By RACHEL HERZ l WSJ Jan.28, 2012
Disgust is one of our most basic emotions—the only one that we have to learn—and nothing triggers it more reliably than the strange food of others.
Nattō is a stringy, sticky, slimy, chunky fermented soybean dish that Japanese regularly eat for breakfast….
(Source: The Wall Street Journal)
How Much Water Does it Take to Make Your Food?
Today is World Water Day.
The UN has a site about water and food security issues here.
Image: 142 liters of water are needed to produce the 8 tomatoes, 1.5 slices of bread and portion of butter to make this meal. Via the UN World Water Day Flickr account.
You go to that drawer full of menus with dragons or pandas or bamboo on them, and the random Chinese characters, and the obligatory promise of fast and free delivery. And in 25 minutes or so a Chinese man on a bike will come to your door and you’ll maybe drop him a xie xie with your tip and he’ll give you a bye bye and he’s gone. End of story.
But there’s a different version of that story that goes on in many parts of this city. And that version is about money, class, race, and education. And in that version people are robbed, assaulted and killed, and people live in fear, constantly on guard and under threat over Chinese food.
npr:
This is what $8 of room service looks like at an Amman airport hotel (by andycarvin)
(Source: climateadaptation)
Recent global population growth estimates (10 billion by 2100, anyone?) plus slowing annual increases in agricultural yields have a lot of analysts worried that many of those new people will suffer from chronic hunger – and that much of the land that hasn’t been converted to agriculture will be plowed under to grow crops.
But a new study in the journal Nature argues that we can feed the world’s growing population without destroying the planet… if we make major adjustments now in agricultural and consumption practices and patterns. (Hey, if it were easy, we’d already be there, right?)
Based on new data about the Earth’s agricultural lands and crop yields, the study offers some core strategies to meet future food production needs and environmental challenges. Those strategies include:
- Stop farming in places like tropical rainforests, which have high ecological value and low food output;
- Improve crop yields in regions of Africa, Latin America, and Eastern Europe, where farmland isn’t meeting its potential;
- Change farming practices to better manage water, nutrients, and chemicals;
- Shift diets away from meat; and
- Stop wasting food (up to 1/3 of all food grown is wasted either in production, transport, or after purchase).
Taken together, these strategies could lead to 100-180 percent more food available for consumption and sustain the lakes, rivers, forests, and soil that food production depends on.
I really liked something Jon Foley said in the interview:
Can we do it? We have to – it’s absolutely necessary. It’s up to us to decide what’s politically feasible. We can change how we govern, tax, ship, produce, etc. What we can’t change are the laws of physics.
Definitely read this.
Food stamps are now worth double at farmer’s markets in Michigan. Lovely. Congrats to the Fair Food Network for spearheading a pilot in Detroit, successfully executing, and then expanding the program to the entire state.
The two most pressing reasons for cutting back on meat today are climate change and global population growth. The post-war years have seen an explosion in the numbers of animals intensively reared for meat and milk. This livestock revolution, and the change in land use that has gone with it, however, now contribute nearly one fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions.
Most people could do more for the climate by cutting meat than giving up their car and plane journeys.
The UN predicts that the number of farm animals will double by 2050. Except, of course, it can’t. The livestock of Europe already require an area of vegetation seven times the size of Europe to keep them in feed. If people in emerging economies start eating as much meat as we do, there simply won’t be enough planet.
Intensive meat production is a very inefficient way of feeding the world. Farm a decent acre with cattle and you can produce about 20lbs of beef protein. Give the same acre over to wheat and you can produce 138lbs of protein for human consumption. If the grain that is currently used to feed animals were fed instead directly to people, there may be just enough food to go round when population peaks.
