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.

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.

Introduction

Last night I happened upon a carton of colored Goldfish-brand cracker snacks at a party. So naturally, I set up a single-blind ABX test to determine if it is possible to distinguish the colored fish from their “naturally” colored friends simply by taste. Color-taste correlation studies have been attempted before-I’m sure everybody remembers the controversial Von Braun M&M experiments in the 1960s-but the results have always been tainted by the fact that most of these studies were bankrolled by Big Dye.

Method

For my study I employed the assistance of a single volunteer, who received no compensation other than approximately fifteen Goldfish crackers. Standard ABX test procedures were followed: the subject was asked to close her eyes, was given a Goldfish known to be uncolored (the “A” sample), and then given a colored Goldfish (“B” sample). The test administrator informed the subject of the specific color of the colored Goldfish, but the main focus of the study was to simply distinguish colored from uncolored samples. Determining a specific color by taste was outside the scope of this study.

Once the A/B calibration was completed, a pseudorandom sequence of Goldfish crackers was given to the test subject one-by-one. The subject was instructed to make a best effort at determining whether the Goldfish was colored. After each trial, the subject was informed of the true coloration of the cracker. This breaks from typical ABX protocol, but was deemed acceptable since an A/B calibration was not performed before each individual trial.

Approximately 15 trials were performed. Detailed data was not recorded since a pen and paper was not readily available. Even without detailed data analysis, it was clear that the test subject was unable to correctly guess the color of the Goldfish more than 50% of the time. This percentage, of course, indicates zero correlation between the color of the Fish and the taste.

Conclusions

Unrelated: Poutine sure has been coming up in conversation a lot lately, hasn’t it?