yolk a quarterly on contemporary cuisine and food science
issue 4
|
spring 2014
tomato stamps by evan william eagan
yolk
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
ART DIRECTOR
PHOTO EDITOR
PRODUCTION MANAGER
Evan Eagan
Ethan Blouin
Daniel Durawa
Evan Eagan
EXECUTIVE EDITOR
CREATIVE CONSULTANT
PHOTOGRAPHERS
TYPEFACES
Hudson Klebs
Max Eagan
Tova Katzman Chris Baer
Gotham Gotham Rounded Thorowgood
EDITORS
STAFF WRITER
WEB AND INTERFACE
PRINTING
Liam Gude Rykerr Maynard
Dylan McCarthy
Alex Norton
MassArt
TEXT CONSULTANT
PAPER
Laurie Schreiber
Mohawk Loop
MENU APPETIZERS 4 THE GUT BRAIN by Heribert Watzke
8 BUTTS AND GUM street food for microbes by Benjamin Wolfe
12 DESIGNER NORI by Umino Hiroyuki
INTERMEZZO 14 RECIPE BOOK featuring Spring ingredients: apricots, fennel, and watercress
ENTRﾃ右S 16 MUTANT FISH how the Fukushima incident is affecting our food by Michael Conathan
24 KNOWING IS HALF THE BATTLE tracking the carbon footprint of our meals by Chris Ying
36 FIFTY SHADES OF BLACK Henry Ford, pig bones, and 30,000 years of charcoal by Nina Bai
DESSERT 47 FEATURED CHEF a day in the kitchen with Wylie Dufrense by Lisa Hanawalt
53 UP AND COMING an interview with Nina Levin
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spring 2014
photo : black currant and roses
| courtesy of noma
KNOWING IS HALF THE BATTLE chris ying
I’ve never seen a forlorn polar bear drifting on a dwindling ice flow, but I have no doubts about the reality of global warming. I think it’s safe to assume that these days not many of us need an in-person ursine encounter to confirm the threat greenhouse gases pose to life on planet Earth. What’s a bit more difficult is scaling the problem — and the solutions — down to a comprehensible size. It’s hard to grapple with complex, global causes, especially when their consequences, though apocalyptic, only reveal themselves over the course of decades. But if there’s one place where global warming should feel clearly relevant, it’s the kitchen. Eating, it turns out, is the most significant interaction most of us have with the environment. Even if we remain cloistered in air–conditioned rooms in front of keyboards and monitors for most of the day, at some point we must eat — and whether it’s a carrot stick or a Big Mac, with our first bite we implicate ourselves in the food system. The food system is responsible for 30 percent of worldwide carbon emissions. That is to say, almost a third of greenhouse gases are a result of growing, shipping, cooking, and disposing of food.
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photo : nordic coconut and bouquet | peter brinch and ditte isager
So kitchens connect us to the natural world, and it follows that cooks have a particular vulnerability to the effects of global warming. Seasonal cooking goes out the window when seasons lengthen and contract abruptly and disastrously. There’s also acidification of the ocean,
too many moving parts to declare something absolutely good or bad. Efficiency is a key to conserving resources and, in many cases, reducing carbon emissions, but efficiency might be achieved in any number of otherwise questionable ways: pesticides, antibiotics, brutal animal treatment,
licable — for a home cook: chilled iceberg salad, Ceaser salad, roasted beets and carrots, ricotta dumplings, grilled pork chops, pork schnitzel, steak frites, burger. In other words, dinner at Prime Meats is something that you might weight against staying in and cooking for yourself.
EATING IS THE MOST SIGNIFICANT INTERACTION MOST OF US HAVE WITH THE ENVIRONMENT loss of arable land, drought, flood, hurricanes — all concerns for people whose job it is to serve food.
genetically modified crops. The endlessly intertwined nature of mental change so unwieldy and seemingly unapproachable.
But what role do restaurants play in creating the current environmental dilemmas? What role can they play in a solution? The chefs I’ve spoken to about this have suggested that dining out is terrible for the environment–all those resources being put into procuring and cooking and serving food in such high volume. But so far as I could tell, nobody (outside of certain large restaurant chains) really knows much about the environmental impact of their restaurants. It reminded me of the way I refuse to look at a scale when I know I’m particularly overweight–better to accept the problem and move on. That doesn’t seem quite good enough, though, when we’re talking about the future existence of the natural world.
