Mad cow was definitely a much bigger scandal in UK, since officials were trying to downplay any negative effects that could come out of eating BSE-contaminated cattle... but then the vCJD link was discovered. Japan honestly didn't think too much about it throughout the 90s until their first case showed up in 2001: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2723414/pdf/12199_2008_Article_BF02897705.pdf But its always my privilege to hear from people who directly lived through this stuff... so any Brits who'd like to share, I'd love to hear it! 🎮TWITCH: www.twitch.tv/ladyvirgilia 🐤TWITTER: @VirgiliaLady twitter.com/VirgiliaLady 🌟PATREON: www.patreon.com/LadyVirgilia
I'm in the UK and I definitely remember living through the BSE/MCD years. The thing I remember the most was the MP who publicly fed his own daughter a burger on TV at the height of the crisis to try and convince the public that British beef was "safe". Weird times
Could you do a video on Persona 5's adoration of Curry? Especially it's connection with Sojiro as he made a coffee to go with Wakaba's curry recipe. Maybe go into the history of Japan's relationship with curry because I'd be very interested in learning it. Also I'd go insane if I couldn't eat pork or chicken
@@LadyVirgilia Thank you! Could you also do a video on why baseball is so popular? I've never understood why that is and there are batting cage scenes in a lot of anime and games, not to mention the popularity of baseball anime.
@@LadyVirgilia I've always wondered what the deal is with coffee and curry in Japan, as Trails in the Sky had a coffee + curry cafe too. Which predated P5 by a LONG time.
ahhhhhh Persona 5 Strikers just makes my mouth water... with the entire road trip listing every random local cuisine available and all the recipes you can make for the team~
When you take the whole Persona series as a whole in chronological order, there is a hidden aspect to it. It all follows Erikson's Psycho-social development chart. Persona 1 deals with Trust/Mistrust, what/who can you trust in the world. You're unable to distinguish between reality and dreams. Persona 2 Innocent Sin deals with Autonomy vs shame and doubt. Doing things without knowing the consequences of your actions. Persona 2 Eternal Punishment deals with Initiative vs Guilt. You have now developed a sense of guilt for your actions, and you must learn to push forward to expand who you are. Persona 2 is split in two to represent the before and after of eating the Fruit of knowledge of good and evil. The age where you learn right from wrong. Persona 3 deals with Industry vs Inferiority. At this stage Your skills are put to the test, and it is also the age you lack the most autonomy. your parents control your home life, teachers control your school life, you have no money or means of transportation. You can develop a sense of apathy, that life is unfair and nothing you do matters. Like all the NPCs in P3 who have given up. Persona 4 deals with two steps on the chart, Identity vs confusion and Intimacy vs Isolation. This one speaks for itself, who are you, what turns you on and what sort of relationships do you want. failure leads you to go down the same path as Mitsuo, feeling empty. Persona 5 deals with Generativity vs Stagnation. Enacting positive change in the world, change that will outlast you as a person. overcoming this trial leads you to create a better world. failure makes you into the rotten adults that let bad things happen because it's easier that way. Following this trend, Persona 6 would be dealing with Ego, Despair and Integrity. The wisdom of a full life. Basically obtaining the World Arcana.
I remember in the 90s, my parents stopped me from eating beef even going as far as writing to the school telling them not to serve it to me. As far as I know, I was the only beef-free kid in school at the time funny enough. This was in England and it was to do with the disease.
Once again, you bring up topics I never would've considered when playing these games. As you said, Persona 4's party Personas point to a VERY traditional Japanese theming, and the rural setting of Inaba lends to that too. It's interesting to think about and easy to take it for granted as a westerner. I knew about the meat ban through Age of Empires (like most of my medieval history), where the Japanese civilization in AoE3 can't hunt animals as part of their mechanics, they need to build rice fields and fish as their source of Food. (Technically this should be lifted in the Imperial Age, which coincides with the Meiji Restoration, but that might've been too complicated.) But with how much I see beef used in Japanese dishes now, like gyuudon and gyuutan, and how in-demand imported Japanese Wagyu beef is where I live, it's hard to believe they never ate it for thousands of years. Meiji reforms really stuck. On a side note, I recently watched a video discussing (one magazine's idea of) what Japanese girls want in a man, and one of the qualities was "eats a lot of meat". The host's Japanese guest said this is considered "manly", so I wonder if that ties into Chie's anxieties about her femininity. Are girls who love meat rare in Japan?
