Food - curators... The Rumpus Interview With Dr. Neal Barnard. I love cheeseburgers.
How they smell and how they taste. With fried onions and lettuce and tomatoes and lots of ketchup. I love the memory of eating them in the bar in Baltimore where my husband and I went all the time early in our marriage–the place that served them big as saucers in red plastic paper-lined baskets, with cold National Premium on tap and ’80s hits by Donna Summer and Joe Jackson on the jukebox. I don’t eat too many cheeseburgers these days. Middle age, caring for my once-vibrant mother after her heart attack and stroke, and decades spent counseling my patients about the dangers of saturated fat have sobered me into moderation.
But lately I’ve been wondering if moderation is enough. Reports of the cruel treatment of animals raised for food, such as a recent undercover video leading to shutdown of a California slaughterhouse, force me to face the fact that eating animals always involves, well, killing animals. I met with Dr. Why the Surge in Obesity? Lane Kenworthy: Why the surge in obesity?
, by Lane Kenworthy: The Weight of the Nation is a four-part series on obesity in America by HBO Films and the Institute of Medicine, with assistance from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). It’s been showing on HBO and can be viewed online. Each of the four parts is well done and informative. Obesity is defined as having a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or more. How Your College Is Selling Out to Big Ag. Dave Gilson Last week, the University of Illinois' College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES) in Champaign-Urbana made a momentous announcement: it has accepted a $250,000 grant from genetically modified seed/agrichemical giant Monsanto to create an endowed chair for the "Agricultural Communications Program" it runs with the College of Communications.
The university's press release quotes Monsanto's vice president of technology communications giving a taste of its vision for the investment: With the population expecting to reach 9 billion by 2030, farmers from Illinois and beyond will be asked to produce more crops while using fewer resources. At Monsanto we are committed to bringing farmers advanced ag technologies to help them meet this challenge. Effectively communicating farmers’ efforts to feed, clothe and fuel a rapidly growing population is a major part of the solution. Nor is Monsanto the only gigantic food and ag company bestowing cash upon ACES. Pluto Press - Let Them Eat Junk.
How Change Is Going to Come in the Food System. Michael PollanThe Nation, September 11, 2011 In the forty years since the publication of Frances Moore Lappé’s Diet for a Small Planet, a movement dedicated to the reform of the food system has taken root in America.
Willie Nelson: Occupy the Food System. Thanks to the Occupy Wall Street movement, there's a deeper understanding about the power that corporations wield over the great majority of us.
Processed food and coronary capitalism. Frankfurt, Germany - A systematic and broad failure of regulation is the elephant in the room when it comes to reforming today's Western capitalism.
Yes, much has been said about the unhealthy political-regulatory-financial dynamic that led to the global economy's heart attack in 2008 (initiating what Carmen Reinhart and I call "The Second Great Contraction"). But is the problem unique to the financial industry, or does it exemplify a deeper flaw in Western capitalism? Consider the food industry, particularly its sometimes malign influence on nutrition and health. Obesity rates are soaring around the entire world, though, among large countries, the problem is perhaps most severe in the United States. According to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, roughly one-third of US adults are obese (indicated by a body mass index above 30). Obesity affects life expectancy in numerous ways, ranging from cardiovascular disease to some types of cancer. Sugar addiction is leading us down a poisoned path.
'Sugar and its best friend, fat, are explicitly marketed at children, and fat toddlers become fat adults.' Photograph: Royalty-Free/Corbis Fags and alcohol are old killers, old stories.
How the Food Industry Eats Your Kid’s Lunch. An increasingly cozy alliance between companies that manufacture processed foods and companies that serve the meals is making students — a captive market — fat and sick while pulling in hundreds of millions of dollars in profits.
At a time of fiscal austerity, these companies are seducing school administrators with promises to cut costs through privatization. Parents who want healthier meals, meanwhile, are outgunned. Each day, 32 million children in the United States get lunch at schools that participate in the National School Lunch Program, which uses agricultural surplus to feed children. About 21 million of these students eat free or reduced-price meals, a number that has surged since the recession. The program, which also provides breakfast, costs $13.3 billion a year.
Sadly, it is being mismanaged and exploited. Here’s one way it works. The Agriculture Department doesn’t track spending to process the food, but school authorities do. The money is ill spent. Children pay the price.