A friend named Peter Freed works for Terrapass, a respected San Francisco company that deals in emissions reductions and renewable energy projects1 . I asked Peter if he could help me measure the total environmental impact of a restaurant meal, and his answer was no, he couldn’t — there are just too many moving parts. What he could do was asses the greenhouse gas emissions of a meal and, by proxy, the culpability of restaurants in global warming. Our starting point was the assumption that restaurant dining is fundamentally bad for the environment — or, more specifically, that restaurant dining is worse than cooking and eating at home. So we’d have to compare the carbon emissions of a restaurant meal to a similar meal prepared at home. Prime Meats in Brooklyn struck me immediately as an apt choice for the former. Much of their menu is doable — if not exactly rep-
Overall environmental impact is difficult to distill into a number or grade; there are 1
ter r apa s s ’ s b i g m o m ent i n th e su n wa s wh en th e y is su ed c ar bo n o ffse t
certi fic ates fo r th e g i f t bags at th e ac ad em y awar ds i n 2006 , th e y e ar an i n co nven i ent truth wo n its osc ar fo r b est doc u m entary fe atu r e .
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th is a s su m es that peo ple , k n owi n g that r estau r ants ar e especially
o ffensive pl an e t war m ers , wo u ld ch oose to coo k at h o m e i nste ad . it ’ s
ad m it ted ly so m e th i n g o f a b i g a s su m ptio n , a s a g r e at man y o f us co nti n u e to do th i n gs li k e e at b lu efi n tu na k n owi n g fu ll well that it co u ld n ’ t b e wo rse , eco log ic ally spe ak i n g .
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Restaurants in the Prime Meats strata have the most to lose if home cooking does turn out to be an earth cooling alternative to patronizing neighborhood restaurants2 But the two chef-proprietors, Frank Falcinelli and Frank Castronovo, consented to the study without hesitation. Not all restaurant menus, however, lend themselves as easily to showdown with home cooking. I don’t think anyone has ever puzzled over whether to stay in or have dinner at Noma. One might question the value of comparing the carbon emissions of a twenty–three–course tasting menu that counts lichens and insects among its ingredients to that of a weeknight lasagna. But what makes Noma an interesting case study is its reputation. Much of Noma’s allure is tied to the local Scandinavian ingredients, specifically plants and animals foraged from nearby forests and beaches. Foraging is a buzzword that comes fully loaded with positive connotations. If a chef forages, he
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is engaged with nature, and therefore he cares about nature and does his best to be environmentally responsible on the whole. This is the type of extrapolation the mind makes when we hear terms like organic, sustainable, free range, cage free, hormone free, non– gmo, seasonal, local, green, natural , wild, raw, fair trade, homemade. Each implies the others and is a convenient signifier for “environmentally sound” the same way that light, fresh, low fat, and whole grain connote ”healthy” whether or not what they’re describing is, in fact, good for you. Many people — myself included — take it on blind faith that a small, localized food system, is definitively better than a largescale one. I’m not saying it isn’t, but testing this assumption against detailed data on a restaurant that specializes in small scale seemed like a worthy pursuit, Again, I was impressed and encouraged when René Redzepi and the board of directors at Noma agreed to be part of the study. So Peter and I settled on a life–cycle analysis of three distinct meals. What we were after was a single number for each: the kilograms of carbon–dioxide–equivalent emissions (co2e) produced by each mealthe meal’s carbon footprint.
a life–cycle analysis can run hundreds of pages, the product of thousands of hours of research. Ours was more life a life–cycle analysis lite. Peter described it to me as not looking at this egg, but looking at an egg. In other words, we’d be specific where possible — looking at actual power and gas bills, and real delivery schedules — and generalizing where necessary. Rather than looking at the actual berries used at Noma, we’d use publicly available information of fresh berries from Nordic countries. The six areas we examined were3: Deliveries, including the frequency and size of trucks bringing food and supplies to each restaurant. In the case of the home meal, we looked at the emissions associated with driving to the grocery store and back. Foraging, including the size of the car used by Noma’s house foragers and the distance they traveled each day. (There was no foraging involved in the Prime Meats or home meal. Electricity use. Other energy use, specifically natural gas. Waste breakdown 4 and hauling.
