Vietnam's Low-Tech Food System Takes Advantage of Decay | Hacker News Reader

Vietnam's Low-Tech Food System Takes Advantage of Decay

lowtechmagazine.com

28 pointsanotherevan10 comments

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.

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.

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

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?).

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.

Fermented foods are often high in histamine which can cause problems for people who lack the enzymes to break it down.

The histamine regulates acid production and other processes in the digestive system and having it in food can send them into overdrive.

What about yogurt?

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

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.

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?

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