Stomachs on legs are proud to present

Abstract

Happiness is an elusive concept, it brings about ideas of ecstasy, contentment, delight but also health and strength, pouvoir and puissance ... a state of mind and body that is precarious and contingent. How to give form and substance to an idea that is otherwise difficult to conceive? What is happiness for a chicken? What is it like to be a chicken today? Free-range certification offers a powerful interpretation of animals' happiness in the context of farming, and it does so by providing a particular translation of the `natural' in the domesticated environment of farming. But it also offers a specific definition of materiality, in the form of the body of the animal, presented as an expression of her/his quality of life in the juiciness and other organoleptic qualities of her/his flesh or eggs. In this paper, I present the results of an on-farm assessment of the welfare of free-range chickens in the UK, carried out by adopting the Welfare Quality protocol. This is a new evaluation of the on-farm welfare of animals that encompasses many aspects of animals' lives, including animals' negative and positive emotions. It suggests that animals' `happiness' can be measured and can become part of an overall score of welfare, but it also addresses the complexities of the interpretation of the emotional states of animals. I propose that this case contributes to the debate on `material politics' and the invention of animals' happiness can be seen as a political technique that affects human ^ non-human
animal relations.

Miele M, 2011, "The taste of happiness: free-range chicken" Environment and Planning A 43(9) 2076 – 2090

It reminds me of the Posh Nosh episode. I can't help but feel that we've gotten our priorities all wrong.

And that's just the environment....what about the social....so the question here is gotta be, how can and should a label symbolise a guarantee of complex environmental and social systems?

I'm not so sure it can or should?

Source IFPRI

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

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.

Wowwww.
The plot thickens like Gong Bao sauce with Kingsfords 'expressly for food' cornstarch!

There have been a few interesting Gut Feelings discussions of late on personal eating choices vs societal implications.

As Maytel pointed out, there are so many different sets of circumstances under which, say, a Walmart may open, it's very difficult to say definitively if it will be a good or bad thing.

England is still fizzing with rage over Jamie Oliver's school dinner campaign, and omnivores get ever more obsessed with the origins of their food, calculating how much energy they expend per footstep to reach their seed store to buy a tomato plant. Meanwhile, as we noted in April, a study in the USA showed that vouchers that permit low-income women to shop at a local farmers’ market increased fruit and vegetable consumption in poor families.
it feels like the developed world is caught in a massive tangle of environmental and social/governmental concerns versus free will concerning what one puts in one's mouth.

Here is a fascinating article about how Los Angeles has imposed a one year ban on new fast food franchises in Southern LA.

Are we at a dietary tipping point? People's dietary choices being controlled by well-to-do city planners!! The coining of the term 'food desert'!!
Are healthy choices a type of imperialism, or is fast food a type of social ill that should be legislated against? It seems clear that in certain senses & situations people are not capable of making choices that are good for themselves.
But is this food-equivalent of Giuliani's draconian nightlife laws going to make LA people healthier and happier?
And is it a big deal if a few pupusa vendors are sacrificed along the way?

"Jonathan Gold, the LA Weekly food critic who won a Pulitzer Prize last year, said he understands the spirit of the freeze, which is an urban planning measure meant to keep the neighborhood, South Los Angeles, from being swallowed up by drive-though fast food restaurants. (A separate measure by the city provides economic incentives for new grocery stores and restaurants with table service.)

Fast food chains, he said, are like jellyfish in the ocean: with too many in one area, nothing else can thrive.

But he worries that the law could keep out places of more culinary interest. South Los Angeles has the best barbecue in the city, he said, and it has a growing number of cooks from Mexico and Central America making lamb barbacoa and pupusas. “Anytime you try to ban something, there’s a lot of bycatch,” he said.

The moratorium’s definition of a fast food business is any stand-alone restaurant that dispenses food, to stay or to go, and that has “a limited menu, items prepared in advance or prepared or heated quickly, no table orders, and food served in disposable wrapping or containers.” It is up to the city’s director of planning to decide which places fit that definition.

