food
sastyk | February 19, 2010Many of us in the Global North probably have a mental image attached to the word "farmer." Here's a pretty good approximation of most of our impressions of what constitutes "the average farmer."
Most of us probably don't realize that the "average farmer" on a world scale looks rather different. Here's an approximate of what the average farmer looks like:
Or maybe she looks more like this:
Women feed the world, and I mean that quite literally. Worldwide, according to the UN FAO, more than 50% of all the food grown worldwide is produced by women, who constitute close to 60% of the world's…
grrlscientist | February 14, 2010tags: food, health, healthy eating, healthy food, cooking, portion size, obesity, overweight, Jamie Oliver, TEDTalks, streaming video
In this affecting video, TED Prize winner Jamie Oliver shares powerful stories from his anti-obesity project in Huntington, W. Va., and makes the case for an all-out assault on our ignorance of food.
Jamie Oliver is transforming the way we feed ourselves, and our children. Jamie Oliver has been drawn to the kitchen since he was a child working in his father's pub-restaurant. He showed not only a precocious culinary talent but also a passion for creating (and…
clock | February 12, 2010A new forum at World Science is up. As always, listen to the podcast first, then ask questions in the forum:
This week, India rejected what would have been the country's first a genetically modified food crop, a transgenic eggplant.
The company that developed it, an Indian subsidiary of Monsanto, claims the crop would reduce pesticide use and boost yields. But the Indian government has decided to do independent assessments of the crop's potential impacts on consumer health and the environment.
What does this mean for the future of GM crops in India and elsewhere? And does this technology have…
jstemwedel | February 10, 2010Earlier today, I had this conversation with my better half.
Dr. Free-Ride's better half: (with a look of deep concern) So, I saw something in your post today.
Dr. Free-Ride: Oh? (Wondering if a heinous typo got through cursory attempts at editing)
Dr. Free-Ride's better half: Yes.
Dr. Free-Ride: What?
Dr. Free-Ride's better half: In the photo.
Dr. Free-Ride: Oh, that blogiversary cake!
Dr. Free-Ride's better half: Yes. Where is it?
Dr. Free-Ride: You may not remember, but that was actually what we used to celebrate the fourth blogiversary last year.
Dr. Free-Ride's better half: There were…
jstemwedel | February 5, 2010The elder Free-Ride offspring is lobbying to try an experiment this weekend. The working title of the protocol is "homemade soda*" but I suspect it may be described differently in the final report.
Dr. Free-Ride: Tell me about the experiment that you proposed to your teacher.
Elder Free-Ride offspring: I'll mix four cups of baking soda and vinegar and put each in its own bucket to keep the bubbles from spilling over, and take what remains in the cup and add fruit juice to it, and taste it, and if it's not sweet enough add sugar to it, and then pass it off as soda!
Dr. Free-Ride: Tell me more…
mikethemadbiologist | February 2, 2010Merry Tuesday. Links fahr ya. Science:
The Case for 'Gray Power'How many Americans received the H1N1 vaccine?The Intellectual Property Fight That Could Kill MillionsThe Duration of PostDoc TrainingDual Function Of Post-Doctoral Training
Other:
Mr. Obama's Junk Economics: Democrats Relinquish the Populist Option to the RepublicansWorld hunger and the locavoresThe futurist weighs in: The things we leave behindLies of rightwing populism: Those evil liberal elitesAfter Three Months, Only 35 Subscriptions for Newsday's Web SiteWhat A Coincidence!
aardvarchaeology | January 27, 2010The Web helps you check if your ideas are original. Recently I've come up with two puns that proved to be unoriginal but still surprisingly uncommon.
Ronald McDonald is the Lord of the Fries.
The famous fantasy role-playing game should always be referred to as Dung & Drag. It amazes me that I haven't thought of this before. Now I have this vision of greying drag queens in printed dresses and rubber boots, cleaning out the manure, shearing sheep and driving tractors.
ddobbs | January 25, 2010
In my "Atlantic article on the genetic roots of stable-versus-reactive temperaments, I noted that the key gene variants linked to these traits appeared to have developed over only the last 50,000-100,000 years -- a short time in evolutionary time. That same idea is developed in Cochran and Harpending's "The 10,000-year Explosion." Here Razib at Gene Expression looks at polymorphisms that have developed over the last 10,000 years in response to agriculture.
