It doesn't take much in these dark times for folk to find cause to celebrate. Todays 'hell, it could be worse' story is about childhood obesity. Word is that the number of obese US kids has remained constant since 1999.

To quote from the New York Times article:

“It may be that we’ve reached some sort of saturation in terms of the proportion of the population who are genetically susceptible to obesity in this environment,” Dr. Ogden said. “A more optimistic view is that some things are working. We don’t really know.” ... read more »

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Posted on 29 May, 2008 - 06:21

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A reporter at Bloomberg dropped a line with this story about diet pills in India. What with Indians ballooning (as we all are) there's something of a demand for weight-loss remedies.

The remedies that make sense (eat less, be a little more physically active, don't eat processed food, enjoy fresh food more) aren't terribly popular. Generating far more interest are the solutions that let you carry on eating unhealthily, but where you don't have to bother trying too hard. The chemical companies have been lining up to provide something like this, a magic regulator of free will that can help take the edge off our food cravings.

Through the cunning use of cannabis, specifically the discovery of how to switch off that part of the brain that makes you crave Mars bars when you're high, the drug giant Sanofi-Aventis has hit on a billion dollar weight-loss drug: Acompli. ... read more »

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Posted on 5 April, 2008 - 09:58

An argument that I find myself making over and over is that although diet is a very personal thing, it can be understood sociologically. And not only can it be understood this way, you have to understand it this way if you're to make sense of facts like one which I start the book with: that the closer Mexican teenagers are to the US border, the more likely they are to be overweight.

The dynamics of consumption that have been imposed on Mexico by its more powerful northern neighbour are having some profound effects. Mohammed writes with this article, which announces that Mexico is the second-most overweight country in the world, after the US, and if trends continue, will soon outweigh the gringos. More than 71 percent of Mexican women and 66 percent of Mexican men are overweight, according to the latest national surveys. ... read more »

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Posted on 1 April, 2008 - 21:12

Source

Eric Holt Gimenez over at Food First sent along this wee nugget from Grand Island, Nebraska.

It's a story about biofuels, based on a report from, er, the American Meat Institute, which ascribes the rise in the price of meat to biofuels. The estimates per animal are striking: "the costs [are] 53 cents per chicken; $3.40 per turkey; $38 per hog and $117.50 per fed beef animal." These are the costs associated with higher corn-feed for the animals, the price of which has been driven up by the US governments hare-brained biofuels schemes.

But statistics, like love, is a battlefield. ... read more »

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Posted on 20 March, 2008 - 22:32

Earlier today I was on Canadian radio, joining the wonderful Costas Halavrezos on his show, Maritime Noon. Unfortunately, technical glitches meant I missed the first part of the show, which included this classic and almost-certainly-documentary footage from the beginning of How To Get Ahead in Advertising. ... read more »

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Posted on 19 March, 2008 - 22:07

Okay, it's time to clear up the backlog of unposted bits and pieces. This one makes it to the front page because it's got an ace visual: a wee chart that shows you which major US food conglomerate owns your favourite crunchy hippy brand of processed food. It's put together by the folk at Good Magazine and it's a healthy reminder that there are big big bucks to be made from selling us food that looks almost exactly like it'll make a difference to the world. ... read more »

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Posted on 15 March, 2008 - 19:53

I've been having a fine exchange with Eric Holt-Gimenez at Food First about Slow Food. Slow Food is an idea about which I'm a little ambivalent. It was founded on some fairly important political principles, particularly around the politics of taste. Slow Food's founding question: 'why can't the masses have pleasure when they eat, why is it only the rich who can afford to eat well'?

The response was to observe that workers need two things to bring this kind of pleasure within reach - time and money. So they organised, working with unions to increase agricultural labourers' wages, and fighting for a two-hour lunch break in which to enjoy food.

Now, as Eric notes, Slow Food has increasingly become a circle jerk of olive oil and blue cheese fantasists, moving away quite sharply from its political roots. ... read more »

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Posted on 25 February, 2008 - 20:16

La Cucaracha isn't just the title of a Mexican revolutionary song (or Spanish for cockroach) anymore. It's also a meal. A UN meeting is currently debating the merits of edible insects.

Now, I'd normally file this under humour were it not for the fact that, well, actually, I'd not mind eating insects (if they turned out to taste any good). They're a good source of protein, better all round than eating mammals and, who knows, maybe they taste like chicken. ... read more »

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Posted on 21 February, 2008 - 04:45

The good people at the Food Ethics Council have run a piece I did on the politics of vegetarianism. It appears in December's issue of Food Ethics magazine.

If Meat is Murder, What’s Vegetarianism? ... read more »

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Posted on 30 November, 2007 - 17:19

Epidemiologists have been busy with obesity, particularly in the most overweight country, the US. By 2040, predicts one study, 100% of Americans will be either overweight or obese, if current trends hold.

If you want to watch the trends in US obesity, and to understand how race, income and gender matters, you're in luck. I've stumbled upon a fine site, with great data, courtesy of, er, The Endocrine Society and the Hormone Foundation. ... read more »

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Posted on 8 November, 2007 - 19:09