Archive for April, 2009
Swine Flu Renamed To Please Pork Producers
Lobbyists’ requests to the World Health Organization to rename the swine flu to something more innocuous were denied the other day. Predictably, the name ’swine flu’ has had people scrambling away from pork products. Egypt has slaughtered its 300,000 pigs in its effort to prevent local outbreak (link).
The name “is jeopardizing and may [...]
April 29, 2009
Tags: agriculture, bacon, education, farmers, food event, Health, marketing, policy Posted in: Health, Politics, Science & Technology 
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Is Factory Farming To Blame For The Swine Flu?
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano began White House press briefing on the swine influenza by noting it had been declared a public health emergency. She said:
That sounds more severe than really it is. This is standard operating procedure and allows us to free up federal, state, and local agencies and their resources [...]
April 27, 2009
Tags: factory farms, farmers, food event, food safety, Health Posted in: Health, Science & Technology No Comments
For High Spirits Or Pub Night Trivia?
Mark Peel, chef and owner of LA’s Campanile, visited with KCRW’s Evan Kleiman last year to serve up a tasty bit of knowledge about the world of punches and cocktails (link). He offered some sweet recipes, too.
The simplest distinction between a punch and the cocktail is the type of glass it comes in. If it’s [...]
April 24, 2009
Tags: alcohol, trivia Posted in: Health No Comments
Dieting in Bush’s Torture Memos
Via the New York Times
The Bush Administration apparently looked at commercial diet plans to justify the calorie-restricted diets it fed prisoners who were being interrogated.
From the Huffington Post:
In a footnote to a May 10, 2005, memorandum from the Office of Legal Council, the Bush attorney general’s office argued that restricting the caloric intake of terrorist [...]
April 23, 2009
Tags: hunger, policy Posted in: Politics No Comments
Fast Food Bans Popping Up in London, Maybe New York
Waltham Forest, a neighborhood in London, has banned the construction and establishment of fast food restaurants within 400 meters of a school. Whereas a little over 1 in 10 children in the borough are overweight, an overwhelming majority (93 percent!) of the residents approved of the measure, intended curb childhood obesity (link).
The measure has [...]
April 22, 2009
Tags: change, fast-food, McDonald's, nutrition, obesity, policy Posted in: Health, Politics, Science & Technology 2 Comments
4,000 Years of Failed Price Control Policies, But Chavez Thinks It Will Work This Time
For the past forty centuries or more, countless civilizations have attempted to feed people by fixing prices and each time it has produced catastrophic consequences. Â Whether they are democratic governments, dictators, or socialist reformers these “central planners”, as economists call them, have profound negative effects on the market when they attempt to hijack supply [...]
April 20, 2009
Tags: agriculture, education, farmers, food event, hunger, policy Posted in: Politics, Science & Technology No Comments
Food Safety Q&A With Dr. Marion Nestle
The world of food safety seems more precarious every day, so I thought it pertinent to review this Q&A between Eat.Drink.Better.’s Beth Bader and Dr. Marion Nestle. The interview took place a little over a month ago, when most of us probably thought it couldn’t get worse than the peanut crisis. However, [...]
April 15, 2009
Tags: agriculture, change, FDA, food safety, policy, USDA Posted in: Politics No Comments
Pork Safety: Free-Range Versus Factory-Farmed
A Pork Safety Study Taken to Task
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James McWilliams, an Op-Ed contributor to the New York Times, wrote about a recent study published in the journal Foodborne Pathogens and Disease that seemed to dispute the commonly held opinion that free-range pork is safer to eat than factory-farmed pigs.
The authors studied the prevalence of trichinella, toxoplasma, and salmonella [...]
April 13, 2009
Tags: bacon, farmers, food safety, marketing Posted in: Health, Science & Technology No Comments
A Few Thoughts On The State Of The FDA
1. People keep being surprised that the FDA does not have the power to invoke food recalls itself. Marion Nestle says the FDA’s authority relegates it to asking the companies to “pretty please” recall tainted food (link). This must be why the ‘A’ stands for administration and not authority. The FDA alert [...]
April 11, 2009
Tags: Barack Obama, FDA, food safety, Health, policy Posted in: Health, Politics 2 Comments
Big Organic Versus Small Organic
To many naturalists, hippies, granolas, etc., big organic is a big oxymoron. For them the ideal, sustainable farming model remains the small, organic farmer, like Polyface Farm (which was featured in Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma). For others, big organic is simply the most pragmatic, efficient way of promoting the organic process. It’s the best [...]
April 7, 2009
Tags: agriculture, farmers, FDA, green, marketing, USDA Posted in: Health 2 Comments
