Sustainability of the Mind: Mental Health and the Sustainability of Restaurants

Sustainability is a movement, an aspiration, a buzzword, a trend but also a necessity. Global leaders are all thinking of sustainability, even if it is just to satisfy the bare minimum requirements to greenwash their brand to increase revenues. These values are often related to the environment, food production, energy production and single use plastics but rarely do we look at sustainability from a perspective of mental health.

Unsustainable business practices have mired the hospitality industry since the conception of restaurants as we know them today. But in recent years, there has been a shift in mindset to encapsulate, or at the very least consider, the impact of operating in an unsustainable manner.

Food costs have soared due to a broken food system that continues to fail everyone except the large corporations who profit continuously. But food cost has always been a factor in any restaurant or food business, just as Apple considers the cost of a Macbook before it hits the market. Restaurants have always had to navigate these waters. What hasn’t been largely considered is the psychological toll that restaurant work often has on those who work in the industry. Only now, post pandemic, are we seeing a greater number of restaurants considering the mental health needs of their workers. Things that are commonplace across other industries such as health benefits, flexible work weeks, mental health support and paid sick days are nearly non-existent in hospitality. For decades those who have worked in restaurants have had to deal with a tremendous amount of physical and emotional abuse with no safety nets or support. This practice, by definition, is completely unsustainable. But it has taken this long to get to a point where restaurant workers have had enough. 

There have been major red flags on this road to our current struggle. The labour shortage for the past decade has been one of them. Aspiring cooks are directed to college to attain qualifications in culinary arts only to realize that upon graduation they have $20k of debt and will be working for $15 per hour in much the same position as they would be if they had moved directly into restaurants without any qualifications. This alone is a barrier in itself, but considering the turnover rate of restaurant staff is 1.5 times that of all private sector workers, the prospects are not rosy. The numbers speak for themselves and clearly outline what is an entirely unsustainable model of entry and longevity in the industry.

The upshot of all this is a shrinking labour pool and employment opportunities that have been decimated by the pandemic. But with the greatest hardship sometimes comes the greatest opportunities. The opportunity to rebuild, strengthen and uplift. The value of the employee is suddenly being considered, as it always should, as the restaurant’s most valuable asset. The sincerity of these pivots into a more stable and supportive work environment is hopefully a long lasting philosophy into a model of placing the lion’s share of value on the employee. People have always been central to the hospitality industry, as the name suggests. The lack of recognition of such has been the product of an exploitation of labour and absence of professionalism

The word sustainability at its most basic concept means to be able to last or continue for a long time. Just like natural resources, there is only so much we can take from our minds, before we are depleted and need to be replenished or seek other sources of energy. We are constantly bombarded by a swathe of stressors, compounded with a pandemic and an inescapable climate crisis. Our phones poison our thoughts and drain our capacity for emotion, leaving the mind an overly burdened entity. Sustainability of our mental health is often overlooked while more responsibility is piled on us to make positive change in the world towards a sustainable food system. The question is; how long can we sustain this level of psychological onslaught? Restaurants have the opportunity, and duty, to be a part of reform in the food system.The opportunity is here and the time for action is now. Equitable pay structure, investment in training, paid sick days and mental health support are all areas in which we need improvements. Some are easier implemented than others but all are possible. Change starts with intention.

It was Ferment To Be: An Introduction to Fermentation

Let’s have a conversation about fermentation. Does that word intimidate you? Bring up thoughts of stinky ingredients? Something that only hipsters and scientists can do? I’d like to break down fermentation and make it a little less daunting. The hope is that a whole new world of flavours will begin to reveal itself to you opening you.

For a little context, here are a bunch of things that you probably consume on a regular/semi-regular basis that are a product of fermentation:

• Coffee

• Black tea

• Any alcoholic beverage

• Chocolate

• Bread

• Olives

• Pickles

• Sauerkraut

• Vinegar

• Kombucha

• Yoghurt

• Aged Cheeses

• Kimchi

• Dry aged meats

• Dry cured meats

I think you will agree that most (if not all) of these ingredients are delicious. You might be salivating right now just thinking about them. But why do we find fermented foods so tasty?

