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Why Chinatown Produce Is Cheap (2016)

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Re: Why Chinatown Produce Is Cheap (2016)

#281

Post by satori99 »

mtempm wrote: post #265
satori99 wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't fish for dinner near big cities in Australia though. It can be just as bad as anywhere else. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-08-16/health-warning-over-fi... http://www.fishingworld.com.au/news/toxins-found-at-popular-...

Those links appear to warn of fishing around Sydney harbour and Oyster Bay. I still would bet almost anywhere along the proper beach is at least an order of magnitude safer than in comparable regions of the states. Many beaches I consistently saw heaps of guys surf casting.

Many people eat the fish in Sydney Harbour too. Despite being warned not too.

Sydney's ocean beaches are often closed to swimmers because of pollution. Sydney disposes of its sewerage via deep ocean outlets, and this can often make the water quality very bad, depending on ocean currents.

I'm not sure my post warranted a down-vote. Is it because I contradicted you? or do you think I am wrong? I lived on a houseboat on The Georges river/Botany Bay for many years, and have spent some serious time on Sydney's waterways, and offshore. I wouldn't eat anything caught in Sydney's rivers or beaches knowingly.

Re: Why Chinatown Produce Is Cheap (2016)

#282

Post by dsfyu404ed »

tn135 wrote: post #66

As a fish loving Indian, I was totally surprised to see that in Capitalist America the choice of fish was absolutely pathetic. At American fish places you only get "shrimps" may be "large shrimps" and "small shrimps". Salmon, Bass, Red Snapper and just few handful of usual fish. My small village fish market offers at least 20 varieties of fish in India's coastal region. A proper fish market would offer at least 100.…

As an American who's friends have visited India I'd have to say reduced selection is a fair trade-off for ubiquitous refrigeration.

Re: Why Chinatown Produce Is Cheap (2016)

#283

Post by dep_b »

briandear wrote: post #164
mncharity wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just fish. A staple of graduate student conversation is "Food X was a favorite of mine at home, but" "I can't find it in Boston" or "the American version is a bad tasteless joke". One issue is lag - the American general food supply diversifies more slowly than the population. Another issue is corporate consolidation of the food supply chain. For example, New England used to have a lot of small confectionery…

Mexican food was a favorite of mine in the United States, but in France it tastes like cardboard. I want to find but France doesn't sell it. This conversation can be had in literally any country in the world. Can't find a decent cheeseburger in Delhi, can't find decent cheese in Shanghai, nearly impossible to find good tequila in Germany. Every country has foods they're good at and foods they're not. As far as the de…

Hmm I remember living in a middle-sized city in The Netherlands that probably most things were available in good quality as long as you knew where to look. Mexican food I can't judge, but Indian or Thai or REAL Chinese food wasn't a problem, with a few options to pick often. Italian and French of course. Good burgers yes.

There's of course a difference in culture. You can't find sesos even at the best butcher shops while in Argentina they're in any medium sized supermarket. That's just stuff that nobody but the very adventurous will eat outside that cultural zone.

Re: Why Chinatown Produce Is Cheap (2016)

#284

Post by [deleted] »

dep_b wrote: post #283
briandear wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mexican food was a favorite of mine in the United States, but in France it tastes like cardboard. I want to find but France doesn't sell it. This conversation can be had in literally any country in the world. Can't find a decent cheeseburger in Delhi, can't find decent cheese in Shanghai, nearly impossible to find good tequila in Germany. Every country has foods they're good at and foods they're not. As far as the de…

Hmm I remember living in a middle-sized city in The Netherlands that probably most things were available in good quality as long as you knew where to look. Mexican food I can't judge, but Indian or Thai or REAL Chinese food wasn't a problem, with a few options to pick often. Italian and French of course. Good burgers yes. There's of course a difference in culture. You can't find sesos even at the best butcher shops w…

[deleted]

Re: Why Chinatown Produce Is Cheap (2016)

#285

Post by jfoutz »

mistermann wrote: post #156
sotojuan wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Immigrants in general, but especially Asian ones, do not want to pay the fees required to accept cards. Most people in their communities are fine with it.

In my experience they often seem averse to typing sales into a cash register, even when they have one right in from of them....or the ole "type the price in and hit "cash" " trick. Must be some sort of a superstition.

My grandfather ran a store that my uncle took over. No pennies, no tax. Everything was priced as marked. End of the day, count up the register and write it in the log. end of the month calculate how much came in, multiply by sales tax, and send a check off to the state.

Maybe they're cheating. IMHO, most of that cash register discipline is because the owner (or his immediate family) isn't running the register.

Im sure you can get away with not paying taxes for a while, but if you're going to have a generational store, you've got to be honest.

