My central European middle-class goggles are much more firmly in place than I thought. A case in point: Joghurt.
I have been happily using a pot of joghurt as a standard comparative price indicator across my travels, complaining about the bland and expensive $1.50 Hawaiian as compared to the lovely €.50 real alpine milk joghurts you can still find in Germany or - until recently - the Greek stirred loveliness at only slightly more expensive. When faced with a dearth of joghurts in Thailand or Vietnam, I simply told myself that, given the high levels of lactose intolerance, locals don't tend to consume milk products and my world-view was saved.
At weaving yesterday, I was having joghurt as a desert (the kind you get in the supermarket chains here is the over-processed american type (sorry!) that mainly consist of ingredients that, to my German purist tastes, should have no place in joghurts -- why would anyone put eggs in a milk product??). As I was peeling off the lid, one of the weavers asked me what I was eating in the same way I had asked them when they were unwrapping their 'ju' (sprouting coconut) or their steamed breadfruit.
Disbelievingly I said 'a joghurt' (I didn't quite know how to pitch my voice on this one).
She asked 'what is this?'
And here is where my world view crumbled: I was eating this joghurt as a desert, an unnecessary add-on to an already nutritious and varied meal (vegetables, tofu, egg, brown rice). And the desert alone cost me almost $2. I was talking to a woman who was eating white rice and meat for every meal of the day, every day of the year, a diet which will almost certainly leave her diabetic like so many of her fellow islanders (see my earlier post). Not only did she not know about many of the food choices that are available to the more fortunate - she had probably never come close to the aisles where they stock the foods for the ri-belle (meaning 'white foreigner') because there was nothing in there she could afford (or would know how to eat).
Just because it's widely available in the supermarkets does not mean it's available to the people who shop in the supermarkets. Got it. Seraphim tells me he is shocked at how naive I am - I am shocked too.
I have been happily using a pot of joghurt as a standard comparative price indicator across my travels, complaining about the bland and expensive $1.50 Hawaiian as compared to the lovely €.50 real alpine milk joghurts you can still find in Germany or - until recently - the Greek stirred loveliness at only slightly more expensive. When faced with a dearth of joghurts in Thailand or Vietnam, I simply told myself that, given the high levels of lactose intolerance, locals don't tend to consume milk products and my world-view was saved.
At weaving yesterday, I was having joghurt as a desert (the kind you get in the supermarket chains here is the over-processed american type (sorry!) that mainly consist of ingredients that, to my German purist tastes, should have no place in joghurts -- why would anyone put eggs in a milk product??). As I was peeling off the lid, one of the weavers asked me what I was eating in the same way I had asked them when they were unwrapping their 'ju' (sprouting coconut) or their steamed breadfruit.
Disbelievingly I said 'a joghurt' (I didn't quite know how to pitch my voice on this one).
She asked 'what is this?'
And here is where my world view crumbled: I was eating this joghurt as a desert, an unnecessary add-on to an already nutritious and varied meal (vegetables, tofu, egg, brown rice). And the desert alone cost me almost $2. I was talking to a woman who was eating white rice and meat for every meal of the day, every day of the year, a diet which will almost certainly leave her diabetic like so many of her fellow islanders (see my earlier post). Not only did she not know about many of the food choices that are available to the more fortunate - she had probably never come close to the aisles where they stock the foods for the ri-belle (meaning 'white foreigner') because there was nothing in there she could afford (or would know how to eat).
Just because it's widely available in the supermarkets does not mean it's available to the people who shop in the supermarkets. Got it. Seraphim tells me he is shocked at how naive I am - I am shocked too.