To explain this, we need to take a look at what fermentation is, what it does and what it results in. In very simple terms:

“fermentation is the transformation of one ingredient into another by way of a microbe” 

- David Zilber

The bacteria changes ingredients, essentially by ‘digesting’ them. This partial ‘digestion’ means that when the food enters our bodies, our digestive system has less work to do to gain the essential nutrition from the foodstuff. Our brain recognises that these foods have had some of the work done already and signals to us that we should eat more of them by recognizing them as delicious, though our senses. It is essentially our brain tricking us into eating more of the things that are good for us. 

How Safe is Fermentation

This question is akin to ‘How safe is travelling in a car’? This would make you think of many other factors that would need to be known to answer in an informed way.

• Who is the driver?

• What are the weather conditions?

• Has the car been well maintained?

• How fast is the car travelling?

• Is there a lot of traffic on the road?

• Who are the other drivers?

We can ask similar questions of fermentation.

• Who is starting/monitoring the process?

• What are the environmental conditions?

• Are the conditions being well maintained?

• What is the temperature of the environment?

• What other pathogens (bad bacteria) could be present?

• What is being done to prevent the presence of pathogens?

The answer is that fermentation is an overarching term for a complex range of processes involving different microbes and mediums. But, just like driving, we can do a few things to ensure it is as safe as possible.

David Zilber, formerly the Head of Fermentation at Noma, Copenhagen, describes the role of the fermenter as being the bouncer of a nightclub, only letting in the patrons that fit the requirements to create the desired ambience inside as well as creating a vibe that would only attract the people you want inside. In fermentation, we use the following control points to make  fermentations safe; salt, PH, temperature and absence of oxygen. We make use of these and create environments which are perfectly suited to the bacteria we want, and inhospitable for the ones we don’t. For example, cucumber pickles. Pickles are a product of lactic acid fermentation and therefore requires lactic acid bacteria (LAB). The environment we create is saline and absent of oxygen. LAB are halotolerant (salt tolerant) and require an anaerobic environment (in absence of oxygen). They can also tolerate the low PH levels in the resulting ferment. Pathogens such as clostridium botulinum (responsible for botulism) are neither halotolerant or particularly PH tolerant. The controls we employ in the making of pickles and the resulting PH level safeguard against the risk of somebody getting sick.

Lactic Acid Fermentation

Let’s take a closer look at lactic acid fermentation, or lacto fermentation. The bacteria responsible for this process is lactobacillus. These rod-shaped microbes convert sugar into lactic acid and create CO2. The following are a product of lacto fermentation.

• Pickles

• Cocao

• Sourdough (along with yeast)

• Yoghurt

• Kimchi

• Sauerkraut

• Coffee Beans

The purpose of this fermentation would have originally been to prolong the life of the ingredient without refrigeration. In the present day, these foods are still part of mainstream consumption due to the flavours that the fermentation process imparts on those ingredients. Lacto fermentation is very straightforward and requires basic equipment that you probably already have in the kitchen. 

Try it for Yourself!

Simple Fermented Hot Sauce

What you’ll need

Handful of Chillies, Stems Removed (you can use any heat level you like, or even a random assortment)

Garlic cloves, crushed

Water

Non-iodized salt

Freshly Washed Jar with screw lid

Digital scale

Method

• Firstly, weigh the jar you will use for the ferment and take note of it. You will want to select a jar that will accommodate the chillies with as little space at the top as possible.

• Take your chillies and rinse under cold water to remove any surface debris.

• Cut them all in half and add to the jar. 

• Add the garlic and fill with the cold water, enough to cover the ingredients.

• Weigh the jar in its entirety. Subtract the weight of the jar and you will be left with your total weight. Let’s call this X.

• To this, we are going to add 2% salt. As aforementioned, this will keep the ferment safe and encourage the lacto bacilles to thrive. To ascertain the amount of salt to add, multiply X by 0.02. 

• Add the salt to the jar and screw on the lid. Shake lightly and leave somewhere in plain sight (so you don’t forget about it) at room temperature.

• Each day, slightly open the lid to release the carbon dioxide. This will start after a couple of days.

• After around a week, the ferment will be done. This is when there are no longer any bubbles rising, or gas escaping, when the lid is unscrewed.

• Next, strain the solids out to the mixture while retaining the liquid. It should smell floral, acidic and spicy. Place the solids in a food processor and blend while adding the liquids back into it bit by bit until you find the consistency that you want. You can add a little oil at this point too to give the sauce a shine and lengthening of heat on the palette. 

