
Vietnam's Low-Tech Food System Takes Advantage of Decay - anotherevan
http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2017/02/vietnams-low-tech-fermentation-food-system-takes-advantage-of-decay.html
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jimmies
I grew up in the countryside of Vietnam during the first 10 years of my life.
My neighbor was making rice wine at that time and man, did they know how to
make ruou nep (fermented rice that is a byproduct of the rice wine-making
process). It is somewhat alcoholic (5% or less) blended with a very sweet
taste (sugar is the byproduct of fermenting process), with the remnants of
rice that one can chew on. I think the dish could actually be made popular in
the States because it doesn't have a weird smell which a lot of the fermented
stuff does.

Wondering why hasn't anyone capitalize on that yet.

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trome
I think its a perspective issue when looking at market opportunities, having
worked with a few dozen older Vietnamese immigrant business owners who came
here at after highschool, they tend to learn a skillset and buy a business in
that vertical and stick with it, operating it from rote memory with baseline
rules (sell at 25% above cost) that keep them moderately profitable, but
prevent them from ever having the scale or capital of Uwajimaya or other
businesses like Walmart that know how to merchandise and sell more items due
to placement in store and similar tactics.

Then you have the 1st generation or those like yourself who went to middle
school & highschool stateside and soaked up some American culture, maybe
learned some critical thinking skills or had to take a business course or two,
and this group either wants absolutely nothing to do with the family business
or small businesses in general, or they end up taking over the family business
or starting their own to varying degrees of success, but using much different
tactics that often net better results.

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omilu
Fermented vegetables and fermented fish no problem, raw fermented pork? Sounds
horrific till you remember it's the same thing as salami, delicious.

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contingencies
We have a huge amount of fermented food next door to Vietnam in the Chinese
province of Yunnan, too.

If you are interested in fermentation, check out some of the foodtech torrents
recently posted on TPB. Two academic books were specifically about different
types of fermented foods in South Asia and Southeast Asia.

Unfortunately I'm traveling now so can't identify which torrent it was, but if
you seek ye shall find (~3-4 weeks ago?).

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norea-armozel
I wish I could eat some of these foods but one thing really hold me up which
is how sensitive my gut is to certain fermented foods like sauerkraut. I don't
think I could gently adapt to it because even a small amount of such food
causes a very painful reaction. So, I think I'm boned when it comes to eating
anything beyond boring US processed foods.

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KSS42
What about yogurt?

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norea-armozel
Most yogurts play nice with my stomach in moderation. If I eat lots of it then
gas city and pain for me.

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avansi
ey—author of article here, aaron i had a similar issue when i first started
eating fermented foods. but before that i had a lot of gas issues in general.
eating fermented food made it especially bad, i had huge stomach aches. but i
started preparing my own kombucha, and eating lots of sauerkraut type stuff.
so yeah it got really bad for a while, my stomach was incendiary, but then
after a month it actually passed. its like it hit some kind of plateau, where
my stomach got used to it after beign totally surprised by it for a while.
bonus: my general stomach aches and gas issues disappeared after i was more
used to fermentation in my diet. im not saying it would be the same for you,
but i do think its worth trying. be careful and see if you can deal with it,
but dont be afraid if at first you have a bad reaction... that might change
after a while.

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JoeAltmaier
Yeah I don't see signing up for weeks of pain for some possibility of benefit.
Are folks desperate for some solution to gastric problems, that makes this an
attractive route?

