Opson

Opson (Greek: ὄψον) is an important category in Ancient Greek foodways. First and foremost opson refers to a major division of ancient Greek food: the 'relish' that complements the sitos (σίτος) the staple part of the meal, i.e. wheat or barley.

Opson is therefore equivalent to Banchan in Korean cuisine and Okazu in Japanese cuisine. Because it was considered the more pleasurable part of any meal, opson was the subject of some anxiety among ancient Greek moralists, who coined the term opsophagia to describe the vice of those who took too much opson with their sitos.

Although any kind of complement to the staple, even salt, could be categorized as opson, the term was also commonly used to refer to the most esteemed kind of relish: fish. Hence a diminutive of opson, opsarion (ὀψάριον), provides the modern Greek word for fish: psari (ψάρι), and the term opsophagos, literally 'opson-eater', is almost always used by classical authors to refer to men who are fanatical about seafood, e.g. Philoxenus of Leucas.

Finally, opson can be used to mean a 'prepared dish' (plural opsa). Plato, probably mistakenly, derived the word from the verb ἕψω - 'to boil'.

The central focus of Greek personal morality on self-control made opsophagia a matter of concern for moralists and satirists in the classical period. The complicated semantics of the word opson and its derivatives made the word a matter of concern for Atticists during the Second Sophistic.

Operation OPSON

Since 2011, and under the coordination of INTERPOL-Europol, an annually recurring operation under de code-name Operation OPSON, has been conducted in a growing number of countries over the world. These operations involving joint efforts of police, customs and national food regulatory bodies in addition to partners from the private sector, have as main objectives to raise awareness of the dangers posed by counterfeit and substandard foods, to establish partnerships with the private sector to provide a cohesive response to this type of crime, and to protect consumers by seizing and destroying substandard foods and identifying the criminals behind these networks.

References

• Davidson, James (1997). Courtesans and Fishcakes: The Consuming Passions of Classical Athens. Great Britain: Harper Collins.