The councilwoman behind the moratorium, Jan Perry, says its intent is not to crush food choices, but to encourage variety and give residents more nutritious options. Making healthy decisions about food is difficult when people have small incomes, the grocery store is five miles away and a $1 cheeseburger is right around the corner, she and supporters of the ban say.

The moratorium doesn’t mean that people who live within the affected 32-square-mile zone will be cut off from the pleasures of an inexpensive cheeseburger and hot fries. More than 45 percent of the 900 restaurants there — the highest concentration in the city — are fast food chains.

The idea is to bring new eating options to the city’s food deserts, the term now in vogue to describe poor neighborhoods whose residents have few places to buy fresh groceries.

“People do not understand what happens in a disenfranchised community,” said Councilwoman Perry, who represents neighborhoods in the area. “The fact remains, there are not a lot of food choices in South L.A.”

Since there is not much land left to develop in the area, the moratorium will allow city planners time to determine what kinds of businesses would be best in an area where rates of obesity and diseases related to it are disproportionately high.

“What we’re beginning to see is almost the monopolization of our dietary intake by a handful of corporations,” said David Zinczenko, editor in chief of Men’s Health magazine and the author of several diet books, including “Eat This, Not That! for Kids!” (Rodale, 2008).

“Add to that the financial reality of feeding ourselves today, where a single grapefruit from a corner fruit stand costs two or more times as much as a few Chicken McNuggets,” he said, “and I think you can begin to put together a case for governmental intervention.”

But not everyone agrees, including Joe R. Hicks, a radio talk show host who was the executive director of Los Angeles’s Human Relations Commission under Mayor Richard Riordan a decade ago. The two now work for a think tank that focuses on race relations.

“The crime in all of this is that people are sitting around meddling into the very minutiae of what people are putting in their mouths,” he said.

He argues that the ban assumes the 500,000 people who live in South Los Angeles are intellectually incapable of deciding what to eat.

“There is not a single public health crisis in the history of mankind that has been solved by handing out brochures,” said Harold Goldstein, executive director of the California Center for Public Health Advocacy.

In South Los Angeles, the burgers continue to fry.

“There is a sentiment here that it is a little anti-American, but people forget government tells businesses where to go all the time,” said Eddie North-Hager, a blogger who runs a community bulletin board focused on his neighborhood, Leimert Park, which is about 90 percent black and within the ban area.

He says there are 10 McDonald’s restaurants within three miles of his home. “It seems like a lot,” he said, “and that’s just McDonald’s.”

During the ag-food conference in Belgium last month, there was a showing of a movie "Our Daily Bread."

It's all about industrial and high-tech food making process, with no narrations or conversations. They just show it to you. A little disturbing, and very provoking.

Below are a few images downloadable from the movie website.



I wasn't sure what the below image was about when I saw the movie... ..but when I downloaded this image, the file name was "UNSER TÄGLICH BROT Spargel."

Oooooh.

Spargel, the white asparagus!!!

Since the movie contains explicit images of animal slaughtering, we joked about conference participants changing their mind about the reception dinner choice... which, to our surprise, they served stuff like foie gras, which did not seem to be the best thing to serve at a conference on sustainable agri-food systems...

Burger King in London has released a $200 dollar burger



Critics charge that the burger is gross, outrageous and with food prices soaring and hunger crisis threatening the lives of millions it is the wrong burger, with the wrong message at the wrong time. Maybe so, or with burger profit proceeds going to charity, is it better than the hunger cafes of Mumbai?

The golden Honda pulled over to the curb alongside the restaurant. A window rolled down. A 100-rupee note, worth about $2.30, popped out, courtesy of a woman in a head scarf who would identify herself only as Mrs. Abbas. Then, as quietly as it came, the car sped away.

Inside the Mahim Darbar restaurant, seven men sprang to their feet: gaunt, beleaguered men with pocked faces, men who appeared to have had their share of dashed hopes. But this was the moment they had been pining for. Mrs. Abbas had, in a quintessentially Mumbai way, bought them lunch.