A full life–cycle analysis examines the total environmental impact of a product, from raw material to used item. For instance, if we were to analyze an egg, we’d look at everything that went into the care and raising of the chicken that laid the egg (what it are, how the feed was grown, how the feed got to the far, to the distributor, to the store, to the consumer; and whether the shell was composted or simply discarded. Such
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Ingredients, meaning the emissions associated with the cultivation and/or production of the raw vegetables, meat, and pantry items used in every dish.
n ot i n clu d ed i n th e stu dy, eith er d u e to ti m e an d data co nstr ai nts o r b ec ause th ei r e xpec ted valu e wa s d e m i n i m us , wer e em is sio ns a s sociated with : wa ste -
water tr e atm ent ; hau li n g o f r estau r ant l au n d ry ; em ploy ee co m m uti n g ; water fi lter d elivery services ; r estau r ant mai ntenan ce ; water a s an i n g r ed i ent ;
d istri b utio n veh icles su pplyi n g th e g rocery sto r e ; h o m e l au n d ry ; h o m e gar bag e d isp osal
(foo d
scr ap s wer e co m p osted); foo d wa ste i n pro d u c tio n o f th e h o m e
m e al ; pro d u c tio n o f g el ati n , fat p owd er , an d m o d i fi ed starch g lu cose
(th er e
wa s a l ack o f data , b ut th ese i n g r ed i ents wer e used i n n eg li g i b le am o u nts).
th e anaero b ic bac teria that d eco m p ose o rgan ic wa ste i n l an d fi lls pro d u ce 4
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m e than e ga s a s th e y wo r k . co m p osti n g bac teria
(aero b ic
d eco m p ositio n) do n ot.
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the menus for the three meals examined were:
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Home窶田ooked meal: Ribeye with roasted potatoes Radish and parsley salad Peach and almond crumble with whipped cream
Prime Meats: Steak frites Escarole salad Crﾃｨme brulee
Noma: Fermented gooseberries as olives Nordic coconut and bouquet Crispy reindeer moss, ceps spice, crﾃｨme fraiche Flatbread and grilled roses Peas in a pod Tender pea tendril with wild strawberries Black currant and roses Pickled quail egg Cod liver and crispy sweet milk Aebleskiver Leek and cod roe Grilled vegetables, berries, and buttermilk Raw shrimp and ramsons Onion and pear stew Caramelized cauliflower and whipped cream Potato and caviar Turbot and greens Blueberry and ants Potato and plum Beet Yeast and skyr Seaweed Danish photo : noma dining room | courtesy of noma
Pork skin and dried berries
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I should admit that I was hoping for a particular result. I was fairly certain that Noma’s emissions factor would be far higher than that of the other two mealsthere were just too many ingredients in the Noma meal for it to be comparable. The way I looked at it there were three possible outcomes for the home–cooked meal. Any of the three results would provide useful information; knowing where we stand is the only way to take a step forward. But if the two were close, that’d be a real coup. It’d be much easier to spur the chefs to action if I could tell them that they were within reach of saying, “Eating at my restaurant is the best thing you can do for the environment.”
average greenhouse gas emissions per ingredient
kg co 2 e noma
prime meats
home– cooked meal
Peter and I presented the results of the study onstage at this year’s mad conference, in front of the Franks and René. None of them were aware of the results ahead of time. When we revealed the numbers, all three chefs spun around and craned their necks to see the monitor behind them, again impressing me with their curiosity and openness. There was no real incentive for them to subject themselves to this sort of scrutiny, let alone stand onstage with no idea what we would reveal about their restaurants. The modern restaurant business can revolve frustratingly around lists of whose restaurant is the best, but here were three chefs who were more concerned with how they could just do good.
that Prime Meats is worse than a homecooked meal or that Noma is worse than Prime Meats. These are raw results, and I’d argue that they are neither the most important nor most interesting results of the study. But they’re a good starting point for narrowing a broad and complex problem down to a simple, understandable figure. Take a look down between your feet and watch the arm on the scale swing and bounce to a stop a few pounds farther than you hoped it would, and take a breath.