• Transfer to a suitable container and keep refrigerated. 

If you enjoyed making this, play around with the flavours next time by adding spices or fruits to create your own signature sauce.

*Note: Any time you are fermenting and the resulting product smells ‘bad’; don’t attempt to eat it. Just discard it. The chances are it won’t taste better than it smells and may carry food borne pathogens. There is always the chance of human error and it could be that the salt content was not right or the jar lid was not clean. 

What if Cod Was One of Us?

An Introduction to Seafood Sustainability

To call our planet 'Earth' is a little misleading. Water covers 71% of the world's surface, and in that water, millions upon millions of organisms have made a home for themselves over millennia.

The future of these habitats is bleak. Pollution, global warming and overfishing are all playing a part in its destruction. The number of biologically stable fish stocks are decreasing and the demand for seafood is consistently on the rise. These practices are entirely unsustainable and will, if left to continue, deplete a significant amount of the world's natural resources of seafood. Not only does this have a direct effect on global food security, but also grossly imbalances the marine ecosystems. Ecosystems that have developed and existed in balance for millions of years are being changed vastly in a matter of decades due to the global climate crisis and overfishing. The outlook for the world’s oceans is frightening. Primary seafood production of the global ocean is expected to decline by 6 percent by 2100 and by 11 percent in tropical zones. In essence, it means that the fish populations will be less able to replenish their stocks. All the while the voracity in which the oceans are being fished increases.

The question we need to ask ourselves is "How did this happen?" I think the answer is quite simple: we lost touch with our food cultures. Having an emotional attachment to food as a part of your culture means cooking with what is available in the immediate vicinity. As soon as the international demand for food increased and global food chains developed, different foods became increasingly easy to come by. New exotic flavours became available and the local ingredients that used to be relied on fell to the wayside in favour of ingredients, grown, raised and farmed thousands of miles away. Consumers lost the knowledge of where their food originated and therefore, the nature in which it was produced. This loss of knowledge has meant that practices of supplying food have slipped without the consumer knowing until suddenly we are faced with a depleted natural resource and the responsibility to fix it.

The conversation around making the right choices about what you eat is a very complicated, multi-faceted one with a number of stakeholders all conveying their points with biases to support their causes. Taking a look at all the information around us and making a decision is what is absolutely necessary but there is just so much, and a lot of it is conflicting. Here are some of the major discussions that are currently being had around seafood sustainability, starting with wild versus farmed fish.

Wild vs Farmed

Farmed fish, although often classed as a ‘sustainable’ source, is a little misleading in its nature. Fish are often farmed in areas of the ocean or lakes which immediately cause some effects in the local ecosystem. An excess population of any animal in an ecosystem will have an adverse effect on its environment. A higher amount of excretion from the farmed fish means a higher level of nitrogen and nutrients decomposing on the ocean/lake bed. This excess of nutrients can have a negative effect, promoting the growth of aggressive algaes and voracious growth of phytoplanktons which both reduce water transparency, in turn, causing loss of submerged plants. (source). This change disrupts the spawning, maturation and general survival of species that rely on such submerged fauna.

Farmed fish are often carnivorous species (such as salmon, trout and seabass), which means that the farmers must feed them food derived from wild caught fish. The fisheries that catch wild seafood for farmed fish food are called ‘Reduction Fisheries’. It seems counter-intuitive to eat farmed fish fed with wild fish that a) doesn’t taste as good b) has a negative environmental impact. It seems much simpler to eat the wild fish. The conversion ratios of 'fish-in to fish-out" can be staggering. For example, farmed salmon can take 5lb of wild caught fish to produce 1lb salmon. It is even more unbelievable for tuna farming where 34kg of feed derived from wild caught fish is needed to produce 1kg (source). For fish that are of non-carnivorous species, they are often fed corn and soy with supplements to promote growth. These crops have to be grown on land, harvested, processed and transported, all requiring energy and resources. A study by the University of Oxford concerning greenhouse gas emissions across the supply chain of different foods shows wild caught fish at lower emission levels than farmed fish and even rice and eggs (source). This is due to the fact that in order to feed farmed fish, fishing still needs to happen, only before the fish is transported to another facility to be processed into food pellets, with the addition of additives, then transported to the fish farms. The carbon footprint of this exercise seems entirely unnecessary. 

