The ever popular Men’s Health Worst Foods in America has been updated for 2009. The winner is this dose of diabetes, the Baskin Robbins Large Heath Bar Shake. It has 2310 calories, and gives you three days’ worth of your recommended daily allowance of fat.
Rob Weissman at Multinational Monitor has the lowdown on the 10 worst corporations, and I’m pleased that he included an agribusiness giant among them – Cargill. Read more (including quotes from your blogger) here.
Eric at Food First told me about this article, from the Chicago Tribune, which outlines the Democrats’ case for appointing an agribusiness insider to run the USDA. It’s basically a manifesto for agricultural imperialism, with the US on a mission to feed the world and, while they’re at it, reduce the trade deficit. This isn’t the first time that a worthy mission and a domestic policy consideration have been aligned – the Cold War food aid program was also both a mission to save the world from communism, promote US interests, and prop up agribusiness. It’s just surprising to see how very little the language has changed over the past sixty years. Looks like we’re beginning 2009 in 1948.
The new year begins with a posting frenzy here at S&S, and the posting frenzy begins with a fine article from the InterPress Service on how poor communities are helping themselves through gardening in South Africa. A good thing too, as the South African government seems to want to have less and less to do with them.
Dear Mr Obama
I owe you an apology. In the run-up to the election, I said that you had been flying around in the Archer Daniels Midland jet, implying that you were still doing it. My mistake. Your team made it clear that you paid for all your own travel.
This has, at best, a tangential relation to food. Above, George Bush proves that he’s The One. More recent graphic commentary can be found at this Wired article, including the pie- and hence food-related Three Stooges visual below.
I’m just finishing work on an academic article about the return of food riots, which I’m co-writing with my good friend Phil McMichael. As part of that work, one of Phil’s finest graduate students, Mindi Schneider, prepared a research report on 2008’s food riots.
Here’s an article that I recently put together for the Americas Policy Program. It’s just a heads up on the World Trade Organisation – because while everyone else had a head full of Obama, the negotiators at the WTO had heads full of something else entirely. If some of the rumours are to be believed, the round is much closer to completion than it was in July. Here’s why. Entire article below, or here.
If I were anywhere near New York City next weekend, I’d be going to Give Us Bread, a reading of a play about the 1917 Food riots. The crew who put it together, the Anthropologists, have a splendid research blog on which they’ve been collecting materials about the riots. On it, you’ll find everything from the City’s response to the riots (eat rice!) to a racial classification of NYC push-cart vendors. If the research for the project is so surprising, challenging and entertaining, it can only speak well for the reading of their production. And, if any of y’all end up there, please do share your thoughts!
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