The world is filled with eating houses of every kind. There are hamburger joints and caviar joints; there are places you drive through and places where you sit down; there is the New York steakhouse and the Paris bistro. But the world may be unfamiliar with a Mumbai variation on the theme: the hunger café.

It takes a city as frenetic, transactional and compassionate as Mumbai to erect eateries for the malnourished. They are not soup kitchens, for denizens of this city have little time to pour other people soup. In a city that never stops selling stocks and shooting movies, they prefer drive-by benevolence.

On a stretch of road in the Mahim neighborhood, the hunger cafés have stood for decades. Mumbai's broken, drifting men squat in neat rows in front of each establishment, waiting patiently. Vats full of food simmer behind them. What separates them from the food is the 25-cent-per-plate cost - a gulf harder to bridge than one might assume. But every so often, a car pulls up, donates, and the men dine....Consider an alternative way to feed these men. You could raise money in schools and temples; you could buy the food and serve it in the quiet of a shelter. You could at least let the men sit inside the restaurant, not on the edge of the sidewalk.

But in India, that may not work. Among the swelling middle class, the anonymous, checkbook-style charity has yet to catch on. Indians have shown scant enthusiasm for giving to abstract causes. Indian giving is feudal giving: giving to those below you in your household chain of command.

Source: International Herald Tribune June 16, 2008

What is better stuffing your face for the poor with $200 burgers or reducing your own consumption and redistributing the savings?

The first seems gross, but maybe pragmatic, the second ideal but possibly implausible?

Any way you look at it, it seems to me a sad state of affairs that Burger King is now the benevolent middle man pushing gross consumption in the name of charity.

Further professional rebuttal to the organic myths article, Peter Melchett of the Soil Association rebuts the silliness of Rob Johnston in the Independent

Thank god someone knows what they are talking about

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

"When you buy a box of Cheerios in New York and one in Champaign, Illinois, you know they are going to be the same. By shortening the genetic pool using clones, you can do a similar thing."

- JON FISHER, president and owner of Prairie State Semen in Illinois, after the F.D.A. declared cloned animals safe for the food
supply: NY Times.

Is it true that most (American) consumers prioritise predictability above all else?
Will we see same-tasting name-brand tomatoes and pork chitlins uniting the palates of the world like McFish burgers and Krispy Kreme?
Seems to me it's easier to make stuff taste the same by adding low-cost soy meal, corn products and artificial additives. Who cares what the cow tastes like in the first place?

As the NY Times reported (see below), of course those same-tasting Mac n Cheese boxes are not the be all and end all for lower income American consumers. Farmer's markets need not be the preserve of the middle classes. If only they weren't so damn expensive.

Vouchers that permit low-income women to shop at a local farmers’ market increase fruit and vegetable consumption in poor families, a new study shows.

The research, published this month in the American Journal of Public Health, comes just as states are making important changes to national nutrition programs. For years, the federally-funded Women, Infants and Children (W.I.C.) program, which subsidizes food purchases for low-income women and young children, hasn’t included fruits and vegetables, except for fruit juice and carrots for breastfeeding women. After a push by health groups and a recent report from the Institute of Medicine, the United States Department of Agriculture in December revised W.I.C. to include monthly subsidies for fruits and vegetables. States will begin implementing the new rules in February.

While this latest report shows that subsidizing fruit and vegetable purchases can make a big difference in eating habits among low-income people, it also suggests that the new amounts recently approved for W.I.C. fall far short of what is needed. The U.C.L.A. study gave women $10 a week, while the W.I.C. program will provide monthly vouchers worth $8 to each recipient and $6 to each child. Breastfeeding women will receive just $10 a month toward fruits and vegetables.

New Mandala details allegations of slavery in Thailand's shrimp industry.