Wait that's really cool regarding Age of Empires. I had to take a look at it, and it sounds like a sped up version of Civilization haha. Love it when games and other forms of media prompt irl learning. Tons of period dramas have done the same for me. Yeah Japanese people love meat now. It actually surpassed the consumption of fish/seafood a little over a decade ago I believe. I think it could also tie in that he must be pretty financially stable/well-off since meat is expensive compared to other protein options. Chie's love of meat sorta ties into how she's so far off from the "yamato nadeshiko" stereotype (traditional JP woman, so knows how to cook fish/seafood perfectly, etc.). Especially so since it's so easy to see the contrast considering Yukiko is her best friend. I think if you live in the cities/suburbs, women who love meat aren't all that uncommon. It's probably just because Inaba is so out in the boonies that Chie's love of meat is seen as a kind of anomally. But I also haven't properly lived in Japan since 2010, everything I've heard since then has been from family or documentaries lol.
Age of Empires is totally different from Civilization from what I can tell of Civ. It's a standard RTS (a genre that's sadly dead today due to MOBAs killing it, though AoE2 STILL gets expansions for its definitive edition, they've got African, Indian and Southeast Asian civilizations now) rather than Civ's turn-based board game-like approach. It might be hard to get into if you haven't played many RTS games but it was my childhood. It was it and Carmen Sandiago that taught me most of my history back in the day. Surpassed seafood? Chie would be proud, meat has truly gone further beyond.
@@BlazingFire12 Thanks! I've had a fun time with it, and although it's coming to an end soon I'd like for people to be able to come back to it for years to come.
The whole "eating meat is manly" and "eating sweets is girly" is something I have never understood about japanese social perception. At least the meat part was partially addressed in the video but I want to know about the second... although I can only assume it is because sweets/candy/desserts are cute and cute = girly.
This is one of those things that I would never realized it if not for your channel. Thanks for bringing this up in the video! Despite being my first persona game, I always felt that time had eroded the "small town uniqueness" that P4 has as it was being heavily siphoned for spin offs and adaptations which brings the setting more and more into the city life. These little tidbits are what set it apart, thanks for the vid again! I also seconded if you were to talk about P5 and its obsession with japanese curry and the cafe craze in the mid 2010s. I think it would be a nice throwback to talk about it again as we all lived through the fad but P5 had the chance to capture that period.
In my first year studying to be a veterinarian, we saw the topic, it was horrible for both cattle and people alike, its a very painful disease as well, I remember talking to my dad about it when I first saw it in class and he told me that a friend of his who he worked together with his thesis died because of it, he said it was really tragic, he was a doctor with his life fully ahead of him and by 2 weeks he was dead. As when the scandal happened, I was a kid and don't remember that many details but my parents were completely against me or anyone in the family eating tacos de cabeza (tacos from parts of the head of the cow), to this day I don't eat those kinds of tacos.
I'm from Germany and I'm old enough to have been very aware of the BSE thing during the later 90s and early 2000s. We talked about it in class (biology) and I saw it on the news. However, Germany issued a ban on UK beef products very swiftly and Germany produces large quantities of beef and other meats itself, so we never really had to go out of our way to avoid UK beef, and neither my parents nor myself were really worried or scared. We just bought locally and looked at the labels more closely for a while.
