Posts Tagged ‘McDonald’s’
“Bacteria represent the world’s greatest success story”*…
But as Stephen Jay Gould goes on to observe (in his 1996 book, Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin), “They are today and have always been the modal organisms on earth; they cannot be nuked to oblivion and will outlive us all. This time is their time, not the ‘age of mammals’ as our textbooks chauvinistically proclaim. But their price for such success is permanent relegation to a microworld, and they cannot know the joy and pain of consciousness. We live in a universe of trade-offs; complexity and persistence do not work well as partners.”
Still, we (more complex) humans have recognized– and accommodated– bacteria for millennia. As We Make Money Not Art explains in a review of a recent book– We The Bacteria. Notes Toward Biotic Architecture by architectural historians Beatriz Colomina and Mark Wigley— that’s fascinatingly apparent in the history of architecture…
This “alternative history of architecture from the point of view of microbes” compiles the research that led to the exhibition We the Bacteria: Notes Toward Biotic Architecture at the 24th Milan Triennale last year. Curated by Colomina and Wigley, the show investigated how microbial ecosystems relate to spatial design and health inequality.
The book argues that microbes have not only built the whole planetary biosphere but they have also been the real architects of our homes and cities throughout the ages. Or rather, it’s the fear and diseases they cause that have shaped our spaces and the ways we move through them.
About ten thousand years ago, humans began retreating into spaces increasingly cut off from the exterior world. Plants, soil and insects could be left outside. But microbes, including pathogenic ones, followed humans inside their homes, where they adapted, mutated and generated new diseases. As our shelters expanded into villages, cities and sprawling empires, so too did the microbial ecosystems.
The authors narrate how buildings and bodies exist in a constant microbial exchange, co-evolving into a single, dynamic ecosystem. The microbiome of a home is highly specific to its inhabitants. Even the microbiome of a frequently cleaned hospital room resembles the microbiome of the previous patient, but starts to resemble that of a new occupant after twenty-four hours.
Architecture cannot exist without microbes, and, by extension, without disease. While scrubbing, spraying and disinfecting may eliminate most microorganisms, these practices also breed extremophiles, species so resistant that they can take over the space.
Throughout history, the book reveals, health crises have dictated architectural and urban design. From toilets to fumigation systems, from the plague hospitals, aka lazarettos, to the sanatoriums for tuberculosis patients; from sewage systems to urban parks, cities have been continually reshaped in response to the threats they sought to contain. Architecture became the first line of defence against microbes…
[More of the intertwined history of bacteria and our reponse to them, with lots of fascinating photos…]
… Given the important role that microbes play for our immune systems and the environments we inhabit, the authors call for a biotic architecture. Biotic architecture is less human-centric than traditional architecture. It learns from microbes rather than resists them. It does, of course, maintain some antimicrobial protocols against pathogens remain crucial. Water, sewage systems, toilets and food preparation areas still need to be cleansed, but cleaning routines should also embrace controlled exposure to microbial diversity. During COVID-19, for example, microbiologist Elisabetta Caselli and her colleagues replaced conventional disinfectants with probiotic-based sanitation in six Italian public hospitals. The result was a decrease in surface pathogens by up to 90% compared to conventional chemical cleaning and lower rates of healthcare-associated infections and antibiotic resistances… For once, here is a book that presents a vision where humans can actively contribute to microbial diversity, collaborate with the unseen world around us and build in ways that nurture rather than harm the environment…
More– and more fascinating images– at: “We The Bacteria. Notes Toward Biotic Architecture.”
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As we coexist, we might recall that it was on this date in 2012 that Rebekah Speight of Dakota City, Nebraska sold a McDonald’s Chicken McNugget that resembled President George Washington for $8,100 on eBay (the third most expensive McNugget ever sold). She had kept the McNugget in her freezer for 3 years before deciding to sell it…. because bacteria.
