh, whipping out phones to capture the moment.” As Fatimah Fadhil and Anthony Kao write, “It’s all-American, family-friendly dining — in Iraq. With a flagship 1,800-seat location in the city of Erbil and a second 800-seat location in Sulaimani … ABC is one of Iraq’s most popular restaurant brands.”