A lot of pacific islands rely on pork or luncheon meats (hotdogs, spam), pigs breed quickly and you can use a combination of most of their meat without getting picky. Cows are very wasteful relative to pigs and chickens, but damn it tastes good. If you don't get visited by explorers then there would likely be a strong limit to eating animals, plus some buddhism influences. Funny to think a lot of popular japanese foods do feature meat coming from older recipes from British and Portuguese cooking or loaned from China, and similarly ground beef recipes are still popular. More to the point of P4 and truth you never really wonder where all your stuff is coming from, especially in modern globalization where it could be frozen from just about anywhere and contamination spreads everywhere to meet demand. I wish P4 went more in depth on the existence of Walmart/Junes in the community, a lot of businesses and families are going under because of the low prices but ya you can also get cheap beef and other things most isolated farming towns wouldn't see. If there was a 100% ban on MEAT, I'd riot to get some chicken. Cutting back on beef I might be able to understand, maybe even pork products, but even if fish is still available you can't just cut all that and poultry out of a man's diet without a fight.
Spam musubi and Loco Moco w/ spam are so good. But yes it's so true that in the globalized era, we hardly question where are goods are coming from. Mad cow only got as bad as it did since all that feed was used all over in the UK (and globally) without considering how bad it is to cannibalize cows yikes I'm glad fair trade and organic movements are gaining traction, but it's so hard for them to gain a foothold when the big monopolies have such unfathomable reach (since the same 3-4 companies in every industry own everything now...). I think it's a pretty common complaint that P4G didn't go as far as it could have with Junes pushing out all the mom & pop stores (much like OG Walmart and nowadays, Amazon). I too, wish Atlus went further with this commentary. Chicken is just so GOOD. Thanks for the very thoughtful comment!
Thank you so much for doing these cultural videos, it's really interesting and you bring up so much depth in what I just saw as a big bowl of virtual meat! I'm a brit but I was born in the early 90s and don't remember/was too young to care about a lot of the fervour around it. 90% of my bodyweight is probably chicken so that being banned would end me
Super interesting! I never knew what p4s "steak" thing was a reference to, but learning about Japan's ban on meat gives me alot more to think about. Great video!
So interesting thing about the US Mad cow scare of 2004, It was due to a herd from Alberta, Canada being given to Montana and Eastern Washington. I might not have been fully paying attention to the news that year, family drama was building on top of a rather heavy college class load, but I did hear about that as part of the story was happening just on the other side of the Cascades from me. As for Meat ban... I would miss beef and pork most. I would have to say that I have been slowly eating less meat, mostly due to the high amount of sodium found in the cooking process.
I was very young durning MCD and can't remember my direct household taking many precautions, but we always got our meat directly from my Grandpa's ranch and i can definitely remember how busy it hept him to insure his own herds were healthy. He'd always primarily stuck to letting his cattle grassfeed with the industrial feeds as more of a back up but this was the first time in my life he reduced the size of his herd so that they could be supported fully off the grasses in his pastures. Definitely something that made my family pretty lucky at the time.
My favorite cuts of meat that I would miss if they’re gone would have to be the lean angus cuts you’d serve on steakhouses. Basesball rounds you have to broil in an oven with blue cheese crust on top is a rare and delicious delicacy. Also, I never tasted A5 steaks in Japan.
Great Video! I'm Brazilian and i remember this Mad Cow disease thing, i remember in my childhood just joking about this "Crazy Cow", maybe because we didn't have any case of this disease in Brazil, as i remember.
Yes, I remember a situation like that here in Argentina. My family on my father's side are Syrian and Lebanese immigrants, one of my favourite foods growing up was kibbeh nayyeh which is made with beef and eaten raw. At one point my mother heard the news of the disease and forbade me and my father from eating it (tbh she was always a bit disgusted by this dish). I didn't eat it again until a few years ago.
In Texas as a kid, it was in the news but I don't remember anyone caring too much about it. Probably because Texas' beef herds were largely self-supported, from what I understand. I do remember tasteless jokes about it, tho, like a local bookshop which had a picture of Wimpy (from Popeye) saying "I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for Mad Cow Disease today!"