Workers said that if they made a mistake on the shrimp peeling line, asked for sick leave, or tried to escape, they could expect to be beaten, sexually molested, or publicly tortured. After interviewing more than 280 workers, police took 63 women and three men to a shelter, suspecting that they had been trafficked and/or forced to work against their will. Another 22 were deported; nearly 80 returned to work at the factory, which remains in operation. Despite widespread worker rights abuses, including child labor and human trafficking, the owner was charged only with employing children under 15 and failing to provide holidays and time off. Though these charges are serious, they were treated as first-time labor code violations. The owner initially only paid a fine of about $2,100 and has returned to work.

Anyone who follows food writer Jeffrey Steingarten's columns in American Vogue will have often remarked on how odd it is to be reading about his cheese fondue experiments in a magazine that is a pillar of an industry that (whether consciously or not) by promulgating certain body types, implies a much less voluptuous version of what and how much we should be eating.

Last year the New Yorker magazine noted on its website "how bizarre it is that the dean of American food writers should be publishing his scientific food forays amid images of Caroline Trentini jumping in Prada and furs", for a piece about burger science and Heston Blumenthal. (see picture above).

The sometimes gothic or even horrific relationship between fashion and food was highlighted again this week when France's lower house of parliament adopted a measure that makes it illegal to "incite extreme thinness." The law will apply across all media, including magazines, websites and advertising.

The law was supposedly in part a reaction to the recent death of a Brazilian model of anorexia - and by all accounts is largely aimed at the extremely disturbing trend of 'pro ana mia' websites. Ana and Mia are shorthand for anorexia and bulimia respectively. The French Federation of Couture responded defensively, deriding a law that would allow the goverment to decide 'who is skinny and who is not'.

When it comes to the eating disorder websites, health experts say a crackdown will be hard to enforce as well as not necessarily having much effect on preventing the eating disorders.

So, having read this, I naturally went to one of those websites out of curiosity. Blech.... of course, it was disturbing, to say the least. The hints for distraction, deception and purging, were just too pitiful to be repeated here, involving talk of stomach-acid bursts, pretending to be vegetarian, and mind-controlling mechanisms involving food and repulsive visual stimuli.

In general I think mental illness as a whole deserves more sympathy and understanding from society - but these types of eating disorders are somehow much harder to feel sympathetic towards. At once deeply narcissistic and nihilistic: they are a scary reminder of how twisted the human mind can become...


So Coco Chanel isn't directly responsible for eating disorders that are far more complicated than simply feeling guilty for having eaten one too many strawberry-lavendar muffins or a boxful of chocolate eclairs from Laduree in Paris.

But I guess we all know women who never eat a full meal: who often have nothing to eat all day except for one slice of cake and one piece of toast, and temper their moodswings with anti-depressants, cups of tea and/or shopping on their credit card. Or boys who complained when you ate your whole plate full, because they are used to girls who left half their portion for them to consume? And what of Karl Lagerfeld, who reportedly stays trim by simply chewing things up and spitting them out?

Whether you think predigestive regurgitation is sexy or not. The relationship between fashion and food is pretty fucked up.

Girls, will you please just eat your granola?

Or even turn all those obsessive-compulsive controlling impulses into something useful like creating your own sourdough starters from the natural yeasts that hide on freshly milled flour?

Basically, just behave more like Jeffrey Steingarten. As if he was on a south beach diet.

It was a damn shame to see that orange roughy was still being sold in New Zealand, almost everywhere we went.

There should be a moratorium on fishing this species. I mean we carry on and on about Japanese whaling yet continue to accept species like orange roughy on our seafood menus....shame on you New Zealand

