Emails from Geraldine of Mount Pleasant

Following our Thursday Mount Pleasant Transportation Planning Committee meeting a group headed over to Sheilas Bistro – she dropped the apostrophe long since to simplify printing menus. Sheila is a member of the Glendale family who have lived in the area dating back to the 18oos (Letters from Geraldine).

Once we had rehashed aspects of the MPTPC meeting the subject turned to the escalating cost of food. Sheila allowed as to having to pay more from the wholesalers and from local produce growers.

Kumar Nandakumar, who is a regular online reader of the Economist, cited an article about the comparative cost of pancakes from around the world. The passage was published on Shrove Tuesday. Sheila always serves a variety of pancakes on that day. People from all over the area and from many backgrounds flock to her bistro to enjoy the variations available.

Japanese pancakes are the most costly of the seventeen countries surveyed at $26 per 130 pancakes. The least expensive are in India at $7 for each 130 . Norway is worth mentioning, costing $21 per 130. Geraldine asked where does Canada sit? Alas, no stats available, which generated the obvious “why not?” question.

Perhaps the researcher forgot, perhaps Canada’s data is assumed to be so close to the United States and not worth independent research, perhaps Canada’s economy is too small to be of interest, perhaps the researcher thought that Canadians did not eat pancakes.

Attributing outcomes to specific reasons is tempting, universal and particularly so in financial literature. An earlier blog referenced this same issue (Braking News?). Who can say with any degree of certainty why the Canadian pancake data are absent from the survey.

Sheila was understandably indignant and will provide her own cost analysis at a later date.