The Pecking Order Paradigm by Pedro F Marcelino

Rotterdam, The Netherlands

Walking down the wide streets of the post-war city, the choice of restaurants is appealing: from Italian to Indonesian, from Surinamese to Malayan, from Caribbean to Indian. The atmosphere is sophisticated, with Dutch as well as tourists enjoying exotic meals served in exotic-looking locations and served by exotic faces – just as they would in Latin America or in Southeast Asia.

London, England

Were it not for the architecture and the drizzle, the scene could well be anywhere in the Indian subcontinent. In Banglatown, a mix-mash of Bangladeshi, Iranian, Indian, Afghani and Pakistani restaurants and stores, but heavily influenced by a dominating Bangladeshi community, the sweet scents of spices dwell in the air, doormen invite passers-by into restaurants every second step. Further away, in Chinatown, shop windows exhibit menus in Chinese characters, others show unidentifiable animal corpses that will make it to someone’s plate. Long gone are the times of pie & mash, sausage & mash or fish & chips. Those are the rarities of the day. From the dull reputation of the 80’s, London became – almost overnight – the European capital of haute-cuisine, a place where the best of every world is assembled to created something new. It is not uncommon to find Brazilian chefs cooking Italian, or Srilankans cooking cajun.

Lille, France

A group of top-tier French chefs boards and airplane, on their way to Japan. They will be attending workshops with reputed Nipponic chefs whose techniques have gathered respect in the West of late. Proud French cuisine surrenders to changing times.

Lisbon, Portugal

Local fast food sides with high street Subways and Burger Kings. Dining out, however, might mean eating Moroccan or Spanish, Ukrainian or Brazilian, Mozambican or Capeverdean. Supermarkets’ fruit and vegetable departments are packed with produce from the five corners of the globe – vegetables with strange sounding names, fruits with odd shapes.

Hamburg, Germany

In the city center, Bratwurst or Currywurst with fries are not easy to find, and actually lie just short of anachronistic. Alongside American(ized) franchises, small Middle-Eastern bistros disseminate the intense smells of Lebanese or Turkish food – Lamacun pizza and Döner Kebab now listed as German delicacies.

Toronto, Canada

A recipe in Wagamama’s cook book requires mirin sauce and a couple other uncanny ingredients. Bruno’s Fine Foods is likely to have them all, and although the shop assistant has not heard of many of the things in the list, she risks pointing out a section. There it is, among dozens of other unidentifiable sauces from every continent. Shelf after shelf, Bruno’s supplies the most uncommon requests of the savviest, most demanding customers in North America. Toronto is considered (along New York and Sao Paulo) the gastronomic capital of the world. With over a hundred signficant minorities living in the city, fresh produce arrives daily from anywhere in the world to supply both their needs and those of restaurant-cultured Torontonians. Karnail, the Sikh check-out operator, comments: «when I arrived in Canada, the thing that surprised me the most was food. Food everywhere, all sorts of food I had never heard of. In India, there was barely enough to eat. Rich countries can pay, they can have any food they want, from anywhere in the world. It’s so different.»

Anywhere in Africa, 2006

Step into any regular African grocery store where the majority of the population gets supplies. The shelves are typically half full (or half empty, depending on the perspective), eggs are sold by the unit, as are oranges or carrots. Quite often, some of these items won’t even be easy to find. Availability oscillates greatly, and shortages are not at all uncommon. Rice, manioc, beans, yam or sweet potatoes might be easier. Imported goods are rare and expensive. Produced in Europe, in Brazil or Mexico, in China or in South Africa, they specifically target the African and Middle Eastern markets. Packaging is done accordingly, Arabic alongside English, French or Portuguese. Butter or oil are usually sold in tin cans, the Arabic wording making it hard to realise that it is produced in Holland. In some cases, local industries were overwhelmed by foreign giants. In West Africa, the guava paste industry went almost but bankrupt when Brazil started flooding the region with its super-production, cheaper despite the transport. Cans read “made in Brazil” in a discrete spot. The label shows the local flag crossed with the Brazilian green-yellow. Albeit being produced locally, sugar is valuable as a trading good, and is often more expensive than in rich countries. There are not, needless to say, international cuisine restaurants. In many cities, actually, there are no restaurants at all.

Within only a few decades, people in resourceful countries have grown used to variety and experimentation. Their vocabularies have increased with tropical nouns. In the Third World, large proportions of the best arable soils are used to grow low-rentability / hig-value produce, that can be sold in Europe, Japan or the US. Most of the world’s population, however, survives on roughly 100 different plants (rice and corn top the list), whose genetic codes have been losing quality. Cross-breed crops threaten the sustainability of the species that feed billions of people, yet genetically modified food is presented by interested corporations as the solutions for hunger.

According to different studies, the world could produce enough food for all of its inhabitants, if only the crop and supplies were evenly distributed. Some companies, such as Néstlé, take these markets seriously. The company has been accused of everything, from tampering with food quality that is destined to African markets, to abusing UN programmes with self-promotion rather than humanitarian objectives.

In a recent award-winning documentary, Darwin’s Nightmare, Europeans, Japanese and American are faced with the ugliest face of food globalization: every single day, empty airplanes flay to Lake Victoria and are pack full with fish sold expensive at home. Local communities are literally left to dwell in rottening piles of skin and fishbones.

Never as today has the world economy afflicted diets to such an extent. In the North for the better, with increased variety. But this variety is not accompanied by a due understanding of what that means in the South.

While a relaxed Saturday cook off in Philadelphia could consist of Danish herring and curry salad, Japanese tuna and beef carpaccio with Chilean wine and Costarican coffee, in other latitudes a family of ten will most likely share a small pot or rice and beans (if there are any beans).

It is after all, the law of nature, the law of the strongest. Bigger birds are higher on the pecking order, hence eating first and getting the nicer chunks. Smaller birds get the crumbs. But perhaps nature got it all wrong, perhaps it needs some fine tunning. Being aware isn’t but the first step.