From the ever reliable wiki

The orange roughy, red roughy, or deep sea perch, Hoplostethus atlanticus, is a relatively large deep-sea fish belonging to the slimehead family (Trachichthyidae). This fish is categorized as vulnerable to exploitation by the Marine Conservation Society. It is found in cold (3 to 9 °C), deep (bathypelagic, 180 to 1,800 m) waters of the western Pacific Ocean, eastern Atlantic (from Iceland to Morocco; and from Walvis Bay, Namibia, to off Durban, South Africa), Indo-Pacific (off New Zealand and Australia), and in the Eastern Pacific off Chile. The orange roughy is notable for its great age — a recorded (disputed by commercial fishers but supported by scientists) maximum of 149 years — and importance to commercial deep trawl fishery. Actually a bright brick red in life, the orange roughy fades to a yellowish orange after death.
Like other slimeheads, the orange roughy is slow-growing and late to mature, resulting in a very low resilience. They are extremely susceptible to overfishing because of this, and many stocks (especially those off New Zealand and Australia, which were first exploited in the late 1970s) have already crashed; recently discovered substitute stocks are rapidly dwindling...In recent years, the consumption of orange roughy has risen drastically due to increased supply through previously impossible deep-sea trawling techniques. Its recovery rate from fishing is slow because of its life cycle and sporadic reproduction making the fish incredibly prone to overfishing. It is the first commercially sought fish to be added to Australia's list of endangered species because of overfishing. According to Seafood Watch, orange roughy is currently on the list of fish that American consumers, who are health and sustainability minded, should avoid. In addition to the dangers for the species, the method of bottom trawling has been heavily criticized by environmentalists for its destructive nature. The destructive nature of bottom trawling combined with the heavy commercial demand has garnered focused criticism from both environmentalists and media.

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

A series of articles in the NY Times called 'Empty Seas' is documenting the dirty business of fisheries. It seems The Last Appetite's prophecies are nigh, at least in Europe and West Africa.
Until further notice, I'll restrict my aquatic vertebrate consumption to trout from the river near Erik's dad's house. And farmed prawns. Nobody'd miss a little prawn or two, would they......?

This is a very sad business.

Fish is now the most traded animal commodity on the planet, with about 100 million tons of wild and farmed fish sold each year. Europe has suddenly become the world’s largest market for fish, worth more than 14 billion euros, or about $22 billion a year. Europe’s appetite has grown as its native fish stocks have shrunk so that Europe now needs to import 60 percent of fish sold in the region, according to the European Union.

In Europe, the imbalance between supply and demand has led to a thriving illegal trade. Some 50 percent of the fish sold in the European Union originates in developing nations, and much of it is laundered like contraband, caught and shipped illegally beyond the limits of government quotas or treaties. The smuggling operation is well financed and sophisticated, carried out by large-scale mechanized fishing fleets able to sweep up more fish than ever, chasing threatened stocks from ocean to ocean.

The Canaries, a Spanish archipelago off the coast of Morocco, have become the favored landing point of illegal fish as well as people.

Once cleared there, the catch has entered the European Union and can be sold anywhere within it without further inspection. By the time West African fish get to Europe, the legal fish are offered for sale alongside the ill gotten.

The European Commission estimates that more than 1.1 billion euros in illegal seafood, or $1.6 billion worth, enters Europe each year. The World Wide Fund for Nature contends that up to half the fish sold in Europe are illegally caught or imported. While some of the so-called “pirate fishing” is carried out by non-Western vessels far afield, European ships are also guilty, some of them operating close to home. An estimated 40 percent of cod caught in the Baltic Sea are illegal, said Mireille Thom, a spokeswoman for Joe Borg, the European Union’s commissioner of fisheries and maritime affairs.

Part 2 in the NY Times series 'Empty Seas'

Some basic stuff here that all kids know, but I guess we're all guilty of boiling with the lid off the pot sometimes...

The most interesting point to me is about the extreme energy inefficiency of gas burners. I suppose the main argument for them was always the level of control, but in the end taking a pot off the heat can be as fast a movement as switching off a flame...

But soaking pasta? I can just see the expression on Marco Passarani's face now - and Erik's too for that matter. Still, I'll try it, since these days I make myself a separate pot of wholegrain pasta anyway! Some might say I've already thrown the real pasta experience out the window, so what's the diff huh? May as well presoak and throw out the baby with the bathwater (wholegrain takes longer to cook, so it makes even more sense). I'll let you know how it goes.

You will notice if you pay more attention to your kitchen’s thermal landscape, even in terms of what you can feel, how much heat escapes without ever getting into the food.

