Strolling around 新宿（Shinjuku）on last weekend, I found an interesting shop that I never seen before. One of the interesting point is they sell rice. Then what a special thing? We can find rice easily in supermarket or convenient store easily. But, this shop over the consumer the fresh rice, which means they will mill the rice soon after we chose the rice that we want to buy. The milling process is to remove the husk and the bran layers, and produce an edible, white rice kernel that is sufficiently milled and free of impurities. Besides from the freshness of the rice, the rice in this shop are little bit expensive between ¥ 730 /kg – ¥ 2000/kg, one more additional reason is because they sell information to the consumer about the quality of their rice (Fig.1 ) . For instance, they put some information about the source of the rice (place where the rice harvested) and the quality. As for quality, they defined the quality whether free from pesticides or not, stickiness, texture (soft/hard), and sweetness. The transparency of the information of the product make the rice in this shop become special. It makes the customer easily to understand about the product that they buy. By doing so, consumer confidence of the product can also be built by providing them with more information related to food quality and safety attributes.
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Figure 1. The rice in the shop (Source : Private picture)
After I found this shop, it gained my curiosity about the rice that they sell in detail. Finally, in their website, I found an understandable explanation of the dimension of the quality of the rice that they sell (Fig.2) and they also want to bring happiness fro a bowl of rice. The happiness is not only for the customer but also for the producer (farmer). Why then food related with happiness ?
Food indeed very important for human life, because we eat to sustain ourselves to do so many activities. From the food that we eat, we can get macro and micronutrients that very useful for our body. why it can make people happy when we eat them?
The one of possible answer is the enjoyment of sufficient information of the quality and safety of the food, cooking, eating, and until the changes in brain chemistry that food can bring about can make people happy.
Fig. 2 The dimension of the quality of the rice
(Source : http://www.akomeya.jp)
Lastly, through this article I would like to say that food safety and quality information are important but sometimes we should pay more to reduce that asymmetry information. Once we get the sufficient information of the food that we eat, it will also increase the excitement of eating the food. So, happiness can also come from the food that we eat.
-Vicka-