Farming fish in areas that are connected to natural bodies of water can pose other lesser known issues. Escaping fish can cause impact to wild populations by competing for food, spawning partners and habitat. Farmed fish are often genetically different to their wild counterparts, which means that interbreeding could leave the offspring less able to thrive or even survive (source).

Fish farms only exist because the global consumer market demands these fish species in huge volumes; much more than the world’s oceans can provide. Farming has become the Band-Aid on a broken food system of over-demand of a handful of species. To really understand how this demand is being fulfilled, we need to take a look at how wild fish is caught.

Understanding Fishing Methods

The methods used to catch fish differ dramatically in their efficiency and effect on the environment. There are intricacies and methodologies that can be employed in each instance that greatly change how ethical and ocean friendly they are. Each of these warrant their own article, but in the interest of brevity, I’ll give you an overview.

Here’s the list from least to most destructive:

• Hand Line - A fishing technique where a single fishing line is held in the hands.

• Baited Traps - Traps are baited and set on the ocean floor - generally used to catch lobsters and other crustaceans.

• Pole and Line - A pole and line consists of a hooked line attached to a pole. Can be operated by a human or attached to a vessel whilst moving

• Seining - A method of fishing that employs a fishing net called a seine, that hangs vertically in the water with its bottom edge held down by weights and its top edge buoyed by floats

• Mid-Water Trawling - trawling, or net fishing, at a depth that is closer to the water’s surface than the water’s bed. 

• Purse Seining - A net is cast which then encircles a group of fish and is drawn closed at the bottom. Mainly used to catch fish which ‘shoal’ together.

• Gill Nets - Nets that are cast with the top floating on the top of the water and bottom weighted down. A fish swims into a net and passes only part way through the mesh. When it struggles to free itself, the twine slips behind the gill cover and prevents escape.

• Long Line - Uses a long line, called the main line, with baited hooks attached at intervals by means of branch lines. Hundreds or even thousands of baited hooks can hang from a single line, sometimes many miles in length.

• Bottom Trawling - trawling along the seafloor. Global catch from bottom trawling has been estimated at over 30 million tonnes per year, an amount larger than any other fishing method  I wouldn’t advise using a word you are defining it its definition

• Dredging - a kind of dredge which is dragged along the bottom of the sea by a vessel in order to collect a targeted edible bottom-dwelling species. 

After that brief overview, let’s take a look at how those methods are employed by different fishing vessels.

The fishing industry and its methods can be largely broken down into 3 boat sizes, which determine the fishing method used: day boats, week boats, trawlers. 

      Day Boats: 

• Less than 50ft long boats

• Return to dock before dark

• Are only equipped to fish with ocean friendly methods: hand line, trolling, seining

Week Boats

• 50-100ft long boats

• Out at sea for 4-7 days

• Equipped to use ocean friendly methods but with the power to use bottom trawling and long lines

Factory Freezer Trawlers

• 100ft+ long boats

• Out at sea for 4-8 weeks

• Will only fish using destructive methods such as dredging, bottom trawling, long line and purse seining.

It's clear that the factory freezer trawlers have the ability to be the most destructive, create the most by-catch and cause the most damage to the oceans and their ecosystems through the fishing methods used. Some factory freezer trawlers are able to catch around 1 million pounds of fish every 24 hours with the capacity to hold 15 million pounds of fish. Fishing on this scale is, without a doubt, unsustainable.

All these factors leave us with some choices to make. Let's face it, a whole industry is not going to change overnight but change has begun and the onus is on the consumer to drive the change. There are many ways in which we can invoke change and demand better fishing practices through our purchases.

So what can we do?

1. Buy and eat fish caught in your country

If you live in a country that doesn't have fish, eat proteins and produce that have originated from your country. Buying fish caught using ocean-friendly methods that have travelled 10,000 kilometers to get to you is also causing harm to the environment through greenhouse gases emitted during transport, especially by air.

2. Eat wild fish from ‘day-boats’ caught using sustainable catch methods.

Day-boats will only be out fishing for a few hours before bringing their catch back into dock. This means that the fish is ultra fresh upon being processed. Day-boats are also restricted to predominantly ocean-friendly fishing methods such as hook and line, trolling and baited pots. All low to no-impact fishing methods.

