'Sometimes, You Just Need To Eat A Whole Cucumber'

I read with a tinge of amusement about summer's TikTok food fad. Cucumbers. Canadian TikToker Logan Moffitt a.k.a 'Cucumber Guy' has been sharing novel recipes using cucumbers as the main or only ingredient. 

I like cucumbers fine. We don't have an issue running out of it here, it seems. Not yet. We get them all the time with chicken rice and nasi lemak. LOL I like eating them that way. Or I toss those Japanese cucumbers into a roast chicken salad. 

I'm just thankful that this isn't about the dumb challenges of eating laundry pods Benadryl, beer tanning, walking over milk crates or worse, eating cereal dipped in liquid nitrogen. OMG Where is the common sense, humans? The New York Times did a short summary of TikTok food fads for us,

The craze is just the latest example of a social media phenomenon disrupting food supply chains. 

In 2021, a TikTok frenzy for a baked feta pasta dish stripped the cheese from the shelves of several American grocery stores. That same year, a salmon rice bowl recipe that went viral tested the supplies of Kewpie mayo. And last May, devotees of flavored water (#Watertok, for the uninitiated) went from T.J. Maxx to T.J. Maxx to search for syrups and sweeteners.

Apparently Iceland likes a salad of grated cucumbers, sesame oil, garlic, rice vinegar and chilli oil. Suddenly everybody wants to eat it. Then, it really turned into cucumbers running low on stocks in Icelandic supermarkets. Wahhhh. 

While Iceland has a self-sustaining agriculture, much of its staple produce is grown in geothermal-powered greenhouses. The isolated island may be particularly exposed to the challenges of disruptions in its food supply. During this month, it had to import cucumbers from Netherlands just to meet its domestic demand. That means, the cost of cucumbers has totally shot up in Iceland for this month.

Farmers grow cucumbers in cycles, and the fad hit during a small lull in the yield of the crop. There is also a slight shortage of carbon dioxide, she said, a key element of greenhouse production. And the cucumber craze comes as schools are reopening, she said, meaning their kitchens are placing bulk orders. 

For evidence that the online frenzy is to blame for the scarcity, Icelanders point to the spikes in sales of other ingredients in salad recipes: At Kronan, sales of ingredients used in one of Mr. Moffit’s most popular salad recipes — sesame oil, rice vinegar and fish sauce — were up 200 percent since Aug. 5. At Hagkaup, another supermarket chain, sesame oil sales have doubled, Sigurdur Reynaldsson, the chief executive, wrote in an email. 

Iceland is particularly climate conscious, and its consumers typically try to buy locally grown foods instead of imported ones to reduce their carbon footprint, Ms. Sveinsdottir said. This mentality, combined with Iceland’s small population of over 380,000 residents, means little wiggle room to handle sudden surges in demand.

However, Icelandic supermarket chain Hagkaup said that the TikTok trend isn't the main factor that buyers can't get cucumbers at the stores. In an interview with the BBC published on August 23, 2024, supermarket chain Hagkaup said that it is common to experience shortages in Icelandic cucumber at this time of year. They're hopeful that stocks would be back to normal supply and demand trends within two weeks. Okaaaay. 

While the company's food product manager, Vignir Þór Birgisson, said sales of ingredients like sesame oil and some spices have "doubled" in his stores, he said the current shortage is not solely due to the TikTok trend.

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"This is the first time we have experienced something like this," Ms Sveinsdóttir said, adding that had the TikTok trend become popular earlier in the summer, "when the [cucumber] production was in full blast" and the shortage would not have been noticeable. 

Farmers in Iceland - which has a population of 393,600 - produce about six million cucumbers, Ms Sveinsdóttir told the BBC. 

They pride themselves on the volume of fresh goods the country can produce, despite the often extreme weather conditions.

Singapore can't even quite be self-sustainable in terms of aqua and agriculture. The waters are too polluted and we don't have even land for hydroponics even. Costs are everything and we're tied. Iceland has like what, <400,000 in population and Singapore, at thousands times smaller in land size, has to feed 6 million. Iceland still has plenty of advantages over us, regardless of its frigid climate in the Northern Hemisphere 

Alrighty Iceland, I hope you get your supplies steady soon. 

If you really want to re-create this cucumber salad, here's a great summary without having to view the TikTok. Hahahahah.

This Food Blog has helpfully described that salad and provided a recipe.