A meal at Prime Meats produces 13 percent more greenhouse gases than a similar meal cooked at home. A full tasting menu at Noma accounts for approximately three times more emissions than a home meal. You’ll notice I’m carefully avoiding saying
On the next page is a breakdown of the emissions of each meal. In all three instances, 59 – 68 percent of the greenhouse gases are a result of the ingredients themselves — a useful consistency. The home cooked meal contained seventeen ingredi-
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equivalent gallons of gas burned
ents, Prime Meats used sixteen, and Noma four hundred, but as a portion of the total emissions of their respective meals, the ingredients’ contributions were all within the same 9 –percent range. The carbon footprint of different farm practices is critical, but changing the way ingredients-organic or otherwise–are grown or raised is a bit beyond the reasonable control of most restaurants and diners. I’d expect it’s also a deal–breaker to ask chefs to alter their recipes, and even if they were willing to do so, it’s a leaky situation. For the moment, let’s discard with the idea of omitting or changing certain ingredients as a way to reduce carbon emissions. Where we want to look for possible fixes is in the other 32–41 percent: the overhead.
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breaking down greenhouse gas emissions by category
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deliveries 3.3% foraging 7%
ingredients 59.7% noma
electricity 28.7%
waste .1% laundry 1.3%
deliveries .13% electricity 11.9%
ingredients 68.3%
gas 18.3% prime meats waste .1% laundry 1.2%
shopping 22.8%
ingredients 64.8%
home cooked meal
electricity 5.5%
gas 6.9%
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Prime meats’ and Noma’s energy usage produce almost the exact same emissions in a given week and account for about the same percentage of the restaurants’ overall carbon footprint5. The per–meal emissions at Noma are much higher because Prime Meats serves 1,350 people per week, while Noma only serves 450. These insights are essentially just reverse– engineering a large–scale food system. There’s a reason why industrial agriculture came about: we needed to feed a growing population cheaply an efficiently. There are plenty of good reasons to criticize the consolidation of food production to a small group of corporations — but efficiency is not among those reasons. If we limit our concern to global warming, one wonders if it’s really better to have twenty different farmers each deliver broccoli in their own trucks to the farmers market, compared to the one veggie–packed truck delivering to multiple grocery stores 6.
contribution of steak in prime meats ' ingrediant related emissions
everything else
ten ounces of wagyu flank steak
average greenhouse gas emissions per ingredient
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n o ma’ s k itch en is an all elec tric an d r esp o nsi b le fo r an aver ag e o f 3 , 193 kg co 2 e per week . pri m e m e ats ’ co m b i n ed
ga s an d elec tricit y use pro d u ces 3 , 468 kg co 2 e per week .
th is do esn ’ t n eces sari ly m e an th e t wo r estau r ants use th e
sam e am o u nt o f en ergy, th o u g h . d i ffer ent p ower g ri ds vary i n h ow cle an ly th e y pro d u ce en ergy. n e w yo r k cit y ha s a cle an er p ower g ri d than co pen hag en .
(pe ter wa s su r prised by j ust h ow d i rt y do n g en ergy — d en mar k ’ s l arg est p ower co m pan y — is , co nsi d eri n g what a fo rwar d –th i n k i n g part o f th e wo r ld it serves .) m y k itch en , wh er e i coo k ed th e h o m e m e al , is loc ated i n th e cle an est p ower g ri d o f th e th r ee , san fr an cisco , an d b ri n gs abo ut 2 kg co 2 e i nto e xisten ce per week a s a r esu lt o f ga s an d elec tricit y use .
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kg co 2 e
5
Again, we’re only looking at one aspect of environmental impact — there are many other factors to consider. This idea is most clearly demonstrated by the data we gathered on Noma’s foraging. Noma’s foragers drive a Volkswagen Caddy Maxi Life camper van 250 kilometers per day in pursuit of elderflowers, Spanish chervil, roses, pine shoots, chamomile, strawberries, black currant shoots, juniper, wood ants, ramson, rhubarb, apples, dandelions, fiddlehead ferns, rocket, yarrow, swamp cress, etc. The van’s emissions make up around 7 percent of the restaurants total carbon footprint, or 777 kg co2e per week.
