Matt Meshulam's Brain Dump

Parts one and two can be found here and here, respectively.

Given my newfound interest in eating cheap taken to the extreme, you can imagine my excitement when I came across this snippet from December’s issue of Harper’s. Abridged and slightly paraphrased:

From a list of recipes from residents of Leningrad during the Nazi siege (September 1941-January 1944). The letter, dated 1942, is from a Russian compilation, “I Saw It: New Letters about War,” published by Vremya in 2005.

[...]

Leather-belt soup: It’s better to use undyed belts. Cut the belts into small pieces, then rinse them in water and let soak. After boiling, season with nettle, saltbush, chickweed, or other herbs. It’s good to add a little bit of vinegar.

[...]

Soup from pets and domesticated animals: Meat is ranked by taste in the following order: dog, guinea pig, cat, rat. Gut the carcass, wash well and place in cold water. Add salt. Cook for one to three hours. For aroma: bay leaf, pepper, any sort of herbs, and, if available, grain.

Of course, the food choices available to you when your town is under siege isn’t quite the same constraint as simply being poor. Also, I’m skeptical about the nutritional value of a leather belt, but since there isn’t really anything even close to it in the USDA nutrition database, that will have to remain a suspicion.

In my quest for better data on food prices, I got sidetracked exploring the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service. They have an impressive quantity of food-related data, and I’ll probably be exploring it for quite a while. Some interesting things I’ve found:

• The per-capita availability of chicken in the U.S. has steadily doubled over the past 30 years, to 87 pounds per person per year in 2006. Pork has been pretty much constant and beef has decreased by about 12%. Source (Excel spreadsheet)
• North Dakota is responsible for 20% of U.S. honey production, more than double the share of any other state. Source (PDF)
• In 1996 the USDA commissioned a survey to determine how Americans prefer their hamburgers to be cooked, as a part of studying foodborne illness. I assume that internally it was known as “The Hamburger Study.” Source
• “U.S. Cabbage Statistics” would be a great name for a prog rock band.

In December, I will be going to Israel for ten days. I recently thought to take a look at the exchange rate to see if the dollar has gotten any stronger since the summer, when some of my friends were busy getting poor in Europe:

Not too bad. It’s not quite where it was two years ago, but it looks like the summer really was the worst of it. Also, it seems like it’s been pretty volatile lately, what with the global financial crisis and all. So naturally, that got me to thinking: Would it be a worthwhile gamble to invest in foreign currency, speculating on the dollar drastically losing value?

I know it’s possible to invest in currency from the comfort of your own country, but just for fun I wondered what the odds would be of profiting during my trip abroad. Simply put, if I buy Shekels the day I get to Israel, and sell them the day I leave, what would be my expected return?

I got the past two years of USD-to-ILS exchange rate data from Oanda.com, which has a very nice interface for historical currency data. I assumed a 2% premium when exchanging currency, approximately what your credit card company charges. I brought the data into Matlab and made a pretty picture:

As expected, it is highly likely that I would lose money because of the 4% in exchange fees (two transactions: USD-to-ILS and back). Sure enough, the red dotted line indicating the average return is pretty close to 0.96. But there have been a few peaks over 1, indicating a net profit. All of these have occurred in the last year when the economy has been going crazy. In the past two years, there were twenty instances where it was profitable to hold Shekels for ten consecutive days. This translates to about a 3% win rate, which is not very encouraging. Furthermore, the highest-ever return was 1.023, netting just above two cents per dollar invested.

The bottom line is that it may make sense to make long term investments in foreign currency (or stock) as a hedge against the U.S. economy, but the exchange premiums make it pointless to try beating the market on a shorter scale.

For part I, click here.

In part one of this ongoing series, I attempted to verify whether it is actually common for people to eat dog food out of necessity. My results were inconclusive, so I decided to perform some additional analysis. In this part of the series, I will be assessing the economic viability of eating dog food. The third part will cover the nutritional implications of this unconventional diet.

For my economic analysis, I relied heavily on two federal databases: the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ average price database, which is used to calculate the Consumer Price Index; and the USDA’s national nutrient database. Both of these resources were incredibly helpful, and you’ll be seeing me using the USDA database quite a bit in the future (I’ve got some big plans brewing).

I compiled nutrition information and the most current average national price for a small basket of foods that I feel reflect a good variety of low-cost sustenance options. I also estimated calorie content of both dry and wet dog food, based on the “guaranteed analysis” that is found on pet food instead of nutrition facts. This data is presented as a percentage (by mass) of fat, protien, fiber, and water. I estimated that nearly all the remaining mass is carbohydrate, a fairly accurate assumption. Since average national price data was not available for dog food, I used the prices at my local supermarket: $11.98 for a 20-pound bag of Purina™ Dog Chow, and $0.80 for a 13.2-ounce can of Pedigree™-brand wet food. I used this data to plot how many calories’ worth of each item can be bought for a dollar. Let’s look at the results:

Sure enough, dry dog food provides a significantly better value than any meant-for-human-consumtion alternative. Canned dog food doesn’t fare nearly as well due to the fact that 82% of what you are buying is water. I found it surprising that oatmeal fared so well, but note that the average price according to the BLS is much less than a carton of Quaker. Their price is 79 cents per pound, which is actually a bit more than I pay for bulk oats from the store.

