Stomachs on legs are proud to present

Following hot on the heels of their last dope music video for Turtle Pizza Cadillacs,

Here is the brand new music vid release from our dear friends Bobbi Sox and Coco Solid (who is an occasional Gut Feelings contributor), aka PARALLEL DANCE ENSEMBLE (a Denmark/New Zealand coproduction). Look out for a crunchy sweet sour creamy album from them in the near future.

Last weekend Coco had lunch with the Black Panthers' minister of culture Emory Douglas - I'm looking forward to hearing about that particular meal.

I'm re-blogging her recipe for disco rap sconez, which, says Coco, are "SO awesome slash CABBAGE!"

I have an awesome fool-proof recipe for scones, which I will now rename sconez so yous don't tease me but they are so sweetheart I have to share. If you got someone to impress, half an hour and $5 this is you man.

1 300ml bottle of cream
1 can of 7up
4 cups of flour
Dash of salt

Put it together. Cut it in squares and bake it for 15 minutes at 250 degrees...I mean degreez. Me and my baby sister Claire baked these today being broke babe buddies and watching movies. Note the jam and leftover whipped cream on the side, plus a fistful of raisins were thrown in (pimp I was def pushing the $9 mark).

My food photography needs work but trust me these rule. Oh my god when did I turn 60 in the 60's.

Check her scone photo porn and buhloon crème brulée mindstate reflections at http://www.jessicoco.blogspot.com/

Getting back to the hyper explosive topic of the social life of vegans the New Zealand Herald writes

A recent survey found vegans prefer partners who steer clear of meat or any animal products, vastly cutting the number of potential dates.

A University of Canterbury "Cruelty-Free Consumption in New Zealand" survey labelled people who choose not to be sexually intimate with non-vegans as "vegansexuals".

One vegansexual in the survey said: "I would not want to be intimate with someone whose body is literally made up from the bodies of others who have died for their sustenance. Non-vegetarian bodies smell different to me - they are, after all, sustained through carcasses - the murdered flesh of others."

The Northern Advocate scoured Northland for vegans and found a Kaitaia woman who was indeed struggling to find love.

"Apart from veganism I do have very high standards, but being a vegan has a lot to do with why I'm single," she said.

The divorced woman said she was being pursued by a meat-eating admirer but wasn't keen - especially as he once threatened to eat her pet pig.

"I know it's quite rare for vegans to date meat-eaters because being a vegan is about having a strong set of principles. I personally wouldn't want to get physical or make love with someone that had hurt or had a part in hurting an animal," she said.

"I cannot bear the thought of pain being inflicted on animals that have emotions."

Vegans are stricter than the average vegetarian, choosing not to consume, use or wear any products made of animals or containing animal byproducts. Banned products include eggs, milk, leather shoes, furs and even honey.

Safe animal welfare campaigner Hans Kriek is happily married to fellow vegan Nichola.

"When choosing a partner you tend to choose someone with the same set of values as you and being a vegan is a clear life choice. If you're a committed vegan it would be pretty hard to feel comfortable and adapt to living with a meat-eater," he said.

But Edward van Son, who lives at a vegan retreat in Victoria Valley, south of Kaitaia, said he had never had trouble finding love. Mr van Son said the girls who moved in his social circles tended not to be the types who ate only burgers.

"I find people who are into health, are creative and artistic, usually take an interest in healthy eating."

He also offered another reason for preferring vegans: "They definitely taste a lot better."

link

The last quote kinda grosses me out the most, and makes me wonder about all the linkages between sex and consumption, granted animals that only eat vegetables taste better, that's why dog has never tempted me, but is it really necessary to extend this taste perception to sex....does vegan muff really taste better.....blind taste test anyone....eeeeewwwwwwww

The Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 2008, this year's topic...vegetables

I'm writing a chapter on vegetables at the moment

Oh well, maybe I'll try and submit a paper for next year's do....on "food and language"

There are two other upcoming events also

Calls for papers:

Tasting histories: Food and Drink Cultures through the Ages - a research symposium, graduate workshop and public conference February 27-March 1, 2009 Robert Mondavi Institute, University of California, Davis, California
We are interested in receiving papers that explore critical issues in food and drink production and consumption that relate to the body and that deploy a world historical lens.