Among the major culprits here are inefficient appliances. According to the United States Department of Energy, a gas burner delivers only 35 to 40 percent of its heat energy to the pan; a standard electrical element conveys about 70 percent. Anyone thinking about kitchen renovation should know that induction cooktops, which generate heat directly within the pan itself, are around 90 percent efficient. They can out-cook big-B.T.U. gas burners, work faster, don’t heat up the whole kitchen, and are becoming more common in restaurant kitchens.

Maximizing the transfer of heat from burner to pot produces better food. In deep frying, the faster the burner can bring the oil temperature back up after the food is added, the quicker the food cooks and the less oil it absorbs. In boiling green vegetables, a fast recovery time means better retention of vibrant color and vitamins.

No matter how efficient an appliance is, the cook can help simply by covering pots and pans with their lids. Some of the heat that enters through the bottom of the pot exits through the top, but a lid prevents much of it from escaping into the air. This is especially true when you’re bringing a pot of water to the boil. With the lid on, it will start bubbling in as little as half the time. Turning water into steam takes a lot of energy, and every molecule that flies away from the water surface takes all that energy with it into the air. Prevent its escape, and the energy stays with the pot to heat the rest of the water.

Once a liquid starts to boil and is turning to steam throughout the pot — the bubbles of a boil are bubbles of water vapor — nearly all the energy from the burner is going into steam production. The temperature of the water itself remains steady at the boiling point, no matter how high the flame is underneath it. So turn the burner down. A gentle boil is just as hot as a furious one.

In fact it’s easy to save loads of time and energy and potential discomfort with grains, dry beans and lentils, and even pasta. But it requires a little thinking ahead. It turns out that the most time-consuming part of the process is not the movement of boiling heat to the center of each small bean or noodle, which takes only a few minutes, but the movement of moisture, which can take hours. Grains and dry legumes therefore cook much faster if they have been soaked. However heretical it may sound to soak dried pasta, doing so can cut its cooking time by two-thirds — and eliminates the problem of dry noodles getting stuck to each other as they slide into the pot.

The trickiest foods to heat just right are meats and fish. The problem is that we want to heat the center of the piece to 130 or 140 degrees, but we often want a browned, tasty crust on the surface, and that requires 400 degrees.

It takes time for heat to move inward from the surface to the center, so the default method is to fry or grill or broil and hope that the browning time equals the heat-through time. Even if that math works out, the area between the center and surface will then range in temperature between 130 and 400 degrees. The meat will be overcooked everywhere but right at the center.

The solution is to cook with more than one level of heat. Start with very cold meat and very high heat to get the surface browned as quickly as possible with minimal cooking inside; then switch to very low heat to cook the interior gently and evenly, leaving it moist and tender.

On the grill, this means having high- and low-heat zones and moving the food from one to the other. On the stove top or in the oven, start at 450 or 500 degrees, and then turn the heat down to around 250, ideally taking the food out until the pan or oven temperature has fallen significantly.

Another solution is to cook the food perfectly with low heat, let it cool some, and then flavor its surface with a brief blast of intense heat from a hot pan or even a gas torch. More and more restaurants are adopting this method, especially those that practice sous-vide cooking, in which food is sealed in a plastic bag, placed in a precisely controlled water bath and heated through at exactly the temperature that gives the desired doneness.

All these are two-step processes, but the same principle works for three steps or more. Rotisserie cooking alternates high and low heat many times: as the meat turns on the spit, each area of the surface is briefly exposed to high browning heat, then given time for that dose of energy to dissipate, part of it into the meat but part back out into the cool air. So the meat interior cooks through at a more moderate temperature. Similarly, steaks and chops cook more evenly on high grill heat — and faster as well — if you become a human rotisserie and turn them not once or twice but as often as you can stand to, even dozens of times, every 15 or 30 seconds.

Heat knocks molecules at the surface of food into the air where we can sniff them, so it increases the aroma. Inside the food, agitated molecules make sauces more fluid and hot meat more tender. And the sensation of a food’s warmth is satisfying in itself. The moment hot food is put on a plate, its heat energy begins to flow out into the cooler surroundings. Aromas fade, sauces thicken, fats congeal.

