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Posts from the ‘links’ Category

Jun 22

Food Links, 22.06.2011

Four ideas to make agriculture more sustainable and improve food security in South Africa.

Feminism + the food movement = femivorism?

Another reason to avoid sugar-laden drinks.

Why India’s food policy ‘reforms’ have done little to reduce hunger and malnutrition.

Tom Philpott surveys recent research and writing on the food crisis.

The food movement in the US has something of an identity crisis.

Consider the milkshake.

On the use of cellulose in processing food.

A celebration of salt.

The effects of climate change on agriculture have driven up commodity prices by around 20%.

‘The reality of America’s food post is far more complicated, and troubling, than is suggested by the romantic image at the heart of our foodie nostalgia.’ This is an excellent article.

The Ecologist provides a very handy guide to food speculation (in case you should ever have to argue against it with a banker).

Conservation International recommends fish farming to feed the world – when it seems that industrial aquaculture is monumentally harmful to the environment.

Lester Brown discusses food and water security in North Africa and the Middle East after the Arab Spring.

Jun 15

Food Links, 15.06.2011

Tim Lang argues that twentieth-century attitudes towards food cannot solve our global food crisis (and makes the point that Walmart’s presence in South Africa is a Very Bad Thing indeed).

The Carbon Brief provides a useful overview of recent research on food, hunger, and climate change.

A ‘food desert’ is a region with limited access to healthy food – usually because supermarkets, accessible only by car, have been replaced by convenience stores selling mainly processed food. This map plots food deserts in the US.

Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, argues that the food movement is not elitist.

Tom Philpott discusses Walmart’s ‘commitment’ to Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move programme.

Life for the very poor in Guatemala shows how screwed up the world’s food system is.

The World Health Organisation takes on non-communicable, lifestyle-related diseases (and shows how bad big food companies are for our health).

On gluttony.

Consider honey.

The Great Trek 2.0 – South Africa’s white farmers move north.

In praise of asparagus.

The New York Times reports that farming tilapia on an industrial scale is a bad idea. How very surprising.

Jun 8

Food Links, 08.06.2011

Hayibo covers the recent tension over vegetable exports in Europe.

Foreign Policy‘s theme for its May/June edition is food, and it’s fascinating. Lester Brown writes about the new geopolitics of food, and this amazing article shows how food explains the world.

Why are food prices at the mercy of bankers?

The Guardian has an excellent guide to the global food crisis.

Should the US government subsidise the growing of sweeteners?

The French government has banned the riot police from drinking alchohol with their meals. Daft.

On the origins of measuring the calorie content of food.

This fascinating infographic from the World Resources Institute charts global greenhouse gas emissions – agriculture is responsible for 13.8% of them, and loads of nitrous oxide and methane.

Penguin has just released its Great Food series: a collection of twenty short books each dedicated to the writing of great food writers.

‘The fact that half of the most costly food pathogens are found in meat suggests that food safety laws at the USDA need an overhaul’. Nice.

Can you feed a family of four on £50 a week? I would have thought so.

Jun 1

2 Comments

Food Links, 01.06.2011

Oxfam warns the food prices are set to double by 2030, causing the world to be plunged into permanent food crisis.

A report from the Guardian on 21 April 1903 describes contemporary responses to the greater availability of exotic fruit.

Arcadia’s blog Voer is one of the most beautiful I know. Read it if you understand Afrikaans, otherwise look at the pictures.

How food shortages will cause more global unrest.

More evidence that speculation has had an impact on soaring food prices.

Lucy Mangan identifies vegetables.

How should the US rebuild its food economy?

Tom Philpott discusses some recent contributions to the debate around why American diets have become progressively worse since the 1970s.

Hanna Thomas thinks about supermarkets and nostalgia.

The truth about extra virgin olive oil.

May 25

Food Links, 25.05.2011

I think Lorraine Pascale is utterly fantastic.

Michael Pollan adds a few more food rules.

‘The world would be a better, safer place, freer and more democratic, if our cheese and onion crisps tasted better.’ Yes, well: on the science of tasting food.

Harriet Deacon writes about food nominations to the Intangible Heritage Convention.

The world’s top 50 restaurants were announced recently. This is an incredible video about the restaurant ranked 28 – Combal Zero in Italy.

The loquat harvest is about to begin in Los Angeles.

It’s lambing season in the northern hemisphere.

AA Gill talks about eating and reviewing food.

May 18

Food Links, 18.05.2011

If you’re in South Africa, go out and vote. Right this minute. Immediately.

In the US, some restaurants are now turning their leftovers into compost.

Are a billion people hungry? This brilliant article from the recent food edition of Foreign Policy examines the complex factors which determine diets.

The World Development Movement explains why it’s targeting Barclays over food price speculation.

Consider the aubergine.