Changes in human diet driven by cultural evolution seem to be at the root of many relatively recently emerged patterns of genetic…
clock | January 24, 2010This is what the Bride Of Coturnix fixed this week - so delicious, it disappeared within a day or two, but I managed to save the picture for posterity before everyone dug in:
grrlscientist | January 21, 2010tags: How it's Made: Chocolate, chocolate, food science, technology, streaming video
After watching Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as a kid, I thought chocolate was made by oompa loompas who were employed by a fuzzy-haired man wearing a delightful purple velvet suit. I guess I was wrong.
pronald | January 21, 2010"Eating with the fullest pleasure- pleasure, that is, that does not depend on ignorance- is perhaps the profoundest enactment of our connection with the world".
Wendell Berry
aardvarchaeology | January 20, 2010
We rarely buy bread. Instead I bake. Tonight's production involved a 5-day sour dough and a bag of roasted sunflower seeds. Pretty good, though I overestimated the amount of salt on the seeds and overcompensated. The sour dough was just for flavour: I can't wait for a proper lactobacillum leavening, so I put yeast in.
[More blog entries about baking, bread; bakning, bröd, surdeg.]
aardvarchaeology | January 19, 2010Writes Dear Reader Bruce Paulson of Gillett, Wisconsin:Your article the other day about rutabagas whet my appetite so on Friday I went to the local grocery store with a friend who was staying for supper. I unloaded three of them at the checkout counter where a teenage clerk started to examine them for an identity sticker. There was none. So she turned to her 65 year old supervisor and said, "What is THIS?" The supervisor said, "That is what they call a Swede turnip. Swedish people eat them, but normal people don't." The clerk then started to check the produce price list for Swede turnip…
revere | January 14, 2010It's been over a year since we discussed the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) article on bisphenol-A (BPA), a high volume chemical used in plastic components of food and drinks packaging and found in 90% of all Americans screened for the chemical. It is also a chemical that disrupts the endocrine system, a complex chemical signaling system that coordinates the actions and responses of various tissues and organs. The JAMA article examined self report in adults of cardiovascular disease and diabetes ("has a doctor ever told you that you had . . . ") and measured liver enzyme…
drorzel | January 11, 2010The problem is, "What is Chad going to do in Austin, Texas on Thursday night?"
I have recently been appointed to the APS Committee on Informing the Public, which is having a meeting in Austin this Thursday, January 14th. Of course, as neither Austin nor Albany is a major airport, the travel to and from Austin takes up pretty much an entire day on either end, so I'll be staying over Wednesday and Thursday nights, and leaving Friday afternoon.
I've got dinner plans for Wednesday night, and I'm going to meet a former student for lunch on Friday, but I have no concrete plans for Thursday night.…
aardvarchaeology | January 5, 2010Everybody knows that English has borrowed the words ombudsman and smorgasbord from Swedish. But did you know that rutabaga is another Swedish loan? And that it was borrowed from a rural Swedish dialect, not standard Swedish?
"Rutabaga" is an American word for the kind of turnip known to Englishmen and Australians as swede. Indeed, the plant hybrid probably once arose in Sweden. In standard Swedish, though, it's called kÃ¥lrot, "cabbage root" -- which is botanically speaking exactly what it is. "Rut-" in "rutabaga" is simply rot, "root". Bagge ("-baga") means "ram", and my speculation is that…
aardvarchaeology | December 31, 2009Today I did something that, had I been a truly rational consumer, I would have done 20 years ago.
Fisksätra has two grocery stores. One is a big chain store and the other is a typical turkbutik, a mom'n'pop store run by immigrants from the Near East. Whenever possible, I have favoured the little store. I have often gone there first and then gotten only the stuff they don't carry from the chain store.
The little store does not carry superior wares. Its assortment is far smaller than the big store's, and there are very few items there that you can't get at the chain store. I have shopped there…
sastyk | December 27, 2009As I've mentioned, we raise our own dairy goats and milk them, and we drink the milk raw, or rather, unpasteurized. Since I wrote my last piece about the goats, I've had several people email me asking for advice about their dairy choices - one person living locally wanted me to sell her raw milk, two others asked if I advised people who can't get their own livestock to source and purchase raw milk. So I thought I'd write a piece about raw milk and your options.
Perhaps the first thing I want to say is that I actually don't have that strong an opinion on this subject, believe it or not.…
jstemwedel | December 24, 2009Well, technically, wrappings for Christmas eve dinner: discos para empanadas.
It turns out, peeling them apart requires some patience and dexterity. Luckily, I had sufficient quantities of both.
I ended up making four different fillings. One was made with veggie ground beef, cheese, and green onions, another with potatoes, onions, and mushrooms, a third with plantains, and a fourth with ricotta cheese, raisins soaked in spiced rum, and chocolate chips.
The Free-Ride family (including the Grandparents Who Lurk But Seldom Comment) judged them tasty.
Next time, however, I plan to skip getting…