“Cuisine is when things taste like themselves”*…
“The destiny of nations,” wrote Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, an 18th-century French gastronome, “depends on how they nourish themselves.” Today a nation’s stature depends on how well it nourishes the rest of the world, too. For proof of this, consider the rise of culinary diplomacy. In 2012 America’s State Department launched a “chef corps” tasked with promoting American cuisine abroad. Thailand’s government sends chefs overseas to peddle pad Thai and massaman curry through its Global Thai programme. South Korea pursues its own brand of “kimchi diplomacy”.
But which country’s cuisine is at the top of the global food chain? A new paper by Joel Waldfogel of the University of Minnesota provides an answer. Using restaurant listings from TripAdvisor, a travel-review website, and sales figures from Euromonitor, a market-research firm, Mr Waldfogel estimates world “trade” in cuisines for 52 countries. Whereas traditional trade is measured based on the value of goods and services that flow across a country’s borders, the author’s estimates of culinary exchange are based on the value of food found on restaurant tables. Domestic consumption of foreign cuisine is treated as an “import”, whereas foreign consumption of domestic cuisine is treated as an “export”. The balance determines which countries have the greatest influence on the world’s palate.
The results make grim reading for America’s McDonald’s-munching, tariff-touting president. The United States is the world’s biggest net importer of cuisine, gobbling down $55bn more in foreign dishes than the rest of the world eats in American fare (when fast food is excluded, this figure balloons to $134bn). China comes next, with a $52bn dietary deficit; Brazil and Britain have shortfalls worth around $34bn and $30bn respectively. Italy, meanwhile, ranks as the world’s biggest exporter of edibles. The world’s appetite for pasta and pizza, plus Italians’ relative indifference to other cuisines, give the country a $168bn supper surplus. Japan, Turkey and Mexico also boast robust surpluses [see chart above].
Mr Waldfogel does not account for culinary hybrids such as the cronut—a cross between a croissant and a doughnut—or Tex-Mex. Nor does he consider authenticity; few Neapolitans would consider Domino’s Pizza a real taste of home. Despite this, some cuisines clearly have a bigger worldwide appeal than others. Foodies scoffing spring rolls in San Francisco or cheeseburgers in Chongqing should give thanks to globalisation. A policy of culinary mercantilism could make dining out very dull indeed…
Which countries dominate the world’s dinner tables?
* Curnonsky (Maurice Edmond Sailland; c.f. almanac entry here)
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As we contemplate culinary culture, we might send carefully-peeled birthday greetings to John Richard (“Jack” or “J.R.”) Simplot; he was born on this date in 1909. An Idaho-based agribusiness entrepreneur, Simplot, J.R.’s eponymous company, became the largest shipper of fresh potatoes by the outbreak of World War II. In 1967, Simplot and McDonald’s impressario Ray Kroc agreed by handshake that the Simplot Company would provide frozen french fries to the restaurant chain; by 2005, Simplot was supplying the (by then vastly larger) Golden Arches with half of its french fries and hash browns. Simplot also provided seed capital for Micron Technologies, a successful computer memory chip company.
“Symbols can be so beautiful, sometimes”*…
One of Northern Europe’s arguably most distinctive exports is “slow TV”: real-time recordings of train journeys, ferry crossings or the migration of reindeer, which regularly draw record audiences.
Among perhaps the most successful — and least exciting — examples of that genre is the live stream of a McDonald’s cheeseburger with fries. At its peak, it drew 2 million viewers a month. The only element on the screen that moves, however, is the time display.
The burger looks the same way, hour after hour.
As of this week, it has looked like that for 10 years.
Purchased hours before the corporation pulled out of the country in 2009, in the wake of Iceland’s devastating financial crisis, the last surviving McDonald’s burger has become much more than a burger. To some, it stands for the greed and excessive capitalism that “created an economic collapse that was so bad that even McDonald’s had to close down,” said Hjörtur Smárason, 43, who purchased the fateful burger in 2009. To others, the eerily fresh look of the 10-year-old meal has served as a warning against the excessive consumption of fast food…
A symbol for our times: “The cautionary political tale of Iceland’s last McDonald’s burger that simply won’t rot, even after 10 years.”