CFP: Food, Culture, and the Law - a call for papers
The field of food studies has grown enormously over the last decade, as evidenced in part by the steadily increasing number of academics and professionals in the humanities, social and nutrition sciences, culinary arts, and hospitality studies who have become engaged in cross-disciplinary conversations about food. Operating in tandem with the explosion of popular fascination with food, these conversations have been joined of late by academics, attorneys, and activists who are particularly concerned with the question of how our relationship to food is, has been, and should be, mediated through law. In response to this emerging area of inquiry, we are soliciting both conference papers and publishable essays that integrate multidisciplinary scholarship in food studies with legal scholarship related to food in existing fields such as agricultural, constitutional, criminal, administrative, tort, intellectual property, and international trade law.

A Case For Fruititarianism?Link

First there was the "mini pig" now comes the mini cow

Bloody Genius, your brain on beer

Food for thought: Intellectual activities make people eat more than when just resting, according to a study that sheds new light on brain food. Researchers split 14 university student volunteers into three groups for a 45-minute session of either relaxing in a sitting position, reading and summarizing a text, or completing a series of memory, attention, and vigilance tests on the computer.

The scientists had determined beforehand that the thinking sessions consumed only three calories more than resting. After the sessions, the participants were invited to eat as much as they pleased.

Though the study involved a very small number of participants, the results were stark.

The students who had done the computer tests downed 253 more calories, or 29.4 percent more than the couch potatoes. Those who had summarized a text consumed 203 more calories than the resting group.

Blood samples taken before, during, and after revealed that intellectual work causes much bigger fluctuations in glucose levels than rest periods, perhaps owing to the stress of thinking.

link

There's been a small discussion over at the Last Appetite about the dearth of good food writing in the mainstream media, from which this excellent quote emerged

Steingarten in Vogue reminds me a little of running “quality” articles in Playboy magazine.

Phil Lees, 2008

Serious talk of food seems now to be relegated to a seemingly endless list of single commodity food analyses which Nalika once described as "crude"

Their basic premise is to illustrate wider economic, social, political and environmental issues through analysing one type of food. And it seems increasingly to be the stock and trade of many an academic these days seeking to escape their dusty old offices to seek fame and fortune on book signing tours for serious "foodies"

I began a list of these a while ago, and I'm sure that the list is incomplete, but here are some (are there anymore that you can think of?)

- the banana book “Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World”

- the oyster book “The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell"

- the cod book “Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World”

- the sushi book “The Sushi Economy: Globalization and the Making of a Modern Delicacy”

- the coffee book ” The coffee paradox: Global markets, commodity trade and the elusive promise of development ”

- the rice book “Rice and Man”

- the potato book "The Potato: How the Humble Spud Rescued the Western World"

- The salt book "Salt: A World History"

- The spice book "Spice: The History of a Temptation"

- the chocolate book "The True History of Chocolate"

- the corn book "Corn and Capitalism: How a Botanical Bastard Grew to Global Dominance"

- the vanilla book "Vanilla : The Cultural History of the World's Favorite Flavor and Fragrance"

- and a forthcoming is a book on the matsutake mushroom


As I said in the comments page of Last Appetite, it sometimes makes me want to yell “argghhhh…we get it food is symbolic of wider economic, political, social and environmental issues”. But the point is that food writing varies from the sublimely silly and superfluous to the deeply analytical and enlightening. Personally I like a bit of sugar with my fibre, junk food for my brain if you will.

But now comes a new type of food book, in line with Patel's Stuffed and Starved these new food books do not focus on one type of food and the limited insight that they may afford of a vastly complex system, they are not seeking to make you feel more enlightened about your everyday commodities but rather explain to you why we're all fucked.

The book ,The End of Food by Paul Roberts explains that while industrial food may be in crisis, its still making the best out of a bad situation.

A reviewer says

Reading through the recent food-politics bookshelf, it's too easy to take away an "industrial food bad, local food good" attitude. But how many modern-day locavores would readily embrace the life of, say, a 19th-century prairie farmer, tending to livestock, grain crops, and a vegetable patch without electricity or machine power? Shopping at farmers markets and joining CSAs -- activities I wholeheartedly support -- present a necessary challenge to a global food system gone mad, but are unlikely to prove sufficient for transforming it. To mount a real challenge, we'll need a clear-eyed grounding in the history and economics of food production, in addition to locavore zeal. And that's were Roberts makes an important contribution.....Robert's historical frame drives home a key point that his predecessors didn't quite nail down: In many ways, modern food production is an attractive response to centuries of chronic food insecurity. Who wants to spend nearly all of one's income on food, and rely on sugared tea as a key source of calories, as did the 19th-century British working class? Who wants to spend hours a day preparing food as peasant women did, not by choice but for survival? By the dawn of the 20th century, people quite understandably longed for food security and freedom from drudgery. The modern food system -- for all of the new problems it created -- largely met those desires, at least in the United States and Europe. The locavore movement will eventually have to confront them head on.