0 home cooked meal
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prime meats
noma
th is go es back to m y p o i nt abo ut perceptio n , it ’ s e a sy to
loo k at th e b u lle t p o i nts abo ut a r estau r ant li k e n o ma – th r ee co nsec utive y e ars o n to p o f th e wo r ld ’ s 50 b est
r estau r ants list ; r en e ’ s a s su r ed prog r es sive ph i loso ph i es ; th e veg e tab le – centric m en u ; th e fo rg i n g ; th e sy m p osi u m – an d a s su m e that it m ust b e th e o utri g ht le ad er i n all man n ers o f e arth fri en d li n es s . to wit, k ate k r ad er , th e r estau r ant ed ito r o f foo d & wi n e p osted a ph oto o f o u r c ar bo n stu dy r esu lts o n i nstag r am an d a sk ed
“home
coo k
vs @ n o r ma vs @ fr an k i es sputi n o m e al , wh ich ha s th e h i g h est co 2 le vel ? g u es s .” to wh ich o n e o f h er fo llowers r esp o n d ed
“am
i m is - r e ad i n g so m e th i n g ? it loo ks li k e n o ma . h ow do
th e y co m e u p with th e n u m b ers ? ”
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spanish chervil
roses
pine shoots
chamomile
strawberries
black currant shoots
juniper
wood ants
rhubarb
apples
dandelions
fiddlehead ferns
rocket
yarrow
photos : a small section of foraged ingrediants from nomas 400+ ingredient menu
elderflower
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dessert of flowers by noma | courtesy of phaidon
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The abundant positive effects of foraging make the question of whether or not to forage an easy choice, but it’s useful to know the emissions it generates. After our presentation, René’s wife Nadine came up to Peter to say she’d been insisting for
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some time that the restaurant buy a more fuel–efficient foraging car, and to thank him for making the case for her. If they were to make that switch, the emissions factor of foraging would drop to zero. Three things I’ve learned that are worth sharing:
1. Meat is by far the worst, emissions-wise.
Earlier I said that it was moot to expect cooks to avoid certain ingredients for the sake of global warming, but I admit we played a bit of a reverse gambit in choosing our menus. Knowing that twenty–three
yolk | courses at Noma were always going to leave a larger footprint than a three–course home meal, Peter and I evened the playing ground slightly by choosing steak for the home–cooked and Prime Meats meals. Raising beef cattle is a resource–intensive endeavor and methane emissions from cow flatulence and manure is actually a major contributor of ghg emissions. The ribeye in the home–cooked meal accounted for the 84 percent of the ingredient–related emissions. At Prime Meats, the wagyu beef accounted for 74 percent. 2. In 2012, 40 percent of the electricity
supplies by Dong Energy in Denmark was produced by coal. That’s why the power grid in Copenhagen is so much dirtier than that of say, California (7.5 % coal). The staff
cartridges I used had a larger carbon footprint (8.7 kg co2e) than the entire meal (7.5 kg co2e). We didn’t factor this into the study, to avoid skewing the final results, but I feel compelled to admit it. Efficiency takes elbow grease. So, let’s dispense with the idea that eating at a restaurant is inherently bad for the climate. Prime meats is within striking distance of matching the carbon footprint of a home–cooked meal. Just for kicks, I asked Peter what TerraPass would charge to fully offset the annual carbon footprint at Prime Meats (about $.11 per diner) and Noma (about $ 3 per diner). There are, of course, plenty of ways to improve the efficiency of a restaurant without forking over money for offsets — installing led light–bulbs in
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all this introspection is a consortium of concerned restaurants that are willing to face the problem and take active steps toward solutions. Imagine a group of restaurants that agreed to open themselves up to a full examination of their respective carbon footprints, and commit the necessary money, time, and on–site improvements to reduce their carbon footprints to zero. The money would be pooled together to further study of restaurant emissions, develop a list of best practices, and pursue food–related emissions reduction projects9. If a few influential restaurants sign on, their participation makes participation desirable, and before you know it you it you’ve got a branded strain of do–gooding. Carbon–neutrality becomes something that benefits your own restaurant as much
NOMA’S FORAGERS DRIVE A VOLKSWAGEN CADDY MAXI LIFE CAMPER VAN 250 KILOMETERS PER DAY IN PURSUIT OF ELDERFLOWERS, SPANISH CHERVIL, ROSES, PINE SHOOTS, CHAMOMILE, STRAWBERRIES, BLACK CURRANT SHOOTS, JUNIPER, WOOD ANTS, RAMSON, RHUBARB, APPLES, DANDELIONS, FIDDLEHEAD FERNS, ROCKET, YARROW, ETC.