3. Don’t eat fish that are bigger than you

Marlin, swordfish, bluefin tuna, shark. All of these apex predators have been fished almost to extinction. Their long lifespans mean that they reproduce at a slower rate than other species and cannot replenish their populations as quickly as other species. 

If that isn't enough, these fish are high on the food chain and, due to biomagnification, contain high levels of mercury which is toxic to us. What’s worse, is that once we eat it, we cannot get rid of it. It only accumulates.

4. Hold restaurants to high standards

When dining out there are many choices with which we are faced. “Dining Sustainably” is most likely way down on the list... past aesthetics, food presentation, cocktails and the hot bartender that only works Saturday nights. But if confronted with the knowledge that the shrimp on your plate were farmed in Thailand with no health and safety restrictions on their practices you may be a little less eager to eat the ceviche. Be vocal. Ask where ingredients are sourced. You'll either be told where ingredients are from or that they don’t know. You will probably want to avoid eating the latter, but at least it lays the foundation to becoming an informed consumer.

At Marben and The Cloak we only use sustainably sourced seafood. Fogo Island Fish is one in particular who we champion frequently for the quality of their fish, but also for paying fishers double the average rate, having zero bycatch and only fishing cod after they have spawned.

5. Be responsible in your eating choices

It is very easy to put things in your mouth that taste good. That's what we are all programmed to do as humans. What sets us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom is that we have the ability to make some decisions about what exactly it is that we eat. We can look at the provenance of the ingredient and ascertain how satiating our hunger is impacting our environment.

6. Steer Clear of Farmed Fish

You may have caught the jist of this in other parts of the blog… Mother nature has provided us with an enormous fish farm that can replenish itself, requires no feeding and is carbon negative. All we need to do is treat it with a little respect.

The Pursuit of Inconsistency

Imagine a world where there is no variety. Imagine going to the grocery store and being presented with a row of immaculately perfect bananas, all identical. Bell peppers, symmetrical and the same shade of colour. Bunches of carrots, all the same width, length and colour. This may be someone’s dream. The decision-making process has been simplified with no need to choose which fruit is the ripest, juiciest or sweetest. This is the aspiration of most players in the food industry: to produce identical products time and time again.

Nature provides us with an abundance of flavours, textures, patterns and genetically diverse plant and animal life. None of this would be possible without inconsistency. Natural selection and evolution are the cause of, and product of, natural inconsistency. This process has brought about the sweetest tasting and ugliest carrots, buttery rich sea urchin and the beautifully decadent marbling of Wagyu beef.

It makes sense to me that the better of these two scenarios is the latter, creating a playground of ingredients to choose from. At the restaurant, because we work with smaller producers, we rarely find products are consistent from one to the next. Sometimes the beef tenderloin will be thinner and more marbled, next time it will be shorter and fatter with less marbling, even though it is from the same herd and raised in the same way. Maybe one cow’s appetite was a little less voracious that its friend or their genetic make-up meant that they were unable to put on as much intramuscular fat. These inconsistencies are embraced and celebrated. Inconsistencies make it more challenging to create dishes and push us to think outside the box, always be on our toes, and to appreciate and respect nature. In doing so, the challenges of inconsistency are relished, not feared.

Last summer, we received the sweetest Ontario peaches. We used them grilled and fresh. They were so incredibly rich and giving! We ordered more in the hope that we would get the same. These were from the same farmer, same orchard and only days apart. They were totally different. So we were lumped with peaches that were sub par. Or were we? We preserved them in a molasses syrup with bay leaves, rosemary and peppercorns and forgot about them. Six months later, in the pit of winter, they are gracing tasting menus with their incredible flavours and texture, giving our guests an elevated Ontario peach with the weather outside being thirty below zero.

Maybe the most notable example of inconsistency is in something that all our food touches at the restaurant: the plates. They are handmade by Dayna Wagner in La Salle, Ontario and no two pieces are the same. Even the width, height and weight of the plates differ. Small bowls have up to an 80g difference in weight and plates have a good half inch diameter variance. They are truly unique, each with a story, their own thumb indentations and irregular speckles. The fact that everything we plate lands on this dinnerware instils the philosophy of embracing the abnormal: the misshapen apple, the under-ripe peach, the fallen immature pear. It helps the cooks to be comfortable with adaptation, problem solving and uncertainty. Yes, the plating for each dish is roughly the same, but with subtle differences as to where the leaves fall or sauce drips, all along with the plate being the conductor of the symphony, shaping the cook’s decision as to what looks best.

