Archive for February, 2009
A Beef Cartoon-A Cut Above The Rest?
Yesterday’s flowchart about the hidden costs of industrial beef production focused on the creation the beef itself, not the consequences of actually eating the beef. Â This cartoon does a handy job of expressing some of those other concerns in a suscint and humorous manner.
What will you be having today?
February 27, 2009
Tags: agriculture, cows, Health, nutrition, obesity Posted in: Fun Food Facts, Health 
One Comment
True Cost of Beef Flowchart
Reading Omnivore’s Dilemma, one realizes that something is missing. Something that could tie many of Pollan’s points into something greater…Something one could understand at a glance…What the book needs is pictures!  More specifically: flowcharts!  Pollan discusses the hidden costs of cheap beef creation via factory farming. While the paragraphs he devotes to the topic [...]
February 26, 2009
Tags: agriculture, cows, farmers, food, green, greenhouse gases, Michael Pollan, subsidies Posted in: Health, Science & Technology 8 Comments
Food Safety and Big Government
When I read headlines like “Peanut Recall Wipes out Energy Bar Company,” it confounds me to see that there are still people that who complain about regulations being bad for business in all cases. They continually insist that governmental oversight is bad for both everyday citizens and businesses. However, the lack of oversight [...]
February 23, 2009
Tags: Barack Obama, FDA, food event, food safety, Health, melamine, policy, USDA Posted in: Health, Politics One Comment
The Bottomless Soup Bowl Experiment
Featured in the Annals of Improbable Research and winning an Ignoble Prize, Brian Wansink’s experiment “first makes people laugh, and then makes them think.” He wondered how we determine when we’ve eaten enough food.  Do we stop eating at the physical feeling of fullness or do we use external cues (that everyone else has already [...]
February 20, 2009
Tags: education, food, food safety, obesity, trvia Posted in: Fun Food Facts, Health 6 Comments
Pepsi To Begin Using Actual Sugar In Their “Throwback” Campaign
Beginning in April, PepsiCo is introducing Pepsi Throwback and Mountain Dew Throwback, “which features those brands formulated with sugar” (link). I love how using actual sugar is considered a “throwback” by the Pepsi Beverage Venders (PBV). Using the term throwback implies that we are technologically regressing. It’s as though using real sugar [...]
February 18, 2009
Tags: cane sugar, food event, marketing, soda Posted in: Health, Science & Technology 4 Comments
Vilsack Understands!
See, I told you to be optimistic about Vilsack.
The scientists, the foodies, and the economists have all been chanting, “Death to corn subsidies! Â Death to corn subsidies!” forever. Â And, now someone who has explicit authority to take subsidies to the guillotine has said, more or less explicitly, he is looking to axe them:
Vilsack called on [...]
February 17, 2009
Tags: agriculture, farmers, green, heroes, nutrition, policy, subsidies, USDA Posted in: Politics 5 Comments
Eating Better: Politics and Strategy For The Dinner Table
Most parents are worried about getting their kids to eat healthier.  You could be wondering how to get yourself to eat more veggies, too. Brain Wansink, in Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think, describes how our environment often stimulates us to eat more of the “bad” stuff.  It’s not a diet [...]
February 16, 2009
Tags: change, food, food event, Health, moms, nutrition, obesity Posted in: Fun Food Facts, Health One Comment
Peanut Corp of America Boss Pleads the Fifth
Like his mouth was gummed up by his own product, Mr. Stew Parnell pleaded the fifth in response to all of Congress’s questions about his involvement in the salmonella scandal. Â When a congressman offered up some peanut butter from a jar wrapped in crime scene tap, he declined. Â After the fruitless congressional hearing, he took [...]
February 13, 2009
Tags: food, food event, food safety, Health Posted in: Politics One Comment
Baby Formula, Nutrition, and…Communism?
At a congressional hearing in 1978, Nestle representative Dr. Oswaldo Ballerin accused American activists of engineering an “indirect attack on the free world’s economic system.” Â By his account, the numerous church groups, women’s groups, unions, and student’s groups were communists because they were boycotting Nestle products in order to protest its marketing of breast-milk substitutes [...]
February 10, 2009
Tags: baby formula, education, Health, heroes, marketing, moms, nutrition, policy Posted in: Politics No Comments
“Food Deserts” and What Cities Are Doing About Them
Wal-Mart in Chicago and a Moratorium on Fast-food Joints in LA
I’ve been complaining about the lack of grocery stores in minority and poor neighborhoods for a while. Â Apparently such inequity becomes news only when someone comes up with a catchy name for it: food deserts. Â Food deserts happen when people do not have access to [...]
February 9, 2009
Tags: change, Health, hunger, nutrition, obesity Posted in: Health, Politics 2 Comments