So when you transfer heat’s handiwork from the kitchen to the table, take along some extra. Warm the plates to prolong the pleasure. And encourage everyone to sit down and eat it while it’s hot.

from article: 'The Invisible Ingredient in Every Kitchen', NY Times, Jan 2nd, 2008

Around this time of year, that eighties special celebrity Xmas song always pops into my head

You know the one that goes....feed the world...do they know its Christmas time...



I imagine bands of celebrities descending on poor villages in Africa (which as the lyrics tell us, aren't snowing, is world of dread and fear, where the only water flowing is the bitter sting of tears and the Christmas bells that ring there
are the clanging chimes of doom and the greatest gift they'll get this year is life... Where nothing ever grows and no rain nor rivers flow) and asking poor little children...

"Do you know it's Christmas time? Do you know what that means"

Heads shake and look perplexed

"Well my starving little heathen native...have you heard of Jesus Christ?"

More perplexed looks

"Well...Jesus was.....umm, look forget about it what it means is today's you're lucky day - how about lunch?"

As much as I try not to be a cynic...I think it must run in my blood...and although I seem destined to make a living out of picking on good Samaritans, there's something in my bullshit radar that rings the alarm, the-empty-gesture-designed-primarily-towards-self-gratification-alarm

I loved the idea of Menu for Hope.....and I got on board. Organised some kick ass prizes and generally tried to rouse our small readership to action...but all the while knowing in the back of my head, after having read James Ferguson's "The Anti-Politics Machine: "Development", Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho a few years back, like all good development studies scholars should, that such efforts especially in the area of agriculture seldom work due in great part to the oversimplification of the supposed problem, I am after all writing my PhD thesis on agricultural aid and development.

Although I'm no expert on Lesotho, Ferguson does point out that Lesotho must must be understood within its environmental, historical and geographical context. That is, that it is a country where farming has traditionally always been unsustainable. At best the mountainous ranges support grazing stocks. The population has always sought its sustenance through economic migration to South Africa (where rain and rivers do flow and things do grow generally well). Lesotho, like so many other countries is an economy dependent on outside interconnections, regional migration and remittances. Ferguson details how development efforts always try to frame problems as if countries like Lesotho exist within a vacuum, as economic and agricultural nulius, instead of acknowledging the reality of Lesotho's historical economic relations. Borders are taken as "natural" and problems are posed as if they exist only within these borders. The "problem" is then further reduced to a set of technical problems that can only be solved through technical interventions of high paid international consultant staff whose interest may be as much one of "feeding the world" as of preserving their 100,000 plus salaries and expat perks.

Ferguson goes a long way into detailing one such failed attempt to "improve" cattle farming in Lesotho, all the while explaining how while the development project failed at it's intended aims (due to a complete misunderstanding of the culturally specific uses of cattle within the Lesotho economy) it very much succeeded at extending bureaucratic power, reorienting bureaucratic accountability towards the aid industry rather than the people they were supposed to serve, and depoliticising development through framing problems as merely a set of 'technical' problems to be solved by consultants rather than a deeply political issue with long standing historical antecedents and regional connections.

Nonetheless, I hope the WFP school lunch program for Lesotho works and not just on Christmas either

I am a big fan of the World Food Program. At least they do give food directly to the poor, even if they make them build roads in exchange (try heavy labouring on an empty stomach) and even though many a local government or patron will often try to make out as if they food is actually coming from them, it is after all no easy task to depoliticise development.

At least the WFP give directly to starving people, unlike say some other development agencies which set up complex conditionalities and projects aimed at stimaulting economic growth all the while holding their fingers crossed that this will mean that people will eventually be able to feed themselves in the long run.

So that's why I've spent the last couple of hours supporting the WFP and playing my new guilt-free highly addictive procrastination game Free Rice. Afterall, I'm not procrastinating...I'm feeding the world...it is Christmas time you know