School dinners were, in my day, disgusting. It seems little has changed. The Washington Post carries a chilling story of ‘downer cattle’ being passed as healthy, in an abattoir that provides beef for school dinners. It was captured on video by a member of the American Humane Society, who’d infiltrated the slaughterhouse in Chino, California. Be warned, the video is nasty – I couldn’t bear to watch it all.
It’s been a while since we had a post mentioning bird flu, but in the past couple of days, folk’ve written in with avian influenza news. So it seems appropriate to acknowledge, first, that bird flu is alive and killing people – over 100 in Indonesia (out of 124 cases – those aren’t good odds). But it’s also spreading dangerously through India, in West Bengal. The Times of India quotes Mamata Banerjee even going so far as to say that it’s “man-made” and part of a concerted strategy to destroy the rural economy. If this weren’t coming from such a showboating and opportunistic politician, I’d be inclined to agree. The government in West Bengal has a clear agenda to industrialise, and bird flu has only been able to proliferate through industrial farming. Over a quarter of a million birds have already been culled, and the situation doesn’t look like it’ll come under control any time soon.
For blog postings to get bumped up to the front page here, they need a snappy visual. If I can find an image likely to hook the prospective reader, reel them in, and make em giggle, then it’s a good candidate for prime-time. Of the six visuals in this story, precisely none are prime-time. They’re more comfortable in the late-night C-Span slots, after all the really sexy committee meetings have been screened. Keep Reading »
Okay, I admit, it’s a frivolous title for a fairly important event, but I couldn’t resist. A number of news sources, like the FT and Al Jazeera have covered the march of over 10,000 people in Jakarta, who are protesting the soaring price of soy. The price of bean curd and tempeh has doubled over the past few weeks. Why? Because the demand for biofuels have diverted production from food to flame. The result? Soaring prices of the key source of protein for a nation of over 200 million people.
With every serving containing 2,900 calories, with 182g of fat and 240g carbs, this tub of sludge is, according to Men’s Health magazine, the worst food in America.
It had to beat some stiff competition, including:
For those who might be unfamiliar with the Alien vs Predator franchise, here’s what you need to know: Predators are a race of creatures who hunt anything and everything in the universe, and whose society is built for the greater glory of the kill. Aliens, on the other hand, have acid for blood, are vicious killing machines, and were created by Predators to be worthy opponents. The tagline of the Alien vs Predator movies is this: “Whoever wins, we lose.”
Here’s something I was forwarded and saw posted helpfully at Green Taxi. Well worth looking at, not just for the differences in prices, but also in tastes (the number of bottles of coke are an interesting indicator, though quite what they indicate isn’t immediately obvious).
If you’ve been reading the Mail and Guardian recently, you might be surprised by my saying things like Keep Reading »
It’s Canada day here at Stuffed and Starved, not for any other reason than that, out of the blue, I’ve been deluged with Canadiana. Yesterday, the executive director at Meal Exchange got in touch, sharing this splendid wee public service announcement aimed at students:
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