Now offered at lunch at a Japanese government restaurant: a rich curry and rice, topped with Fukushima vegetables fresh from the nuclear-emergency zone.It is part of an unlikely twist in the eat-local movement as the government presses a skeptical public to accept that food from the contaminated northeastern coastline should be purchased, roasted and devoured, not avoided.
“Damage by perception,” reads a poster promoting the revamped menu at Sakuna, located inside a government ministry. “Let’s fight against it.”
When the restaurant opened for business Friday, politicians rushed in, filling a table of 12. Three parliamentarians were there. Same with the foreign minister, Takeaki Matsumoto. Within minutes, waitresses presented the meals. Each curry dish was topped with two button-size cuts of carrot and broccoli, a few mushroom slivers and two silver-dollar slices of purple potato. Cameras clicked, and politicians sampled their lunches and nodded their approval.
Prime Minister Naoto Kan has also been doing his part, urging people to eat food from the disaster-hit areas as a show of support. So has Yukio Edano, the chief cabinet secretary, who went to a farmers market and ate a Fukushima strawberry.
“Only safe produce is being distributed,” Edano said. “Please eat it.” Read More
Tokyo - Authorities have detected high levels of radiation in fish and spinach produced near the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant in north-eastern Japan, a news report said Thursday. On Tuesday, 2,600 to 3,200 becquerels per kilogram of radioactive caesium was found in two samples of sand lance caught off Iwaki city, south of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station. That is five to six times above the legal limit, public broadcaster NHK reported. High radiation levels in food near damaged Japanese plant - 28th April 2011
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