at Noma discovered this while putting their energy bills together for TerraPass. It took them by surprise, and as we were assembling the study, they emailed us to say that they’d elected to switch to a 100 percent renewable energy supply (at an increased cost). If that change goes through, their yearly emissions drop instantly by 29 percent. In the words of GI Joe, knowing is half the battle. 3. Whip–its are bad for the environment. In an act of undeniable laziness, when I was making whipped cream for the home–cooked desert, I elected to use a nitrous–oxide siphon rather than whipping the cream by hand or with a machine. Later, Peter called to tell me that the global warming potential of nitrous oxide is somewhere in the range of 300 times worse than carbon dioxide, and that the two nitrous
spaces which require task lighting; consolidating deliveries (Prime Meats only takes eight deliveries per week); using more energy–Wefficient refrigerators, coolers, ovens, and fan hoods7. And what about Noma and restaurants of its ilk? To look at the raw numbers and say that dinner at Noma is an inefficient meal would be like saying a visit to the Louvre to see the Mona Lisa is an inefficient way to see a beautiful woman. Noma serves a different purpose. In any creative field, there will be individuals that push us to reconsider the status quo. The study itself was a response to an opportunity presented by René Redzepi and Noma via the mad symposium. And just like Prime meats, Noma was eager and thorough 8 in volunteering every bit of information requested of them. The pie–in–the–sky end game for
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fo r th e r eco r d , n o ma alr e ady uses so m e o f th e m ost
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special co m m en datio n sh o u ld go to zuzi otcena sova , th e
en ergy – effici ent eq u i pm ent avai l ab le .
n o ma staff m em b er ta sk ed with gath eri n g i n fo r matio n o n t wo separ ate 400 – i n g r ed i ent m en us , 27 d elivery co m pan i es , plus elec tricit y, wa ste – co llec tio n , an d l au n d ry b i lls .
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as the planet. Simple. I’m being naïve, but maybe not as naïve as you think. Diners are increasingly considering what and where to eat. Why not capitalize on it? More importantly, why not make the same sort of choices as chefs? What kind of restaurant do you want to be? What sort of work do you want to do? A few brave chefs could spark a movement that transforms dining out into an act of purposeful good. Restaurants are among the most agile, innovative small businesses on Earth. They are a place where creative thinking about efficiency happens every day — whether it’s making the most delicious things with the cheapest cuts or fitting all your mise en place into the low boy. There’s no reason why they couldn’t or shouldn’t be leaders in environmental stewardship.
wh en i a sk ed pe ter what so rts o f proj ec ts m i g ht fit th is d escri ptio n , h e so ld m e so m e o n th e i d e a o f anaero b ic
d i g esters c aptu r e th e m e than e fro m an i mal wa ste , r ec ycle
it a s natu r al ga s that c an b e used to coo k o r h e at a h o m e , an d r en d er th e an i mal wa ste safe to b e used a s ferti lizer .
b ec ause m e than e is a p otent g r een h o use ga s , small proj ec ts c an have a b i g i m pac t. fo r e x am ple , i n th e d e velo pi n g wo r ld ,
$150 , 000 co u ld b u y an d i nstall 750 small d i g esters provi d i n g en ergy fo r h o useh o lds an d r ed u ci n g g r een h o use ga s em is sio ns by aro u n d 2 , 500 , 000 kg co 2 e e ach y e ar .
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michael conathan
Following an admittedly brief spate of investigation, my initial reaction, “Eating Pacific Ocean Fish Won’t Turn You Into a Mutant,” was rather the opposite. However, in an effort to balance reporting and expertise with entertainment and humor — most notably the amount of radiation contained in your average, every day banana — my greater point may have suffered. Commenters on the blog questioned everything from my intelligence to my ethics, and many raised legitimate questions about the potential impact of the radioactive particles that have been released into the Pacific. So I pledged to follow up, and went straight to the experts, primarily Dr. Ken Buesseler, Senior Scientist in Marine Chemistry and Geochemistry at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. Dr. Buessler was literally on his way out the door to catch a flight to Japan to continue his research, but he took a moment to read my post and return my email. His reaction: “Let’s be clear: leaked radiation is bad. This is a problem that needs urgent, international attention. But at least for now, I’m happy to reassure Joe Romm and all the parents of Facebook: your fish are not glowing with Fukushima radiation. Eat up!” Dr. Buesseler also pointed me to a Fukushima faq page on his department’s website that he set up to answer the influx of questions he has received on this particular issue. In the context of seafood consumption, the most important thing to determine is the potential degree of harm that can come to someone who eats fish that may contain higher–than–
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normal quantities of potentially dangerous isotopes. This begs a few specific questions: 1 . How much radiation is out there? 2 . Where is it? 3 . What concentrations are harmful to humans? And of course: 4. Seriously? Radioactive bananas?
