Influenced or not

Every Italian you ask will know what the name of this Supermarket is

Sometimes memories are very close. You hear a song on the radio and you are immediately back in that beautiful trip during one of your holidays. Or you smell a dish which reminds you of some cozy winter evenings with your family. But not all those flash-backs go back to private events.

Advertising companies make their money with these memories of people. Their goal is to relate a specific product to a specific memory: a special song, a short phrase, a typical person…. After a while you only have to see the phrase and you know that ‘They can do it’. Or you can’t see an actor without thinking about the brand of coffee he drinks.

Some people have memories of commercial dating years or even decennia back. Especially those who were the first to encounter commercial breaks on the radio or on the tv. These short interruptions were usually very hilarious. I recently visited a lecture were some interesting examples were clarified.

Now commercial breakdowns become sometimes very annoying. But even then it stays in our minds. So in this case even an annoying commercial might help to augment the sales. Since that seems to be the objective of commercials.

There are brands which have such a clear typography that only the typography of the letters or the logo without the name is enough to recognize where it belongs too. Do a check in this alphabet. I am sure you can find half of it without thinking more than ten seconds.

The streets are full of these brands. Whether we like it or not, it does influence us and the appearance of the streets. An artist once did an interesting project on this. See the amount of yellow on the picture?

I am not sure whether I should be pro or contra commercials. I know that it is not always good when we are influenced by the big companies. Especially because it usually concerns unhealthy products. On the other hand belong this commercials – or logo’s – to the life in cities and villages. It is part of a long history were companies try to make money. Like we all do in our own way. I guess you just need to stay awake and decide for yourself whether you allow them to influence you or not. Good luck!

From the field to your doorstep

‘They’ want to bring farmers closer to their clients. The supply needs to get closer to the demands. Interesting. I’ve already talked about milk farmers going from door to door, wrote about open farm days and many posts named the words urbanfarming. But this isn’t all of it.

To create a more intense relation between consumer and the produce they eat you can undertake different actions. Some of them are passive and really easy to execute: put a picture of the farmers’ family on a jar of milk underlined with a romantic text ‘written by the farmer himself’ and the consumer will immediately feel that he knows where his milk comes from. Or – another relatively option – is to shoot a tv commercial in ‘a sunny gold colored grain field where healthy and strong man and woman working hard to get the cereals for our breakfast or bread’. Don’t you want to buy it? 

It might become more difficult if you like the consumer and producer to actually meet. Most of the produce process are not as romantic as the consumers like to think or are told. So it becomes a delicate thing and the organization of the event needs to think carefully who to introduce and who not. Besides that it asks an effort from the consumer. Are they curious enough to enter the dirty and smelly yard of the farmer?

Farmers markets seem to be popular these days but also here you can wonder whether you would really meet the farmer? Most of the time he hasn’t time to sell his own produce and asks someone to represent him. Not speaking any bad of the knowledge on products of that person.

More modern and very convenient for the hard-worker-with-a-full-agenda might be the internet shopping. You go online, check in on the website of your local farmer or fresh food supplier, chose the products you need that week and fill your basket. The only thing you then have to do is wait until the doorbell rings. Easy as it is. But not very a moment in which you really encounter he who produces your food.

Although I don’t sound really convinced on it, I decided to try it. A group of young people created a nice website which allows you to order different baskets filled with vegetables and/or fruits. You get local produce, fresh from the field right on your doorstep. Recipes included. I do feel good about it. It gives me the feeling that I support a local farmer, that I do reduce transport emissions and I have the idea to get the produce which are in fact from the season. Yummy. And maybe, when the weather starts to get a little better, I give it a try. I will go and find ‘my farmer’ and tell him what I think of my produce.  I’ll let you know when the time is there. 

Sweets

You have to resist a lot when you live in Italy. There is wine, delicious pasta’s, wood oven pizza and many, many pastry shops offering the most beautiful and delicious sweets. How can the Italians enjoy it all without growing obese?

For a north-European the streets in Mediterranean cities are full of calorie-rich temptations. But are these really temptations? Can’t we just enjoy it like the original inhabitants do? They start their breakfast with a brioche or a croissant, flush it away with a small but strong coffee and then head of for work. Easy as it is.

But for me it is strange. I learned that it is necessary to have a decent breakfast. Dutch food-specialists tell you to have a good part of the necessary daily fiber intake in the morning. This wakes-up the digestion process for the rest of the day. And more over you need to be careful with the calorie intake not spilling all you points within an hour after waking-up.

A couple of weeks ago I had to live on a single brioche from early in the morning till 16h in the afternoon. In the period in between I made a six hour walk in the hills only eating an apple. Not something I plan to do more often, but I made it without any problems. So a brioche doesn’t seem to be so bad for your body.

More surprising is to see that slim Mediterraneans  do not only eat sweets at breakfast but also later in the day. As a dessert after lunch or for a snack in the afternoon. Maybe it is the ‘high cuisine’ snack that makes you enjoy it completely and pure. Anyhow to me it seems a better treat than one of those commercial chocolate bars.

Maybe this is the trick that does it. Allow yourself at least once a day to eat something sweet of a good quality. Take your time and do it somewhere far away from your desk. Your body will enjoy it and digests it without punishing you with extra kilos. It’s worth trying? 

Fear of water

Almost ready to take off and serve water to the Milanese

Yep. It is a new year. A year full of new opportunities. A new start in which you can change your own habits and influence the direction of your future. And after all the eating you did during the festivities you might also want to pay some more attention to your drink and eating habits.

Since last summer Milano is my hometown. While I am used to drink water from the tap the Milanese don’t like to do this. Guests who are served water from the tap seem to be afraid to drink it while it is as fresh as water from the nearby mountain creeks. But they are not used to drink it and it’s difficult to make them do so. Tap water even has the doubtful nickname aqcua del sindaco (water from the mayor).

The problem of getting the people to drink tap water is not only a problem of Milano. Most cities here struggle with the fact that their inhabitants keep buying bottled water while restaurants and bars keep serving small plastic bottles to their customers. This creates an enormous pile of waste (plastic bottles and environmental output through transports) and costs a lot more (up to a hundred times per liter). What more reasons do you need to make a change this year?

The government has already initiated a diversity of campaigns to make their citizens aware of the fact that it is possible to drink water from the tap. Tests have been done and published on websites and are constantly updated. Even newspapers have done tests to compare bottled water with those offered by the mayor. It should be clear by now that there is no risk to fill a glass from the tap and drink it all.

Off-course not all cities are situated close to such a nice source of water (the pre-alps) as the ones in the northern part of the country. We don’t have to coop with the smell and flavor of chlorine. But even here fore are some simple solutions: just leave it standing for a while and the smell will be gone.

Most cities offer running water in public rubinetti which can be useful during hot summers. It is used by tourists, dogs and other animals to stop them from being thirsty. But only some Italians are brave enough to fill-up a bottle and finish it completely. How can this be changed?

Well, the municipality of Milan found some solution. In addition to the earlier mentioned water-tap-points the city invested in (expensive) machines which offer citizens free sparkling and still water. Water which is constantly controlled and thus safe. The only thing a citizen has to do is to obtain a pass, bring some glass bottles and go to one of the five water-tap-points in the city. In a minute you have liters of fresh water.

These water-o-mats are a good idea to keep the Italians away from the bottled water from the supermarkets. Plastic is saved and transport costs and outputs reduced. As long as the Milanese come by foot or by bike off-course. But haven’t we left behind the period that we needed to go out to get water?