Here's an example of deduction: Real food will decay when left out on a shelf for a year. A McDonald's Happy Meal does not decay when left on a shelf for a year. Thus, a McDonald's Happy Meal is not real food. Glancing at the two McDonald's Happy Meals pictured here, you may feel they look pretty much identical.
Astonishingly, however, this is the same meal, photographed 12 months apart.
Where any other food might be a mouldy, decomposing mess after a year, the McDonald's meal shows few signs of going off apart from the beef patty shrivelling and the stale burger bun cracking.
Scientists at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem are hoping that the genetically-tweaked, sterile male insects they are releasing into the wild will serves a "green" population controllers that will reduce/eliminate the need for harmful pesticides on crops.So here you go: one plastic-wrapped, waste-producing sandwich that isn't any healthier and doesn't taste any better than the one from your own kitchen. That'll be $10,000, please.
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Here is an interesting article featured on NPR about healthier food choices. Encouraging healthier eating is proving to be a complex issue; NPR takes a look at the economic side of the issue:
Bucks for broccoli or cash for carrots? Financial incentives aimed at encouraging healthier choices are catching on from New Zealand to the Philippines. Workplaces in the United States have been offering incentives for weight loss. In a London-based study, dieters got paid when they dropped pounds. Now researchers are interested in understanding how food price manipulations may influence what ends up in mothers' grocery carts. Does increasing the cost of sugary items mean fewer people buy them? Would more people buy veggies if they were more affordable?
To create successful incentives, says Yale behavioral economist Dean Karlan, a policy needs to specifically target the people whose behavior its trying to change. "So in the case of broccoli you'd want to find out who's not eating broccoli and then pay them to eat it," he says. You don't want to necessarily make broccoli cheaper for those who are already buying plenty of it, you want to target those who don't buy enough fruits or vegetables. It could be very tricky to structure such an incentive.
Click here to read the rest of the article
In this segment from the New York Times' Dot Earth blog, science communication experts Matt Nisbet and Randy Olson debate whether or not climate change scientists should get nasty and fight back against those trying to discredit them.
Agribusiness is getting even more criticism. This time it's about the use of antibiotics. There has been talk for a while now about the overuse of antibiotics and the development of "superbugs", or antibiotic resistant bacteria. Concern is rising over the overuse of antibiotics in livestock. Nicholas D. Kristof, of The New York Times, offers his take on the situation:Antibacterial drugs were revolutionary when they were introduced in the United States in 1936, virtually eliminating diseases like tuberculosis here and making surgery and childbirth far safer. But now we’re seeing increasing numbers of superbugs that survive antibiotics. One of the best-known — MRSA, a kind of staph infection — kills about 18,000 Americans annually. That’s more than die of AIDS.
Last month, Wisconsin farmer Will Allen shared a podium in Washington, D.C., with Michelle Obama as she launched her plan to fight childhood obesity.
On Tuesday, Allen will be in the buffet line at Madison’s First Unitarian Society at a community potluck, which will be followed by his presentation on the groundbreaking national effort to bring high quality food to everyone, regardless of their income, through innovative urban agriculture.
Despite Allen’s growing national prominence — he’s a recipient of a MacArthur “genius grant” — it’s likely that he’ll continue to spend a good amount time in the Madison area.
Allen’s Milwaukee-based Growing Power Inc. is a key partner in the proposed Madison “agro-urban” charter school which would be built on Madison’s South Side, at the corner of Rimrock and Badger roads. Although funding and planning are still in flux, the 4.5-acre property for the Badger Rock Middle School was purchased from Dane County for the school in January for $500,000, and agricultural work there will begin this spring — a first step in creating the vegetable gardens and orchards that will surround the school.