Yes, who indeed wants to live like a peasant? (aside from you Phil and Hock who's apparent dream is to spend all of their waking hours cold smoking meats and makin bacon)

Basically, the point is that yes modern food is deeply problematic but if we get rid of it human kind will undoubtedly face starvation....the end of food, and all those mindlessly indulgent food writers and bloggers and the equally useless academics that go along with it.

If you're like me and you find reading about the food industry as compelling as trying out a new recipe or stuffing nice things in your mouth then this website may be of interest. Oligopoly Watch has a food and beverage section which details happenings in different food sectors including articles on the beer and organics industry

Plus an interesting graph on the industry structure of organics in the USA....

This week Phil brings us a story about banana pancakes as harbingers of mediocrity

More ominously The New Yorker explains why the global food market is about to collapse , which it blames it on the over production of mediocre food.

Given this I thought I should also include their witty ruminations on hang overs, because the previous article may lead you to drink

When you recover from your hangover you might want to get serious and check out some sites on survival gardening, alternately also called armageddon gardening and/or defensive gardening or hardcore homesteadingbecause according some of the opinions expressed in the NY article, you may as well get a head start if you're going to be forced back to the farm anyway

Which may not be as bad as you think because at least you'll be able to brew your own which brings us neatly back to hangovers

Hangovers are probably as old as alcohol use, which dates back to the Stone Age. Some anthropologists have proposed that alcohol production may have predated agriculture; in any case, it no doubt stimulated that development, because in many parts of the world the cereal harvest was largely given over to beer-making

So nothing to worry about really, so long as you master hardcore homesteading your food will mostly taste better and if it doesn't you'll be too drunk to notice anyway

Since recent worldwide food prices rises I've heard rumblings against organics as an irresponsible and unaffordable type of agricultural production

The Independent continues the assault with its organic myth exploding article

According to the author there are seven common myths about organic farming.

Myth one: Organic farming is good for the environment

...organically reared cows burp twice as much methane as conventionally reared cattle – and methane is 20 times more powerful a greenhouse gas than CO2. Meat and poultry are the largest agricultural contributors to GHG emissions. Life Cycle assessment counts the energy used to manufacture pesticide for growing cattle feed, but still shows that a kilo of organic beef releases 12 per cent more GHGs, causes twice as much nutrient pollution and more acid rain.

So apparently if your gonna eat organics and claim to be environmentally benign you better not be eating beef or chicken. I can't help but think that this is some sort of vegetarian conspiracy....Are scientists now going to start getting large grants to experiment with the breeding of non-burping, non-farting cows and chickens? And what's more how on earth did they carry out this study to begin with?


Myth two: Organic farming is more sustainable

Organic potatoes use less energy in terms of fertiliser production, but need more fossil fuel for ploughing. A hectare of conventionally farmed land produces 2.5 times more potatoes than an organic one.

I can't help but think that the trend towards carbon counting each individual product back through its production and supply chain is a case of splitting hairs. Ok so when it comes to a potato grown organically in Ireland then there are costs and benefits, but surely there must be, at the end of the day some form of net calculation that can be made for organic agriculture as a whole. Yes, organic agriculture may require more soil care that requires more fossil fuels, but again what this comes down to is reliance on fossil fuels within the whole economy and perhaps once renewable energy sources are better developed then organics can truly be delinked from the carbon economy, the fact that it currently is not entirely delinked is not in my view a case against organics but further emphasises the need to improve green energy sources.


see the quandaries of carbon labelling

Myth three: Organic farming doesn't use pesticides

Actually, organic farmers also use pesticides. The difference is that "organic" pesticides are so dangerous that they have been "grandfathered" with current regulations and do not have to pass stringent modern safety tests. For example, organic farmers can treat fungal diseases with copper solutions. Unlike modern, biodegradable, pesticides copper stays toxic in the soil for ever. The organic insecticide rotenone (in derris) is highly neurotoxic to humans – exposure can cause Parkinson's disease. But none of these "natural" chemicals is a reason not to buy organic food; nor are the man-made chemicals used in conventional farming

This seems to me to be an issue solved with better regulation


Myth four: Pesticide levels in conventional food are dangerous

The proponents of organic food – particularly celebrities, such as Gwyneth Paltrow, who have jumped on the organic bandwagon – say there is a "cocktail effect" of pesticides. Some point to an "epidemic of cancer". In fact, there is no epidemic of cancer. When age-standardised, cancer rates are falling dramatically and have been doing so for 50 years.

