Friday, July 09, 2010

What we don't know

There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. These are things we do not know we don’t know. - Quote by Don Rumsfeld
I'm sitting here with my lunch, farmer's market gespatcho and Mexican Fruit stand avocado and I got to thinking about food. Particularly a question I asked the vendor who sold the soup a long time ago. I asked him if it was vegan. It must have been Lent when doing vegan Fridays (never again!). He said that the bread used was vegan. I was doubtful but bought it anyway. I never made bread and always figured it needed eggs and milk. I must have been confusing it with cake. But that was an illustration of what I didn't know. I didn't know that bread is flour, water and some sort of yeast or rising agent.
There is a lot we don't know about food. There is probably even more that we know that we don't know about food. There is probably even more than that which we don't know we don't know about food. The food unknown unknowns. As a society there is a lot we will know about what is trendy to know about food but will increasiingly loose knowledge about old foodways of cooking and food prep and food saftey because they are not as trendy.

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