Technical controls are cool and all. When you can just look over and see you need more cans of soup, when you implicitly trust your employees, and you're not looking to make a quick buck and run away, they're just a lot of work for not much value. Scaling has a cost.

Re: Why Chinatown Produce Is Cheap (2016)

#286

Post by plandis »

mmanfrin wrote: post #246
tn135 wrote: post #66

As a fish loving Indian, I was totally surprised to see that in Capitalist America the choice of fish was absolutely pathetic. At American fish places you only get "shrimps" may be "large shrimps" and "small shrimps". Salmon, Bass, Red Snapper and just few handful of usual fish. My small village fish market offers at least 20 varieties of fish in India's coastal region. A proper fish market would offer at least 100.…

totally surprised to see that in Capitalist America the choice of fish was absolutely pathetic followed by Then I entered 99Ranch and since then my respect of my eastern neighbours has gone up significantly Because a supermarket founded in California is not part of America? Not to mention the fact that the antecedent statement is just factually wrong -- my local grocer offers at least 20 varieties of fish as well (in…

I think what the person you're responding to meant to say was: "I'm disappointed the US isn't exactly like where I'm from. By US I mean the very few places I've been."

Re: Why Chinatown Produce Is Cheap (2016)

#287

Post by koalaman »

purity_resigns wrote: post #249
lacampbell wrote: post #135

Amazing how they manage to stay so cheap while hiring people at at least minimum wage, with valid work contracts, while paying all relevant taxes and not having any ethnically discriminatory hiring practices. That's the real miracle.

Does the article handle ethnically discriminatory hiring practices? Neither "Divers-" and "ethnic"show up in the article, and if it's like Boston's Chinatown, workers are overwhelmingly Chinese.

I took the poster you are replying to is being sarcastic.

The Chinese community in NYC at least is notorious for tax avoidance.

Re: Why Chinatown Produce Is Cheap (2016)

#288

Post by Nomentatus »

js2 wrote: post #117
look_lookatme wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For whatever reason Americans just don't eat a lot of seafood. This is why the choices are so bad in "Capitalist America" -- there's not enough demand. It's literally capitalism at work. Some theorize that this is due to American's avoiding flavor in general [1]. http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/07/01/327248504/the...

The author interviewed in this piece is the subject of a recent Frontline: The Fish on My Plate. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/the-fish-on-my-plate/ It's about his experiment of eating fish as his only protein for a whole year, as well as an investigation of where our fish comes from, fish farming practices, sustainability, etc. Aside, it may be a good thing Americans don't eat as much seafood as the rest of…

Fish isn't complete protein for humans, you will starve if it's literally your only protein (no wheat, lentils, etc.)

Re: Why Chinatown Produce Is Cheap (2016)

#289

Post by stephencanon »

secstate wrote: post #175
briandear wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps some data to back that up? Some of the best restaurants and chefs in the world are American. Have you been to an American grocery store of any reasonable quality? The cheese selection of many big-city grocery stores rivals even French grocery stores. I shop in France all the time and I am still amazed at the variety at many American grocery stores. Try finding Napa/Chinese cabbage, fresh chiles, daikon radish…

I dunno. Sample size may have something to do with this. I live in a rural section of the US now, but spent a year living in Eastern provincial France and the difference in the cheese case makes me cry when I think about it. Americans stock their shelves with "swiss" "american" "jack" and "cheddar" with almost all of them being made in about a week in cheese factory somewhere. Contrast that with having TWO versions o…

I feel sorry for you, but in my small-town new england co-op, we have easily more than a hundred cheeses available, including many local cheeses that you can't get in Europe at any price, and which compare favorably with the best I've had anywhere outside of the northeast.

Rural America has a great food culture here in many areas; it's not just chefs on the TV.

Re: Why Chinatown Produce Is Cheap (2016)

#290

Post by coin »

wahern wrote: post #227
nickparker wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beef and pork are significantly worse than seafood in terms of environmental impact. There's nothing to celebrate in the sources of American protein. If America was as hungry for seafood as East Asia, fisheries would have depleted enough to create frighteningly high prices long ago, and we'd probably have a thriving aquaculture industry today.

I'm very skeptical of that claim, particularly wrt pork. Once we've completely depleted the oceans of wild fish stock and rely entirely aquaculture, then it'll be a fair comparison. According to this article, based on CO2 production farmed salmon has the same impact as pork: http://www.ewg.org/meateatersguide/a-meat-eaters-guide-to-climate-change-health-what-you-eat-matters/climate-and-environmental-impacts/ And chic…

I wouldn't trust anything from EWG. They are an agenda driven pseudoscience organization. They actively criticize conventional agriculture (see their "dirty" dozen list) and vehemently oppose genetic engineering.
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