Also important to note is that many of the foods listed require additional gas or electric costs for preparation. I may do a more in-depth study that takes this into account, but I suspect that the difference isn’t severe. Intuitively, I would expect a PB&J to be a slightly better deal than black beans, but it probably wouldn’t catch up to spaghetti.

Of course, calories per dollar is the crudest calculation possible to determine the cost effectiveness of food. A proper ratio of macronutrients (proteins, carbohydrates, and fats) as well as dozens of other nutrients are required to stay healthy over even a short period of time. But for that analysis, you’ll just have to wait for part three.

With all the news about the economy, I’ve been hearing a lot of news stories about how people are changing their behavior to save money. Take this story in the New York Times from a while ago about how people are eating differently nowadays:

Burt Flickinger, a longtime retail consultant, said the last time he saw such significant changes in consumer buying patterns was the late 1970s, when runaway inflation prompted Americans to “switch from red meat to pork to poultry to pasta — then to peanut butter and jelly.”

“It hasn’t gotten to human food mixed with pet food yet,” he said, “but it is certainly headed in that direction.”

<b> added. I’ve heard references to people being so poor they had to eat dog food, but I suppose I just assumed it was a figure of speech. But an expert said it! It must be true! Right? So I turned to my trusted advisor in all important matters: Yahoo Answers. In case you aren’t familiar with the service, Yahoo Answers is a place where the stupidest people on the internet go to answer the stupidest questions on the internet. It is responsible for the “How is babby formed?” meme. So let’s see what wisdom the Hive Mind has for us today.

I found two questions on human consumption of dog food out of necessity. For each posting I will quote a summary of the question as well as some highlights from the answers.

Post #1: Would poor people really eat dog food? There is a stereotype image of poor people having to eat dog food because they don’t have enough money for anything else. Isn’t a tin of tuna or Chef Boyardee just as cheap or cheaper?

• I have never been poor, but I doubt if they have had to eat dog food. Chef Boyardee is pretty cheap. Some of that dog food, is pretty expense [sic]. I am sure they would go to the $1.00 menu at McDonald’s if necessary
• Can of tuna does not have the nutrition [sic]. If you look at the dog food ingredient [sic], you see a wide variety of food. Corn, meat, fat, protein, everything’s in there.
• If a poor person was hungry enough, they wouldn’t have a dog just sitting around, they would have it run deer [sic], or they would eat it. Poor people also grow there [sic] own food, hunt there [sic] own game. They are way more independent then rich people, because if the world was to go to heck…they wouldn’t suffer that much!

Post #2: How did the urban legend that poor elderly people eat dog food get started?

• unfortunately, it is not an urban legend. it is quite true.
• WHEN MY GRANDPA GOT COUGHT [sic] POURING MILK ON HIS KIBBLES AND BITS FOR BREAKFAST THEN CHUCK NORRIS KICKED HIM IN THE FACE
• Elderly people on fixed incomes started buying dog and cat food because it was cheaper, and has the same if not better nutritional value. However, that was quite some time ago – pet food is not always cheaper than cheap canned foods. This was a big concern and story in many places in the late 70s, early 80s.

So there’s some disagreement on whether there has ever been a widespread trend of eating dog food out of desperation. It’s worth noting, however, that the only response that didn’t appear to be written by an idiot supports the idea. But does eating dog food actually make economic sense? Does it provide all the basic nutrients needed by the human body? Find out next time, in a very special episode of…Matt Meshulam pathologically overthinks everything.

According to the Guardian, every major economic recession in England has occurred around the time of an AC/DC album release. The correlation is staggering:

1973: AC/DC form in Sydney, Australia.
Economy: Start of the oil crisis, which saw the price quadruple

1980: AC/DC release breakthrough album Back In Black
Economy: Inflation in UK reaches 20% and unemployment nears 2 million

1990: AC/DC score comeback with The Razor’s Edge
Economy: Recession in UK imminent

2008: AC/DC top UK album charts
Economy: Biggest world recession in decades looms

This is the most important discovery in correlation science since it was found that pirates prevent global warming:

I’ve been reading Arthur Clarke’s Rama II, the sequel to the awesomely dry Rendezvous With Rama. I just remembered a passage near the beginning that had some notable parallels to our current economic downturn. Quoting:

Dire warnings of impending economic doom started being heard above the euphoric shouts of the millions who had recently vaulted into the middle and upper classes. Suggestions to balance budgets and limit credit at all levels of the economy were ignored. Instead, creative effort was expended to come up with one way after another of putting more spending power in the hands of a populace that had forgotten how to say wait, much less no, to itself.

…

On May 1, 2134, three of the largest international banks announced that they were insolvent because of bad loans. Within two days a panic had spread around the world.

The full excerpt can be read on Google Books.

Of course, there are likely hundreds of published fiction stories where a global economic collapse is triggered by a prolonged period of loose credit. I was just interested how the quoted passage describes so closely what happened recently. Also interestingly, the narrative then diverges to tell how the collapse perpetuated itself because the computers running the stock markets could not keep up with the volume of transactions pouring in from people dumping their stocks. Arthur C. Clarke may have been the first to propose the notion of geosynchronous orbits, but I think he also slightly miscalculates the computing power that will be available over a century from now.

I suppose, in science fiction, you can’t hit a home run every time.