Eat This Podcast
Talking about anything around food

Eat This Newsletter 048

6 February 2017 Filed under: Tags:

Life beyond iceberg lettuce, citizen science, noodles and enough about the history of coconuts to drive you nuts.

6 February 2017

  1. Me, I’m not weeping over the iceberg lettuce shortage in the UK. The silver lining: It prompted this little post that explained just how precarious supply lines are and offered some alternatives. I recognised all except Tango. What is it?
  2. More biodiversity for citizen scientists. Rob Dunn’s lab at North Carolina State University wants you to pay particular attention to pumpkin predators. There’s a very contentious statement in the middle of that piece, which I might address elsewhere.
  3. A favourite contributor to Eat This Podcast gets star treatment: Ken Albala “takes on the tangled world of noodles”.
  4. A global history of the coconut, with recipes.
  5. On the other hand, some coconut scholars don’t fully agree. Dig deeper.

Worst food diagram ever?

3 February 2017 Filed under:

“[C]alories from all food groups increased, fats and oils and the meat group most of all, dairy and fruits and vegetables the least.”

Marion Nestle describes this diagram as “my favourite figure”.

Calories

I hope she’s joking, because I can’t make head nor tail of it. ((Well, I can, but only with considerable effort.))

It’s from a USDA publication on U.S. Trends in Food Availability and a Dietary Assessment of Loss-Adjusted Food Availability, 1970-2014

Note, first, that the data are for food availability, which “serve as a proxy for food consumption”. So it’s measuring what’s there and saying all of it was eaten. Fair enough.

Inside the report are tables and graphs that are far more informative than that circular abomination — what are we even supposed to be comparing?

Marion Nestle concludes:

[C]alories from all food groups increased, fats and oils and the meat group most of all, dairy and fruits and vegetables the least.

While the report says:

Americans continue to fall short of the recommended amounts in USDA’s Dietary Guidelines for Americans for fruit, vegetables, whole grains, seafood, and dairy products, and their consumption continues to exceed the recommended amounts for total grains, some protein foods, saturated fat, and added sugars. In order to meet these recommendations, Americans would need to lower their consumption of added fats, refined grains, and added sugars and sweeteners, and to increase their consumption of vegetables, whole grains, dairy products, and fruit.

Go to it.

In praise of meat, milk and eggs For poor people, a little animal source food goes a long way

1 February 2017 Filed under: Tags: ,

Giving up on animals as a source of food is a luxury that many people cannot afford. For poor people in developing countries, a bit of animal source food can greatly improve their health and wellbeing.

Excluding animal products from your diet as a vegetarian or vegan is a choice some people have the luxury to make, and if they know what they’re doing, and take care, they can be perfectly healthy. But there are probably far more people who have no choice in the matter. They would eat meat if they could, but they simply can’t afford it. For those people, a little bit of animal source food – milk, meat, eggs – can make a great difference to their health and wellbeing. It can be easy to forget that, in the clamour for meatless Mondays and other efforts to respond to climate change. There’s also the fact that in many parts of the world, animals play a very useful role in transforming things people can’t or won’t eat, like grass, into good food.

One of the organisations promoting greater access to animal source foods is ILRI, the International Livestock Research Institute. They’re faced with some formidable challenges. One is to ensure that more animal foods doesn’t mean greater emissions of greenhouse gases. The other is to manage food safety as the demand for animal source foods grow. To find out more I talked to two people at ILRI: Shirley Tarawali, Assistant Director General, and Delia Grace, a veterinarian and epidemiologist.

Notes

  1. International Livestock Research Institute
  2. Industrial production of poultry gives rise to deadly strains of bird flu H5Nx
  3. Banner photo by ILRI/Dave Elsworth
  4. Other photos by ILRI/Stevie Mann

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