How much radioactive water are we talking about? Last month, the Japanese government reported that the Fukushima plant was leaking approximately 300 tons, or 71,895 gallons, of contaminated water each day. That’s a lot of water — except when you compare it to the Pacific Ocean, which is estimated to contain 187,189,915,062,857,142,857 gallons. That’s 187 quintillion for those counting at home. So as a quick comparison, even if the site continues leaking 72,000 gallons per day for 10 years, the total amount spilled would be 262.8 million gallons. This is a tall drink of water to be sure, but it is still just .00000000014 percent of the volume of the Pacific Ocean. Of course, anyamount of leaked radiation is bad, so we’ll get to the part about exactly how bad this stuff is in a minute. It’s also likely that additional water could seep, or is already seeping, from various other containment devices — hence the news that Japan will construct ice dams or other containment structures to help hold back the radioactive flow. In short, this kind of engineering nightmare makes bp ’s months–long struggle to plug the Macondo oil gusher in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 look like a People magazine crossword puzzle (13 across: Skywalker pal Han _ _ _ _). Containing Fukushima radiation is not likely to be resolved anytime soon, so: where is the radiation going? According to Dr. Buesseler’s faq: The spread of cesium once it enters the ocean can be understood by the analogy of mixing cream into coffee. At first, they are separate and distinguishable, but just as we start to stir the cream forms long, narrow filaments or streaks in the water. The streaks became longer and narrower as they moved off shore, where diffusive processes began to homogenize and dilute the radionuclides.
photo : overview of fukushima power plant | courtesy of geoeye
recently wrote a piece attempting to address a conflagration of concern that had flared up amid reports that the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan is continuing to release radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean. More specifically, a blogger or two had expressed the opinion that “Your Days of Eating Pacific Ocean Fish Are Over.”
title typography by evan william eagan
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Dr. Buesseler and others have suggested that radionuclides will reach u.s. shores “some time in late 2013 or 2014” but that “at the levels expected even short distances from Japan, the Pacific will be safe for boating, swimming, etc.” Some studies predict that over the next 5 to 10 years, concentrations on the North American Pacific Coast could actually be higher than those off Japan, but the total amount of radioactivity will be well below the current levels near the crippled nuclear plant because of dilution throughout the Pacific Basin. Should we be worried about the quantities found in our fish? It goes without saying that we should monitor our seafood and water quality with extreme care. As for the specifics of what to look for, we turn again to Dr. Buesseler: Seawater everywhere contains many naturally occurring radionuclides, the most common being Polonium–210. As a result, fish caught in the Pacific and elsewhere already have measurable quantities of these substances. Cesium [forms] a salt taken up by the flesh that will begin to flush out of an exposed fish soon after they enter waters less affected by Fukushima. By the time tuna are caught in the eastern Pacific, Cesium levels in their flesh are 10 –20 times lower than when they were off Fukushima. Cesium will still be more concentrated in larger, carnivorous fish higher up the food chain, such as bluefin tuna than in smaller fish with diets consisting more of plankton and algae, but because it will “flush out” of the fish’s flesh, concentrations will not necessarily mount over time. An area of greater concern to Buesseler is the increasing quantity of Strontium–90 detected in the waters near Fukushima. Unlike Cesium, Strontium accumulates in bone rather than muscle, and it is not rapidly flushed from the fish. The good news here is that aside from consumers of small fish such as sardines, which are eaten bone–in, most diners will not be eating strontium. How is the federal government testing Pacific Ocean seafood? The lead u.s. agency testing seafood for contamination is the Food and Drug Administration, or fda. As of June 20, the fda has tested 1,313 samples of food imported from Japan, including 199 seafood samples. Of those, just one — a sample of ginger powder — exceeded the level considered safe for consumption. 22
