Too Fresh?

When the lunch break was announced I needed to catch up on some calls and emails, so didn't get to wander backstage right away for a bite. When I finally broke free I found an assortment of sandwiches, including turkey, veggie, roast beef and tuna. There were also chips, cookies and fruit, so as lunches go it wasn't too bad. I chose a half a tuna sandwich and a bag of chips, and wandered out a back door to get some air. I found a spot in the shade and perched on a bench away from the hustle and bustle of the job to catch my breath for a few minutes.

When I was done I threw out my garbage and headed back in, intending to grab a cookie for the afternoon. As I was standing by the food tables considering my choices (chocolate chip or sugar) I ran into one of my team. He was shaking his head and looked a little put out. "Everything OK?" I asked Hugo. "If you haven't had lunch, don't eat the tuna." Uh oh. Too late for me? He seemed all right and looked unsettled, though not unwell. "I had a tuna sandwich, and after I took a bite and put it down, a tiny worm fell off the lettuce." Unsettling to be sure. But at least it wasn't half a worm.

For all the news about the growth in prepared foods, packaged meals and the dangers of highly processed items, we all say (or at least pay lip service to) the idea of eating more fresh foods. That can be proteins that aren't formed, as in chicken drumsticks as opposed to nuggets, as well as fruits and vegetables that come straight from the tree or the vine vs. a can or a bag. That's not to say that all processing of food is bad. Flash freezing of vegetables and meats extends their life and convenience. Dehydrating or canning foodstuffs enable us all to enjoy items out of season, or from locales where getting them to consumers in a fresh state is impractical or prohibitively expensive. Bread is a processed grain, milk needs to be pasteurized, and ice cream is simply way better than just frozen milk. But the idea is to get as close to the origin as possible, doing only what is needed to get it from the source to you.

And yes, getting fresher stuff does mean that you have to occasionally put up with the realities of where it comes from or how it is produced. While the modern food industry is a marvel in how it butchers, picks, packages and transports the things we eat, it is impossible to accomplish that level of sanitary washing and preparing without a few misses along the way. Coupled with that is the simple fact that the less processing you do to the end product means there is more possibility of "contamination" along the way. That the word is accurate if not unfairly pejorative, as there is no evil intent or sloppy work in the process. But when there are thousands of people producing about 350 million metric tons of meat and 1.17 billion metric tons of vegetables a year, the odd worm (Hugo's probably weighed less than a tenth of a gram) will indeed slip through.

Last year when we were in Japan, we decided to have our last night's dinner in our local Kyoto neighborhood. We chose a sushi place where we sat at the counter and watched the chef. I ordered a variety of sushi, while my wife asked for the sashimi special. Hers came with multiple small dishes, presented in a beautiful array of colors and shapes. Finally, a gorgeous platter with an assortment of pieces of fish was put before her. We both admired it, and each began to enjoy our dinner. She used her chopsticks to take a bite of one piece of sashimi, then put it down and turned to take something else. Out of the corner of her eye she noted some movement. She turned back to see that same piece twitching just a bit. She dropped her sticks in horror, looked at the chef in front of us, waved her arms and shrieked, "Too fresh! Too Fresh!" He looked over, smiled, quickly reached across and grabbed the offending piece and took it away. It came back shortly thereafter on its own plate. Grilled. It was delicious.

You might like your steak rare, your broccoli crunchy and your apples crisp. Just know that to get that might mean you find the occasional unsettling evidence of its former existence. Hugo's worm just proved his lettuce was fresh, and my wife's sashimi twitch the same. Too fresh or still fresh? It's just a matter of degree.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford tries to eat fresh food when he can, but also likes a good hot dog. His column appears weekly via email and online http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/ and https://marcwollin.substack.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.