In Canada, each season brings differences in ingredients, along with vast temperature swings. This means that even ingredients that are in season will vary greatly based on what is happening in nature. This is even true in the case of flour. We only use organic stone ground flour at the restaurant. It is unbleached and tastes like wheat. It sounds funny to say but shouldn’t all flour taste like wheat, not washed out white dust? This flour is one of the most beautiful, delicious, complex, frustrating, neurotic ingredients we have dealt with. We make a batch of sourdough and let the shaped loaves proof overnight in the fridge before loading into a proofing oven. From one bag to the next, the loaves can take 30 minutes or 4 hours to proof. Once we get used to the characteristics of one bag, we move on to a different bag and have to start the experiments again. But how can we expect to have a consistent product that is organically grown in nature? Temperature, sunlight, humidity, nutrient levels in the soil, pests, wind speed and rainfall all play a part in the wheat’s ability to grow and, essentially, replicate. Their end goal is symbiotic with ours.

Achieving a consistent product usually means sacrificing another aspect. Is it worth consistency if the product has lost all flavour? But it’s consistent, right? I’d rather take a bag of deliciously unwieldy flour any day…

For the Love of Milk

The milk at Marben is special. Until recently, like most restaurants in the city, we were using one of the generic commercial brands of milk. Convenient and cheap. After all, it’s just milk right?

The realisation came after we changed our eggs and flour. We moved from large commercial consistent products to incredibly unique products from small local farms. One day while making brioche, the sous chef, Jack, and I realised that the only product that was wasn’t ‘special’ was the milk. We looked at each other in mischievous curiosity and said “let’s change that”.

After some asking around, we were introduced to Sheldon Creek Dairy. I decided to call them and spoke to Marianne for an hour. I was sold.

The farm is located just outside of Orangeville. The family started with one single Holstein cow in the 1950s which they managed to purchase with the little money they had as it was injured. After being nursed back to health, the cow was able to be milked. Today, the farm has seventy-eight Holstein cows, all descended from the one cow purchased some sixty years ago. The cows are all free of antibiotics, hormones and steroids and are pastured year round. The farm also grows their own feed to supplement the diet of the cows: A mixture of fermented alfalfa and sweet hay. All of the feed they grow is free of pesticides and insecticides.

A farm that has these practices is not uncommon in Ontario. The farmers who raise our beef, pork, and chicken operate in a similar manner. The extra special part comes into play when the cows are milked. In addition to having the milking, processing and bottling facilities on their property, they have also installed a system that allows cows to choose to have themselves milked. The reasoning is quite simple. A nursing mother will need to be milked more often that a mother who had a calf nine months ago. The cows, therefore, experience less discomfort and can relieve themselves of milk build up at their whim. This ‘self-milking’ facility has resulted in fewer illnesses and lower blood pressure when milked, meaning it is a lower stress process.

All of these factors will result is a good quality milk. But there is another hurdle to overcome for this milk to hit the table. The pasteurization and separation process can be harsh. There is a legal minimum of pasteurization that needs to be reached. Going longer than this will damage the proteins, eliminate nutrients and deteriorate flavour. At Sheldon Creek, the milk is pasteurized to a legal minimum and separated used the ‘old method’ which separates the milk warm, as opposed to conventional systems which separates it chilled. When separating chilled, fat content of only around 18% can be achieved, with butterfat being added back in to get to 35%. Sheldon Creek produce a 45% cream along with their whole and skimmed milk. Their milks are also non-homogenized which means you get a delicious reward of a tablespoon of cream at the top of their bottles. What a treat!

The first time I tasted this milk, it took me back to my childhood in England. Bringing in the glass bottle of milk from the doorstep, pressing in the red foil seal and pouring a fresh glass of milk through the cream top. The sweetness and creamy thirst-quenching sensation of it running down my throat… it all came back to me.

Every drop of milk that is poured at Marben is from Sheldon Creek. It has stepped up our brioche, polenta and custards. This is one in a long line of products that we have taken to the next level to ensure that our philosophy and values are honest and true.

I encourage you to buy a bottle and taste the difference.