When contacted about its testing of domestically caught seafood, an fda spokesman responded in an email, saying that “the fda is not aware of any evidence suggesting that the domestic seafood catch contains harmful levels of radiation.” He further referenced a 2012 study from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which found levels of Cesium–137 and Cesium–134 in bluefin tuna to be, according to an email from the fda, “roughly 300 times lower than levels that would prompt fda to investigate further to determine if there were a health concern.” How does nuclear waste differ from the radiation emitted by a banana? Nuclear radiation exists in many places in our daily lives. Perhaps the most commonly cited example is the average, everyday banana. Bananas have enough naturally occurring radiation that science communicators developed a metric called the Banana Equivalent Dose, or bed, as a means of explaining in user-friendly terms how much radiation a given thing emits. The bed represents the amount of radiation the body receives from eating one banana and roughly equates to 0.1 nanoseiverts. A seivert is the unit used to measure exposure. An arm x–ray is equivalent to 10 bed. A flight from New York to London: 400 bed. A chest ct scan: 70,000 bed. A fatal dose is roughly 80 million bed. Most of the radiation in bananas comes from Potassium–40, which is processed naturally by the body, but some of it arrives in the form of Polonium–210, the isotope used in a massive dose to kill former kgb agent Alexander Litvinenko in 2006 . Of course, the radiation in bananas is different from what’s in leaked nuclear wastewater. For starters, while bananas’ radioactivity occurs naturally, nuclear waste contains isotopes, including Cesium–137, which are exclusively and deliberately generated by human activity — specifically, the process of nuclear fission. Radiation released in the decay of radioactive isotopes is classified in three types — alpha, beta, and gamma — and each type has different strengths and properties. Banana radiation — Potassium and Polonium — is alpha radiation, while cesium and strontium fall in the strongest category, gamma rays. The radioactive particles also have different half–lives — a half–life is the amount of time it takes for 50 percent of a given compound to decay. The half–life of Cesium–137 is 30 years; for Polonium-210, it is 138.4 days. So while eating a serving of Pacific bluefin tuna will expose someone to roughly one to five bed, according to a paper Buesseler and his colleagues published in the Proceed-
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spring 2014 photo : workers repairing fukushima power plant | photo by ethan blouin
ings of the National Academy of Sciences in late 2012 , that does not mean the potential harm is the same as eating a handful of bananas. But so far, according to Dr. Buesseler and the fda, we have no reason to fear the amount of radiation in domestically caught fish. Recall that Cesium–137 and other affiliated nasty particles have been part of our lives in varying quantities since the
first nuclear tests occurred in the 1940 s and ‘50 s. While the Fukushima release represents a major influx of the material to the natural environment, when it comes to ocean contamination, it still represents little more than a drop in the proverbial bucket. At least for now, except for fish from the immediate area around the Fukushima plant, Pacific Ocean seafood remains safe to eat.
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appetizer
umino hiroyuki
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yolk |
spring 2014
sample of laser cut nori | designed by umino hiroyuki
Japanese ad agency i & sbbdo was approached by a client who wanted to boost their flagging business after the 2011 tsunami in Japan — the product, however, was nori (sheets of Japanese seaweed used in sushi). In an effort to reinvent this simple square of seaweed without losing sight of the age–old traditions embedded in their culture, i & sbbdo decided to laser cut classic Japanese patterns into the paper–thin nori sheets. Each pattern is meant to symbolize good fortune, happiness, and longevity. The result is a delicate, unexpected reinvention of the classic Japanese food with a modern twist. The patterns are crisp, and when incorporated into the rolls, they create a sharp contrast between the dark seaweed and the white grains of rice within. They’ve entered (and won) a number of ad/design contests for this phenomenal work: “The tragic tsunami of March 2011 dramatically affected all industries in Northern Japan. Our client was one of them. They came to us, their channels of distribution damaged, their business hurting, and asked us to create an online campaign for them that would help to rebuild their business. But it’s hard to think of a product that could spur less interest online than a black square of seaweed. The design of a square of nori has not changed since its creation in the 15 th century. Choosing the right designs was also important, as we wanted to convey the classic brand heritage and our positive hope for the future, so that our customers could sense our values and feel more optimistic when seeing our designs. We carved into Nori various Japanese classic patterns that signify happiness, long–life, etc, creating an unprecedented type of Nori as a result of the combination of a traditional product with a modern laser cutter, thereby conveying both our wish for the future, as well as our respect for the past.”
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yolk a quarterly on contemporary cuisine and food science
issue 4
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winter 2014