The defenders of raw food assure that food loses its properties above 42 degrees. Well, I'm sorry to inform you that in recent days even the lettuce and tomatoes in the salad have been exposed to more heat in our gardens and homes.
Those two monsters of low-temperature cooking that are Salvador Brugués and his buddy, a certain Joan Roca, propose to cook some fish between forty and fifty degrees (deep-freeze them beforehand if you want to try it at home, because of the anisakis, and eat them immediately). . The good news (appreciate my irony, please) is that we no longer need a controlled graduation water bath; by leaving the teleost supreme on the windowsill for a moment we will have it ready to serve.
And if you are more of meat, and as a server you like it rare but never cold, know that among the forty-odd degrees of heart of product that characterize a good round and round steak, or "bleu" in Scoffierian terminology, and the fifties and few of the juicy point, "saignant" or "rare", the temperatures registered these days in the different continents of the northern hemisphere have moved.
That is why the Secretary General of the United Nations has also used a gastronomic simile to describe the current situation of climate change, stating that we have already gone from the screen of global warming to that of boiling.
If António Guterres had foodie tendencies, he would still have said that our atmosphere is more and more like an air fryer. The truth is that we live in a kind of solar oven with a broken thermostat, and scientists say that at least part of it is us who is loading it. In other words, not only do we look like that frog that swims in the pot of increasingly hot water without realizing that it is already half-cooked, but at the same time we fan the fire that will condemn us to boil.
The theory of the so-called boiled frog syndrome is based precisely on the fact that we are not capable of reacting to the slow phenomena that concern us until it is too late, and it was already used by Al Gore to alert us to global warming in An Inconvenient Truth.
That truth that Gore denounced in 2006 is today more true than ever, but it continues to be uncomfortable. And a large part of the problem is precisely that, that in order not to further aggravate the drift we must leave our comfort zone. Living without contaminating so much is possible, but not at all comfortable.
This is demonstrated by the excellent high school research work that has just been presented by the daughter of some friends, Judit Borralleras, who together with her family tried to minimize the generation of household waste for a month, weighing and documenting every detail. Result, it is feasible to reduce them extraordinarily, although it requires awareness, planning, effort and time. Also, it is quite expensive.
And that is what we must not allow. Being sustainable cannot penalize us so much. Surely we have to give up many things (most of them absolutely unnecessary, actually) and invest time in taking care of ourselves and taking care of the planet so as not to end up cooking all of us “au bleu” in this short climatic broth.
But sustainability cannot also be more expensive. It is not logical that it is cheaper to fill the house every day with single-use containers with unhealthy products from the boondocks produced and brought at the cost of wasting water, ruining land, exploiting people and generating greenhouse gases.
We therefore need education, but also legislation to return the food system to logic. The problem is that either we all do it, or it's useless. Because all frogs are in the same pot, which is the planet. Historical temperature records have not been recorded only in Europe; also in America and Asia. It is the temperature of the entire world that is rising uncontrollably, and there is no way to isolate yourself.
In other words, if in Europe we finally take responsibility, after being pioneers for a long time in this development model that today we know is unsustainable, but the rest do not, our agri-food producers may lose productivity, thereby further increasing the external dependency. In addition, it is unfair that the social and environmental rights that we protect in our surroundings are not required for all the products that we end up consuming.
It will not seem to us that our efforts and resignations are of much use if the commitment against climate change is not global. In turn, those who still need it have every right to develop in search of well-being.
This planetary transition, as immense and complex as it is urgent, is obviously difficult. More knowing that, meanwhile, we continue to need to eat every day. If possible, fine. Someone very smart and with command in the square will have to know how to apply game theory in this world saucepan where we are poached.
And quickly, here the heat is starting to feel and there is no B-side.