I don't remember any particular anxiety over mad cow in my childhood in Montreal, but in a sort of related note, because of E. coli it is illegal in Canada to serve hamburgers medium-rare (or less cooked than that) and has been for about thirty years. A friend and I had a culture shock moment living in the US when I ordered a medium well burger, she was shocked and told me her boyfriend (a cook) would refuse to serve me if I ordered that at his restaurant, and I told her his restaurant would be shut down by public health if it was in Canada.
I remember distinctly growing up in East Texas, a major agricultural and lumber region of Texas. Back then, while I was in school, first grade school, then high school, there was a streak of BSE going around in the farms in the area. Reason for it is because the cattle were (bleh, unfortunately) eating each other after the cow died. The animal was ground up and fed to the other animals which caused the disease to spread. Back in the 1990s when I was in grade school, first, it was thought to be a meningitis outbreak and we all got vaccinated. Then, others started getting sick past the one person that died. That was the first outbreak. The second happened while I was in high school, but it was caught and detected early. So, while cattle died, no people did like previously. That was before my senior year in high school. Seeing as how the markets never carried local beef, my family was safe, but for a time, we switched from beef to chicken. When bird flu became a thing, then we even tried going meatless for a while. Being anemic, that was tough, but I found spinach makes a good substitute. That's all I got.
I learned something today. At 9:29, it says we French call the Brits as 'rosbifs' , because of their abundance (funnily enough that's a breed's name) of cattle, especially beef. Although I knew these informations, I never connected the 2. Also, I'm currently in Japan and Europeans who lived during the mad cow disease period cannot give their blood, as it is considered impure. I.e. I just turned 20 and I can't, but people slightly younger are allowed (2004 onwards)
Growing up in the US, I remember hearing about mad cow disease (I was in elementary school in the mid- to late-90's). We didn't eat a lot of beef in general (mostly chicken), but my understanding was that was more for health reasons (chicken being leaner and thus more "healthy" according to my mom) rather than out of concern about mad cow disease. But who knows! Maybe they just didn't want to tell little impressionable me. I recently finished my first playthrough of P4 Golden. I kept waiting for some conclusion to the beef rumors that floated around town. Imagine my surprise watching this video and finding out there really aren't ever any answers given! Just another P4 mystery...
Great video, hadn't heard this story before! As for the meat ban question: There's an amazing hibachi place near my sister's that I love going to whenever we visit her, of all the meat I've had I would definitely miss their steak & chicken combo the most.
Ah that era...Honestly, I was still very young and dont have much memories about it... I do remember a vague fear about it, like you couldnt outrigth freak about it because it was such an unsure event...You couldnt know if you had it because it took so long to show up. It was frustrating too because while you could feel a sense of security due to eating swedish meet (sweden have a very high standard for animal rearing), the meat was far too expensive for my family so we still bought foreign meat. Still is very expensive due the high standards.
The average size of Australian and Canadian soldiers in both World Wars was larger than the average size of British soldiers, if not a better diet, how else would you explain that?
@@Ravi9A I think it’s a genuine question. You can’t write it off just because you feel they might attack you verbally when they haven’t. I’m interested as well. I always though meat based protein helped “beef” people up, but apparently your comment says otherwise?
@@Nintendo122333 it's actually been proved that the cholesterol, from even one small slice of beef, enters your bloodstream and severely affects the brain's performance, sexual drive, and physical healthy. Those who eat meat have a 30% more chance of getting cancer, than those who don't. And if you're wondering about the protein, then animals don't even have that much. Nuts and spinach are RICH with Protein and a single bowl has more than the entire animal. As proof of the performance Arnold Schwarzenegger, and one of the strongest men alive are both vegetarian (Arnold Schwarzenegger became one later in his career). Also, most olympic athletes make it a point to avoid meat before the game, because that straight damaged their performance.