If there is a "cocktail effect" it would first show up in farmers, but they have among the lowest cancer rates of any group. Carcinogenic effects of pesticides could show up as stomach cancer, but stomach cancer rates have fallen faster than any other. Sixty years ago, all Britain's food was organic; we lived only until our early sixties, malnutrition and food poisoning were rife. Now, modern agriculture (including the careful use of well-tested chemicals) makes food cheap and safe and we live into our eighties.

This seems more like a rant about celebrities and the type of people that she stands for rich, white blond organic eating types. I don't think I'm qualified to comment on the safety or danger of eating pesticides per say, but even if there is no health risk to either I don't see how this is an effective argument against organic farming when pertoleum based input costs have skyrocketed along with oil prices, whether or not it is safer to eat seems besides the large point of how to feed the world


Myth five: Organic food is healthier

This high level of infection among organic chickens could cross-contaminate non-organic chickens processed on the same production lines. Organic farmers boast that their animals are not routinely treated with antibiotics or (for example) worming medicines. But, as a result, organic animals suffer more diseases. In 2006 an Austrian and Dutch study found that a quarter of organic pigs had pneumonia against 4 per cent of conventionally raised pigs; their piglets died twice as often. Disease is the major reason why organic animals are only half the weight of conventionally reared animals – so organic farming is not necessarily a boon to animal welfare.

Disease is also a major fact of all life, perhaps with organic farming we have to get used to a higher (and more normal?) level of mortality for farm animals than was previously the case? This I do see as a potential argument against organic farming, but if we are all supposed to be organic vegetarians then maybe it doesn't matter so much. Oh my god we're doomed


Myth six: Organic food contains more nutrients

The study that found higher flavonoid levels in organic tomatoes revealed them to be the result of stress from lack of nitrogen – the plants stopped making flesh and made defensive chemicals (such as flavonoids) instead

i personally don't see why flavanoids in tomatos make a particularly strong case for or against organics or anything really

Myth seven: The demand for organic food is booming

Less than 1 per cent of the food sold in Britain is organic, but you would never guess it from the media.

and.....?

My overall assessment, a fairly baseless and nitpicking article that doesn't answer much in the way of whether organics is a good route to head down en masse to ensure the continued survival of farms and people

A response to the Global Food Prices Crisis: Sustainable family farming can feed the world
Thursday, 14 February 2008
PRESS RELEASE : LA VIA CAMPESINA

(Rome, 14 February 2008) Consumers around the world have seen the prices of staple food dramatically increasing over the past months, creating extreme hardship especially for the poorest communities. Over a year, wheat has doubled in price, maize is nearly 50% higher than a year ago. However, there is no crisis of production. Statistics show that cereals' production has never been as high as in 2007 (1).

Prices are increasing because part of production is now diverted into agrofuels, global food reserves are at their lowest in 25 years due to the de-regulation of markets by the WTO, and extreme weather has effected crops in some exporting countries such as Australia. But prices also increase because financial companies speculate over people's food as they anticipate that agriculture prices will keep rising in the near future. Food production, processing and distribution falls increasingly under the grip of transnational companies monopolising the markets.

The tragedy of industrial agrofuels: they feed cars and not people

Agrofuels (fuels produced from plants, agriculture and forestry) are presented as an answer to the peak in production of oil and global warming alike. However, many scientists and institutions now recognise that their energy benefits will be very limited and that their environmental and social impact will be extremely negative. However, the whole business world is rushing into that new market that is directly competing with people food's needs. The Indian government is talking of planting 14 millions hectares of land with Jatropha, the Inter-American Development Bank says that Brazil has 120 million hectares that could be cultivated with agrofuel crops, and an agrofuel lobby is speaking of 379 million hectares being available in 15 African countries (2). Current demand for corn in order to produce ethanol already represents 10% of the world consumption, pushing up world prices.

Industrial agrofuels are an economic, social and environmental nonsense. Their development should be halted and agricultural production should focus on food as a priority.

