hunger
mikethemadbiologist | August 3, 2010Last week, I wrote about the effects of poverty on educational performance, and, in particular, science education. I received many responses, both in comments and by email. One reason I wrote this is that our current wave of educational 'reform' seems utterly focused on teacher managerial issues. I'm willing to cede that part of the poverty effect could--and I emphasize could--be due to some poor schools serving as warehouses for horrible teachers. Yet the amount of variation in test scores that is correlated with poverty is so overwhelming: I really didn't think it would be that high,…
mikethemadbiologist | July 18, 2010I'm surprised that this revelation by Democratic Congressman David Obey hasn't received more attention. Basically, the House Democrats went to the wall for education and managed to get $10 billion to prevent teacher layoffs and an additional $5 billion for Pell Grants. To do so, they had to cut Obama's educational 'reform' program, Race to the Top, by about fifteen percent. This is the same so-called reform bill that screwed over Massachusetts' schools and that also weakened science education.
What was the Obama administration's response? According to Obey (italics mine):
The secretary…
sastyk | June 7, 2010Thanks to reader Sunshine for forwarding me this AP article, which I think does a really good job of pointing up something I've been talking about for a long time - the food crisis that was in the news two years ago never actually went away. While food prices stabilized in the developed world and things like the economic crisis shoved the situation of the poor and hungry off the front pages, that doesn't mean the food crisis came to an end.
With food costing up to 70 percent of family income in the poorest countries, rising prices are squeezing household budgets and threatening to worsen…
sastyk | May 13, 2010I was out of town when Zuska posted this piece about trying to feed a family on a food stamp budget, and I've been meaning to respond to her suggestion that I might have something to add for a while. The article she builds on is one in which chefs try and come up with food stamp budget menus that are also healthy and appealing. Zuska comments on the difficulty of this, and challenges me to come up with something too:
A few problems with any of these solutions: as noted in the article, cooking from fresh ingredients takes more time than buying processed food, so although you get more, and…
sastyk | March 25, 2010It is interesting that young and unemployed (two words that are now virtually synonymous) and highly educated folks are using food stamps to buy high quality food - and taking a lot of heat for it. I can understand the visceral reaction that people have, but I also think it is fascinatingly difficult to try and figure out what we think poor people should eat - we criticize them freely for buying junk, and then we criticize them for buying high quality food. Where is the space that the poor are free to choose in?
Controversy about how they use food stamps marks an interesting shift from the…
grrlscientist | March 11, 2010tags: fish farming, aquaculture, piscivory, bird sanctuary, foodie, ethical eating, permaculture, agriculture, poverty, hunger, Dan Barber, TEDTalks, streaming video
Chef Dan Barber squares off with a dilemma facing many chefs today: how to keep fish on the menu. With impeccable research and deadpan humor, he chronicles his pursuit of a sustainable fish he could love, and the foodie's honeymoon he's enjoyed since discovering an outrageously delicious fish raised using a revolutionary farming method in Spain. My one complaint about this video is that the speaker never once identifies either of…
sastyk | February 25, 2010In a recent previous post "Do You Have to Grow Food" I pointed out that the impact of urban gardening is vastly greater, in the aggregate, than most people believe. We tend to think that little gardens here and there make no difference, but in fact, they add up rapidly. Consider the impact of US Victory Gardens in WWII, for example - in 1944, US Victory gardens, which averaged only about 350 square feet, grew fully half the produce for the US. That is, home gardeners grew as much produce as all the vegetable farms in the US at the time. While it may seem, intuitively that small gardens…
sastyk | February 21, 2010Because of the enormous impact of agriculture on climate change, pick up any book about "green" solutions and you'll find the suggestions that you grow a vegetable garden. Bang into the "we can't go on as we are" end of the environmental movement (mine), and you'll see the general assumption that growing food is part of any process of adaptation to lower resource use.
This often then morphs into the assumption that all of us should be able to grow all of our food, or a vast majority of it - that sustainability means the country life for everyone. You might think that because I do produce a…
sastyk | February 18, 2010In many ways the enormous outpouring of support for Haiti after the earthquake was very moving. In other ways, not so much - consider the International community's total lack of interest in whether Haitians will be able to feed themselves in the upcoming year - "We're very happy to send our surgeons, engineers and food aid - but hey, when we're done, we're done" seems to be the dominant worldview, as the UN reports:
"At a time when Haiti is facing a major food crisis we are alarmed at the lack of support to the agricultural component of the Flash Appeal," UN Food and Agriculture Organization…
thusspakezuska | February 15, 2010Don't you just love food palaces? Round these parts in Philly, we have several new Wegmans stores to choose from, and of course Whole Foods. A new Whole Foods opened not far from where I live that includes a little bar - you can have a beer or glass of wine and a little something to eat if you find the experience of shopping for your whole foods wholly exhausting and need to partake of serious refreshment. The big chain grocery stores have even stepped up their games to stay in competition. In downtown Philly, there is Di Bruno Brothers, a gourmand's shopping paradise, not to mention…
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!
