In the quiet moments of early morning, my mind seems clearer, able to think deeper and wider than during the day. For example, I find myself pondering the concept of what could be the farthest thing from sushi in our contemporary society.
Sushi is a traditional Japanese dish, meticulously crafted using ingredients like fish, seaweed, and rice, with the majority of its components sourced from the sea. Most are prepared raw after careful preprocessing. Culturally, it represents a facet of Japan's traditional cuisine. Imagining what's farthest from this, we might consider terrestrial proteins like meat, bread as a contrast to rice, cooking methods like grilling as opposed to raw preparation, and Western modern cuisine as a cultural counterpoint. Combining these factors, we might arrive at a Western dish like a hamburger or hot dog.
However, there's a sense of familiarity and accessibility to both sushi and hamburgers or hot dogs. They are all readily available in shopping malls, and their ubiquity makes them feel close, not distant. There must be a food that's farther from sushi. Let's shift our perspective.
Sushi and hamburgers involve a lot of hands-on preparation before they are served. What about food that involves minimal human intervention in its production process, something that goes straight from machine to mouth? Instant noodles might come to mind, but they require some preparation before eating. Snacks like potato chips, on the other hand, feel very "manufactured". There's a significant conceptual distance between sushi and potato chips, and they evoke different kinds of familiarity. Yet, they are both readily available, which brings a sense of similarity.
Perhaps the farthest food from sushi is something that's not readily available. Let's consider physical distance. We live on the Earth's surface, so what about food that's far from the surface? That brings us to space food. I don't know much about how space food is made, but I imagine it's mechanically produced, packaged in a special way, and processed to prevent it from scattering in zero gravity. The mere fact that I'm unfamiliar with its production process makes it feel distant from my daily life. After a morning of contemplation, I've concluded that the farthest food from sushi is space food. I briefly considered intravenous nutrition, but that's not really eating, so I dismissed the idea.
A quick Google search on space food reveals that there are categories like Japanese and Western, suggesting that cultural aspects of meals are being developed even for space food. This led me to think that considering space food as a group might be too broad. I feel there's more to explore here. To deepen my understanding, I'm considering making some space food on my next day off.