All farmers do not benefit from higher prices

Record world food prices hit consumers, and contrary to what can be expected, they do not benefit all producers. Stock breeders are in a crisis due to the rise in feed prices, cereal producers are facing sharp rises in fertiliser's prices and landless farmers and agricultural workers cannot afford to buy food. Farmers sell their produce at an extremely low price compared to what consumers pay. The Spanish coordination of farmers and stock breeders (COAG) calculated that consumers in Spain pay up to 600% more than what the food producer gets for his/her production.

The first to benefit from higher agricultural prices are the agro-industry and large retailers because they increase food prices much more than they should. Will food prices decrease when agricultural prices go down again? Large companies are able to stock large quantities of food and release them when the markets prices are high.

Small farmers and consumers need fair and stable prices, not the current high volatility. Small farmers cannot produce if prices are too low, as has often been the case in the last decades. They therefore need market regulations, the opposite of the WTO policies.

Agriculture trade “liberalisation” leads to crisis

The current crisis reveals that agricultural trade “liberalisation” leads to hunger and poverty.

Countries have become extremely dependant on global markets. In 1992, Indonesian farmers produced enough soya to supply the domestic market. Soya-based tofu and 'tempeh' are an important part of the daily diet throughout the archipelago. Following the neo-liberal doctrine, the country opened its borders to food imports, allowing cheap US soya to flood the market. This destroyed national production. Today, 60% of the soya consumed in Indonesia is imported. Record prices for US soya last January led to a national crisis when the price of 'tempeh' and tofu (the « meat of the poor ») doubled in a few weeks. The same scenario applies to many countries, for example for corn production in Mexico.

Deregulation and privatisation of safeguard mechanisms are also contributing to the current crisis. National food reserves have been privatised and are now run like transnational companies. They act as speculators instead of protecting farmers and consumers. Likewise, guaranteed prize mechanisms are being dismantled all over the world as part of the neo-liberal policies package, exposing farmers and consumers to extreme price volatility.

Time for Food Sovereignty!

Due to the expected growth of world population until 2050 and the need to face climate change, the world will have to produce more food in the years to come. Farmers are able to meet that challenge as they have done in the past. Indeed, the world population doubled in the past 50 years but farmers have increased cereal production even faster.

Via Campesina believes that in order to protect livelihoods, jobs, people's health and the environment, food has to remain in the hands of small scale sustainable farmers and cannot be left under the control of large agribusiness companies or supermarket chains. GMOs and industrial agriculture will not provide healthy food and will further deteriorate the environment. For example, the new “Green Revolution” pushed by AGRA in Africa (new seeds, fertilizers and irrigation at large scale) will not solve the food crisis. It will deepen it. On the other hand, recent research shows that small organic farms are at least as productive as conventional farms, some estimates even suggest that global food production could even increase by as much as 50% with organic agriculture (3).

To avoid a major food crisis, governments and public institutions have to adopt specific policies aimed at protecting the production of the most important energy in the world: food!

Governments have to develop, promote and protect local production in order to be less dependent on world food prices. This implies the right for any country or union to control food imports and the duty to stop any form of food dumping.

They also have to set up (or to maintain) supply management mechanisms such as buffer stocks and guaranteed floor prices to create stable conditions for producers.

According to Henry Saragih, general coordinator of Via Campesina and leader of the Indonesian Peasant's Union, « farmers need land to produce food for their own community and for their country. The time has come to implement genuine agrarian reforms to allow family farmers to feed the world. ».

Ibrahim Coulibaly, president of the National Coordination of Peasant's organisation in Mali said: «Facing extreme rises in food prices, our government has agreed with the farmers organisations' demand to develop and protect local food markets instead of increasing imports. Increasing food imports will only make us more dependent on the brutal fluctuations of the world market ».

Via Campesina believes that the solution to the current food price crisis lies in food sovereignty. Food sovereignty is the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and the right of their governments to define the food and agriculture policies of their countries, without damaging agriculture of other countries. It puts the aspirations and needs of those who produce, distribute and consume food at the heart of food systems and policies rather than the demands of markets and corporations. Food sovereignty prioritises local and national economies and markets and empowers peasant and family farmer-driven agriculture and food production.

