Musings on food security and systems, nutrition, and gastroecology
Check out this graph from the O’Reilly Radar. Of course, Mexico and US are way up there. And then there is the French. Eat and smoke their way through decadence and remain stick thin. god dammit. One thing not really accounted for, as there are many confounders in this, is soda consumption…
This was done byCatherine Rampell of Economix.
Time spent eating versus obesity rate
Forging a Hot Link to the Farmer Who Grows the Food – cool article in the Times
Raj Patel wants you to Buy Japanese or at least, live in Japan
Teenagers near fast food = obesity. And Marion Nestle has some ideas on it. And she was in the NY times last week. Go Marion.
The new Food Inc movie. Can’t see it here in Nairobi but see it if it comes to a theater near you…
And another film called “Food Fight”. It is hard to keep up these days…
Best Trattoria in Rome? Let the Debate Begin. God, how I would die to be eating this food every night. Taking slow food to the profound letter. But hell, this the origin of slowness in all its beauty.
One of the biggest news items to come out of the Olympics is the amount of calories swimmer Michael Phelps consumes in one day – roughly 10 to 12,000 and the kid still struggles to keep weight on. I consume roughly 1/10 of what he does. To make us all a bit more jealous, he isn’t consuming lean fish, tofu and multi-grain bread. He consumes pizza, pasta, fried egg sandwiches, lots of mayonnaise and french toast. YUM. On the other hand, not many of us exert ourselves at all, nor do we put ourselves through what this young man puts his body through every day. His is a machine. And he has 8 gold medals to prove it.
Posting calories on menus of fast food joints. Not a novel concept but a novel law taking effect in New York City this week. By Monday, McDonalds and Burger King will unveil their new menu boards that will post the whopping calories of a Whopper and will put the B back into a Big Mac.
But will the average NYer understand what those calories mean? Does the average NYer know how many calories they should consume each day or even what the heck a calorie actually is? I would bet not. The nutrition literature on calories in = calories out is so confusing to the average consumer that a 1,130 caloric rich lunch of a big mac, order of large fries and a diet coke may not sound that bad at all to some.
With that said, It will act as a deterrent for some, hands down. Now you can compare food item to food item. Besides price, which is often a major factor in whether or not someone buys something, there is another number added to the equation. Now you have a measure of price and of “health.”
The funny thing is, the law takes effect during Restaurant Week in NYC although the restaurants impacted by the law, the major fast food chains, are not the type of places you want to “eat famously” at if you know what I mean…you won’t be seeing calories on the menu of places like the ecogastronomic WD50 or Mario Batali’s Babbo. Should we though? Maybe we should know how many calories are in Batali’s beef cheek ravioli. Or maybe it is just better to not know…