sastyk | January 26, 2010A couple of years ago, I wrote a post with the above title, about the way that biofuel and meat production in the US was pushing up world food prices. I observed, as has been documented in any number of studies, that when the world's poorest people and the world's richest people's vehicles (or their pets, to their appetite for grain fed meat) compete for food, the cars, pets and rich folk always eat first - the rich come to the table once for their share of staple grains, then three of or four more times for more grains in the form of meat. We then come to the table again for a share for…
sastyk | December 4, 2009The subject of food waste is not sexy. Anyone faced with the statistic that we waste 40% of our food in America is almost certainly appalled - for a second or two. But they also probably stop thinking about it just a tiny second later, probably after a moment of thinking "not us, though." And yet, it almost certainly is us.
A recent study is very clear about the costs of wasted food - food waste has risen by 50% in my lifetime, and the average American now wastes 1400 kilocalories a day of food. That adds up to 1/4 of all freshwater use, 300 million barrels of oil spent in agriculture (…
mikethemadbiologist | November 26, 2009Remember that it is far better to eat turkey than to be eaten by them...
On a more serious note, if you have enough to be thankful for this Thanksgiving, consider giving to your local food bank. If you're in the Boston area, these people do good work.
grrlscientist | November 28, 2008tags: Hunger in America, food banks, food pantries, soup kitchens, food stamps, poverty
Image: Orphaned.
One thing that the Thanksgiving Holidays has made clear: America, the land of plenty where holiday overeating is celebrated as a social good, is suffering from a food availability crisis. The Economic Research Service of the United States Department of Agriculture describes a range of food security categories, ranging from "food secure," which includes high food security and marginal food security, and "food insecure," which includes low food security and very low food security.…
mikethemadbiologist | September 3, 2008In the midst of all of the hoopla surrounding Republican VP nominee and full-blown bugshit insane lunatic, Sarah Palin, I think it's worth noting that Obama's candidacy is also historic for another reason:
He is the first recipient of food stamps to run for president:
McCain, who has portrayed Obama as an elitist, is the son and grandson of admirals. The Associated Press estimates his wife, a beer heiress, is worth $100 million. Obama was raised by a single mother who relied at times on food stamps, and went to top schools on scholarships and loans.
Quite conceivably, we could have a…
mikethemadbiologist | April 21, 2007Remember Conservative Ideologues: You drink his blood after you molest him. It's more fun that way*
I would like to think certain things transcend political, religious, and ideological divides. One might think that Meals-on-Wheels, a program that relies heavily on donations, discounts, and volunteers to bring meals to elderly shut-ins would be liked by all. I would like to think that aiding frail, elderly people is about as universal as it gets. But never underestimate the moral depravity of the conservative ideologue.
In a recent post, I wrote:
Maybe it's that I grew up in Virginia, and…
mikethemadbiologist | January 15, 2007You'll hear a lot today about Martin Luther King and race. But what you won't hear nearly as much about, particularly from conservatives, is his views on economic justice. I think that his views on race were inseparable from his economic views which were based on a universal call for justice and equality for all. From a speech he gave to striking sanitation workers in Memphis on March 18, 1968 (italics mine):
My dear friends, my dear friend James Lawson, and all of these dedicated and distinguished ministers of the Gospel assembled here tonight, to all of the sanitation workers and their…
mikethemadbiologist | January 4, 2007Have you ever been really, really hungry? Well, this python certainly was.
The lump in the python is a sheep. A pregnant sheep.
Ewe.
mikethemadbiologist | November 16, 2006For you younguns, in the 80s, the USDA decided to define ketchup as a serving of vegetables so it could skimp on subsidized meals for needy schoolchildren. Well, the USDA has decided to stop using the word "hunger" and replace it with "very low food security." Here's some statistics on "very low food security":
Some are not happy with the Orwellian double speak:
Anti-hunger advocates say the new words sugarcoat a national shame. "The proposal to remove the word 'hunger' from our official reports is a huge disservice to the millions of Americans who struggle daily to feed themselves and…