The Catherine Ferguson Academy in Detroit specialises in providing cheap, high quality education to pregnant girls. The school is built around a food-producing garden (the girls grow vegetables and care for chickens, goats, and bees) and seems to have achieved some amazing things since its founding. And now it’s threatened with closure. Madness.

‘There’s more to salt than the taste.’ So there is.

This is an excellent overview of the origins, nature, and impact of the food industry in the United States.

Starbucks is now the third biggest chain restaurant in the US – after McDonalds and Subway.

May 11

Food Links, 11.05.2011

Ferran Adrià closes El Bulli and opens a research foundation, one of the aims of which will be to promote healthy eating.

It seems that there may be a link between fasting and preventing heart disease.

A fantastic farming project in Malawi demonstrates how good agricultural practices can combat malnutrituion.

A while ago I read – and loved – Barbara Demick’s Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea (2010) and was struck, in particular, by her description of the experience of famine. This article from the Los Angeles Times concerns Kim Jong Il’s bizarre eating habits.

What a clever idea: cooked too much for supper? Log in to Supermarmite (marmite as in the French for cooking pot, not the spread) and let others in your neighbourhood know what you’ve got going, and how much you’re charging for it.

Another reason to oppose the overuse of antibiotics in stock farming.

‘Americans need information, through labeling, nutrition education and medical advice, to make smart diet decisions. Then they should be free to eat what they want — as long as they bear the cost of their personal choices.’ The Los Angeles Times opines on the introduction of a ‘fat tax’ in the US.

Widespread obesity is caused by a range of factors – this is an attempt to collate research on all of them.

May 4

2 Comments

Food Links, 04.05.2011

John Crace digests Gwyneth Paltrow’s Notes from my kitchen table. Read and weep.

Is it cheaper to be a meat-eater, vegetarian, or vegan?

The New York Times argues against increasing efforts to prevent scrutiny of factory farming in the US.

This enterprising chef has written a recipe book about chillies and climate change.

Who should control the world’s seed supply: farmers or the evil empire Monsanto?

I don’t have much time for PETA, and this ad simply confirms my annoyance.

Adults’ height is a reliable indicator of childhood disease, nutrition, and poverty. Height improved all over the world after the middle of the twentieth century – but a recent study suggests that in the past two decades the average height of women in very poor countries has been falling.

The Guardian describes the royal wedding menu.

Apr 27

Food Links, 27.04.2011

New Mexican sheep farmers describe their busiest time of year, Easter.

‘last year, 98 percent of cassava chips exported from Thailand, the world’s largest cassava exporter, went to just one place and almost all for one purpose: to China to make biofuel’ – the New York Times reports on the link between high food prices and the production of biofuels.

Check out Rene Redzepi (the chef proprietor of Noma, voted the best restaurant in the world last year) speaking at the TEDxObserver 2011 event. (The link comes courtesy of the lady who writes this blog.) And speaking of Redzepi, John Crace’s digested read of his recipe book is uncannily similar to the original.

Monsanto seems to be playing a role in Iowa’s anti-whistleblowing bill which, if passed, will make access to information about food production even more difficult.

In China, McDonalds becomes surprisingly open about how it sources its chicken. (And, yes, the campaign is called ‘Chickileaks’.)

One of the major obstacles to small-scale farmers in the US (and elsewhere too, I imagine) is the lack of abattoirs.

Arizona – yes, a red state – mulls over a suggestion to tax the obese.

‘Even the simple pleasure of a good bowl of cereal is touched by global policy shifts.’ On how shifts in global food prices and policies impact on what we eat.

Apr 20

Food Links, 20.04.2011

Annia Ciezaldo investigates what a ‘Mediterranean diet’ really is, and asks if actually exists (particularly in the Mediterranean).

Jay Rayner reviews Gordon Ramsay’s revamped Savoy Grill.

Big food companies lobby the US government in the same way as the tobacco and gun industries. This article exposes the tactics of the American Beverage Association, the lobbying arm of the country’s softdrink companies.

Tom Philpott discusses the recent report by Bon Appetit on the conditions of farm labourers in the US.

Anna Lappe encourages consumers to pressure governments to fund sustainable, climate-friendly agriculture.

I’m fascinated by the American counter-culture movement’s enthusiasm for ‘whole’ food and sustainable agriculture during the 1960s and 1970s. Melissa Coleman has written what sounds like a riveting memoir of growing up on her parents’ pioneering organic farm. (Her father, Eliot Coleman, is something of an organic guru. Yes, I chose ‘guru’ deliberately.)

GOOD provides a useful guide to the best metaphors invented by British restaurant critics.

‘for all its monuments to material consumption, this town is a culinary desert or, perhaps more accurately, parking lot’ – Nic Dawes eviscerates the Joburg restaurant scene.

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