Mad Cow Disease was admittedly a bit before my time since I was born in '97, so i would've been to young to really understand what goes on. As for the hypothetical meat ban, I would miss out most on pork and chicken.
The type of meat I can not live without is chicken. I live in the UK and being muslim I'll always go to my local kaba house to get a packet of chicken an' chips.
As a UK living person, yes I remember well how big MCD was treated and we still get scares regularly (like once every so many years) where the disinfectant is placed outside farms and farm shops plus other outdoor activity buildings. As for its effects it did raise prices and give a big push to the "healthy living" (free range) meat industry here too. Hope this helps anything else you'd like to know just ask away, I used to live in a farming centric village and know a good few farmers perspectives on it.
I'm glad the free-range push came out of an otherwise horrible crisis! Do you know if those farming villages are still raising livestock? Like if they're actually still raising cattle? Or maybe something else now like lamb and chicken? One of my friends from college days grew up on a farm in Tennessee, and her family had to shift from ranching to growing soy and other vegetables since they lost their entire herd in a catastrophic flood in late 2000s. So I can't help but be curious if the British farming communities from then were able to recover...? It's awful that there's a tangible death toll from BSE and vCJD, but it seems so much of the other human toll gets lost in the mix, where so many families lost their entire livelihoods :/ Whether you can answer these questions in particular or not, I appreciate the thoughtful comment from someone who lived through it!
@@LadyVirgilia a lot of the ones that focus on that still are one of my old friends family are cattle farmers prodominantly for milk based products and it increased the inspections and checks, which has meant during times of issue has meant cleaning checks were done by anyone in and out of the farms
In britain the attitude was generally (or very quickly became) "The source of the problem has already been fixed - nothing that we do now will change whether we were infected or not"
I have no idea if this is even true but my mother always told me I could not donate blood in the US since we are immigrants (technically) and I was born in a country that had a BSE scare in 2001 or something and the US health admin does not permit donations from such demographics
I’d miss chicken or fish the most. There’s stuff that tastes like chicken, but not quite. And nothing can exactly replicate that oily fishy taste. If there was a ban though, I’d imagine my country (US) would produce a lot more tempeh, tofu, and etc, so I’d still probably be happy if I got to eat way more of those
As a national preventative effort, the US banned people from giving blood if they served/lived/traveled to specific parts of Europe. My father was stationed in the UK in the late '80s, so my siblings and I have been affected by this ban since we returned to the US in the early '90s. The interesting part here is that the CDC has only just lifted this ban in November 2022, over 30 years later.
Well i was born in 2001 and i'am from brazil, so i think when i finally grown enough to eat meat the problem was solved (i dont think it was this fast) or the country itself wasnt affected at all (maybe but unlikely) or no one on the country cared (probably and likely happened in my opinion due recent events involving a certain 19)
If we're talking just land meat, I'd be bugged by the lack of beef (particularly minced), but I'd probably be fine so long as I can eat seafood. That said, if I went full vegetarian, I probably wouldn't last a week due to my love for shrimp and sushi.
What do you mean "miss"? I would smuggle or get out of the country! But srsly, when the 2001-2002 economic crisis of Argentina started (I was 10 at the time), I remember asking my mom if we wouldn't be able to buy meat anymore. I think I would miss... Everything, from asado to empanadas, from hamburgers to steaks. Meat is most of the time the main part of my plate.
It takes Understanding to accept it as a whole, Knowledge to set the proper pace, Courage to attack the mountain of meat, and Diligence to keep on eating. All of these are required to conquer the Mega Beef Bowl. (Level 5 Understanding, Knowledge, Courage, and Diligence)
The irony, japanese culture is so influenced by the chinese culture. And they have meat dishes. 😅 The other irony, most new agers and vegans were mostly influenced by that japanese shinto/buddhist mindset in regards to meat.
My favourite meats are full cuts and even meat on the bone like ribs or chicken limbs. Iches my caveman brain. Of course ground is still good and fish (salmon and rainbow trout especially) are delicious and healthy.