* Breakfast of Champions
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As we muse of the messages in our meals, we might send gloriously-written birthday greetings to today’s epigramist, Kurt Vonnegut Jr.; he was born on this date in 1922. In a career spanning over 50 years, Vonnegut published fourteen novels, three short story collections, five plays, and five works of non-fiction, with further collections being published after his death. He is probably best known for his darkly-satirical, best-selling 1969 novel Slaughterhouse-Five.
Vonnegut called George Orwell his favorite writer, and admitted that he tried to emulate Orwell– “I like his concern for the poor, I like his socialism, I like his simplicity”– though early in his career Vonnegut decided to model his style after Henry David Thoreau, who wrote as if from the perspective of a child. And of course, Vonnegut’s life and work are resonant with Mark Twain and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Author Josip Novakovich marveled that “The ease with which he writes is sheerly masterly, Mozartian.” The Los Angeles Times suggested that Vonnegut will “rightly be remembered as a darkly humorous social critic and the premier novelist of the counterculture“; The New York Times agreed, calling Vonnegut the “counterculture’s novelist.”
“Every once in a while, people need to be in the presence of things that are really far away”*…
The temperature was hovering in the mid teens outside when we all made our way down to the continental breakfast that occupies the lobby of every roadside motel in America. There was a couple hovering over watered down coffee and self-made waffles when my dad proffered information about our morning: “We’re on our way to the McFarthest Spot!”, as if fully expecting them to smile and say back “Oh, what fun!” Instead, we were met with blank stares and an uncaffeinated “what?”
The McFarthest spot, of course, is the point in the contiguous United States that is furthest away from any McDonald’s restaurant. A brilliant (if eccentric) man named Stephen Von Worley determined it to be in the middle of nowhere in South Dakota some years back. A twist of fate, unsurprising to any resident of Tonopah, led to their McDonald’s closing and moving the coordinates some. Recalculating the location of the Spot with the newly closed restaurant absent from the dataset pushed our beacon of hope west.
The Spot now lies on some BLM land in the middle of Nevada, just northwest of Groom Lake – better known as Area 51. It’s just over 120 miles as the crow flies to the nearest Big Mac, even more if you account for driving miles. It seems to me oddly far, but also strikingly close given the magnitude of the 3.1 million square miles we in the US have between Canada and Mexico…
Tag along on “A Visit to the McFarthest Spot.”
* Ian Frazier
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As we dally at a distance, we might note that to day is April Fool’s Day. A popular occasion for gags and hoaxes since the 19th century, it is considered by some to date from the calendar change of 1750-52— though references to high jinx on the 1st of April date back to Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales (1392).
April Fools’ Day is not a public holiday in any country… though perhaps it should be.
The McFarthest entry above is not a gag. Nor is your correspondent’s suggestion for an April Fools smile: this ad (via the Minnesota Historical Society) for a Bobcat loader: Bobcat A Go-Go.
“What a museum chooses to exhibit is sometimes less important than how such decisions are made and what values inform them”*…
This cartridge for holding tartar sauce is made of white cardboard; the words “McDonald’s ® Tartar Sauce” are shown in green lettering along with the McDonald’s double arches logo. This canister holds 25 fluid ounces of tartar sauce, and is made to be used with a ratchet gun condiment dispenser. The tartar sauce is used on McDonald’s Filet-O-Fish sandwiches, a menu item developed by a franchisee in 1962 as an option for his customers who did not eat meat on Fridays for religious reasons. The Filet-O-Fish became a nationwide menu item by 1965 beating out another meatless option, the Hula burger, made with grilled pineapple…
From the collection “FOOD: Transforming the American Table 1950-2000,” in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of America History.
* Martin Filler
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As we lick our lips, we might recall that it was on this date in 2001 that Taco Bell announced that the chain would give a free taco to everyone in the U.S. if the Mir Space Station, which was scheduled to re-enter the atmosphere and fall to Earth later that week, landed on a 40 foot by 40 foot target that the company had floated in the Pacific Ocean. In the event, the Mir missed.
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