One of the nice things about last week’s Guardian article has been the correspondence I’ve received in its wake. One reader, Carolyn Mahoney, sent along her thoughts on what she thinks sociology has to say about the way we eat today. Sadly, this isn’t an avenue of enquiry she has been able to follow, which is a great shame. As her essay shows, which she has allowed me to post here in order to save it from oblivion, she’s a sensitive and thoughtful commentator on food politics.
The Centre for Science and the Environment in India produce a well crafted magazine, Down To Earth, that pulls together thoughtful commentary and reporting on a range of environmental and social issues. In the most recent issue, is this piece, which crisply distills what’s wrong with bottled water. Keep Reading »
The Financial Times carries a story in the King Kong Vs Godzilla vein. Wal-Mart, the world’s largest private employer, is jumpy about the arrival of Tescos, the UK’s largest supermarket chain, into the US market. The Walton empire is pondering how to develop new ‘Wal-convenience’ stores, along the same lines as the smaller ‘Tesco Extra’ stores in the UK, to fend off what is likely to be a very aggressive push from the UK firm. But just like the old Tokyo disaster movie, regardless of whether one or other side wins, the battleground is home to millions of ordinary people, whose architecture and lives are likely to be severely remodelled in the deathmatch.
Moving a little north for this African posting, it was pleasing to see this article in the New York Times last week. One of the most dangerous ideas in international development is the notion that food aid is designed to help the poor. In fact (and I go into this at some length in the book), it was invented to find a home for a domestic crop surplus, as part of the war on communism. Under this rubric, it didn’t much matter that food aid, dumped into a country where the poorest people are farmers, and struggling to survive an already parlous situation, had the effect of wiping out any possibility of earning money for the ‘beneficiaries’. Instead, they were reduced to penury, hooked on the largesse of food aid. Mission accomplished.
Continuing the South African food theme, here’s something from this weekend’s edition of the Sunday Times. The story concerns the noxious ‘dop system’, where workers on vineyards in the Western Cape were paid, in part, with alcohol. Through this, cataclysmic levels of foetal alcohol syndrome have plagued communities of farmworkers there.
Thing is, although the system was outlawed in the early 1990s, it is still, from what I’ve heard, alive and well, though in a far more discreet way. Worse, there has been an increased incidence of foetal alcohol syndrome. This can’t be blamed on the sub rosa persistence of the dop system. In the absence of anything else, the tone of the article below suggests that the communities have only themselves to blame.
I’m in South Africa at the moment and so it’s entirely appropriate to have a short run (in this and the next couple of posts) of articles about food and land politics here in the Rainbow Nation.
Of the tidbits I’ve collected, this is, I think, my favourite, even if the most troublesome. Jonny Steinberg is a fine author and journalist, whose previous two books, Midlands and The Number have been scattered with profound insight, and deep problems, in terms of the perspectives they omit, and the narratives elevate to an analytical position that they do not warrant.
I’m dead pleased that the Guardian’s Comment is Free section has run this short piece, on obesity and moral panic in Britain, a theme familiar to regulars here at Stuffed and Starved. Article follows, with a different title to the one they chose…
An old story seems to have sprouted up again in the food blogosphere. I’m not sure why it has resurfaced, but it’s well worth reprinting. Here’s the Associated Press version from 21st December, 1999. Keep Reading »