For more information and to interview world farmers leaders in Rome:
Via Campesina delegation in Rome: +393487276117
e-mail : viacampesina@viacampesina.org
www.viacampesina.org

(1) Les Chambres d'Agriculture - France: http://paris.apca.chambagri.fr/
(2) Grain: www.grain.org
(3) “Shattering Myths: Can sustainable agriculture feed the world?”: www.foodfirst.org

First up the more easily digested:

'A Short History of the American Stomach' by Frederick Kaufman

"A Short History of the American Stomach" is a history of extremes. In Kaufman's version, there isn't a lot of middle ground. When we're not furiously trying to shed pounds, we're gorging ourselves. In one of his more amusing sections, he looks at the phenomenon of extreme eating. "Professional gurgitators," those champion hot-dog eaters you read about every summer, come from a fine, if bloated, lineage; extreme eating is a classic American folk tradition. This voraciousness, frowned on in polite company, symbolizes the bounty of fish, flesh and fowl that the settlers consumed as they settled America. Kaufman evokes those colorful backwoods characters "who devoured alligators and rattlesnakes and blood." The American appetite is perhaps key to our westward expansion, "for America was a vast digestive force that understood the entire continent -- if not the world -- as its manifest dinner."

Main Course of extremely stodgy text to chew on:

'The Future Control of Food: A Guide to International Negotiations and Rules on Intellectual Property, Biodiversity and Food Security' by Geoff Tansey and Tasmin Rajotte

This book is the first wide-ranging guide to the key issues of intellectual property and ownership, genetics, biodiversity and food security. Proceeding from an introduction and overview of the issues, comprehensive chapters cover negotiations and instruments in the World Trade Organization, Convention on Biological Diversity, UN Food and Agriculture Organization, World Intellectual Property Organization, the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants and various other international bodies. The final part discusses the responses of civil society groups to the changing global rules, how these changes affect the direction of research and development, the nature of global negotiation processes and various alternative futures.

BBC Four investigates efforts to introduce carbon labelling for food in the program "Costing the Earth"

An argument for fair trade ready made mircrowave chicken meals from africa?

Turns out the economies of scale via supermarkets might be quite good afterall...at least this might shut the holier than thou "locavores" up....but not necessarily

all and all it looks like the future is set to give us ethical dialemmas up the ying yang

enter the ethical quagmire here

"We’ve already heard about the large carbon footprint of a burger [... Lloyd has brought us some pretty unappetizing news of the link between cows and global warming. Now we hear, via a report in The Guardian, of a new study just published in New Scientist magazine showing that eating just one kg (approximately 2.2lbs) of beef creates the equivalent emissions as driving for three hours while leaving all the lights on at home! Unfortunately the true cost of emissions will be even higher than stated, as the study did not include the energy involved in maintaining farm equipment, nor in trucking the meat to market. All is not lost, however, as the scientists believe that significant savings in greenhouse gases can be made"


source

If you are in Sydney you may be interested in attending this:

Distinguished Lecture Series #2
“Global Sushi: Soft Power and Hard Realities”

Theodore C. Bestor
Professor of Social Anthropology and Japanese Studies Chair, Department of Anthropology Harvard University Visiting
Academic to the Asia Institute, University of Melbourne

Venue: Building 10; level 6; Training Room 1. (enter through Jones St but use lifts at Wattle St end of building)
See Map
Time/Date: 6-7pm Monday 16 July 2007
Contact: Michael.Prince@uts.edu.au

For the past eighteen years, Ted Bestor has been visiting fish markets, fishing ports, tuna ranches, and sushi bars in the
Asia Pacific and North American and European Atlantic regions to track the spread of “Global Sushi,” as Japanese cuisine
has been transformed from exotic ethnic specialization into an icon of Japan’s “gross national cool,” an aspect of Japan’s
projection of “soft power” into the arenas of global popular culture. But Global Sushi is not just slick cosmopolitan
consumption; it is an industry of off-shore production and distribution, created by complex joint ventures and
technology transfers, environmentally controversial aquaculture projects, illegal fishing and international attempts to
regulate global common property regimes. Global Sushi depends upon complex arrangements of production and
distribution, and an extensive and only partially transparent international trade in seafood.

You should sunscribe to this

It's a round up of all food related stories on NPR each week


This week is

1) Hot Dog Eating Contest Is July 4 Tradition 2) Beer Industry Calls for Kegs 3) Ritz Serves Breakfast Fit for a Czar 4) The Great Ice Cream Sundae Debate

Last week was

1) Sushi's Ascent in America 2) Inspection in China Finds 23,000 Cases of Bad Food 3) In France, a Controversy over Camembert 4) 'Consider the Oyster' -- a Peerless Summer Delicacy