Thinking About Food
A quick glance at the label one of the many processed foods found in any convenience store in Japan or the U.S. would reveal a list of a dozen or so ingredients. Some of these are recognizable like butter or sugar and some are less so. Sometimes it’s hard to draw the connections between these ingredients and something we might like to eat.
At last spring’s work camp to the Asian Rural Institute, a man named Johnny from Malaysia lead a workshop on palm oil production and its uses. We looked the ingredient labels for popular foods like Country Ma’am or convenience store cream pastries and looked for common ingredients. From the workshop we learned that in 2005, palm oil became the most commonly found ingredient in processed foods in Japan. Palm oil is also processed into sweeteners like sorbitol (in Japanese ソルビトール) which is found in yet more foods because it is cheaper and it helps keep the foods tasting fresh longer than using regular sugar. According to Johnny, one of the dangers for palm oil farmers is wild fire. Palm oil trees grow very quickly and they have high oil contents and therefore catch fire very easily.
For the past year and a half I’ve been blessed with the opportunity to participate in these volunteer work camps alongside students from the center. Every time I am shocked to learn something new from people so central to producing the foods we eat. While their hard work makes our lives cheaper and more convenient, theirs become more difficult. Talking about these issues is one of the many experiences I look forward to every summer. The solutions to these problems are not always clear and well defined but it’s the process of finding them together that will make the biggest impact.
- (SKLT)
