Eat This Newsletter 45
5 December 2016
Authentic food news
Thin gruel this week, I’m afraid, not least because I spent three days last week in the belly of the beast at FAO in Rome, at the International Symposium on Sustainable Food Systems for Healthy Diets and Improved Nutrition. Sure it’s just another talking shop, but some of the talk was rather interesting and may eventually amount to more than hot air. More on that later, maybe. So, here’s your meagre serving:
-
“When better food is affordable, people still have to want it. The food movement can’t just fix supply. It has to address demand.” The FAO meeting heard that malnutrition — of the overweight obese kind — goes up as people have more money. Silly people! This has always been a problem, and I only wish I had seen this article before the meeting.
-
Then there’s the question of people who choose not merely to eat things that may not be good for them, but to do so to excess. Sarah Loman’s “brief history of competitive eating” is a treat.
-
Cynthia D. Bertelsen continues to make her case that “southern” food in the US owes at least as much to the British as to other immigrants, in the run-up to reviewing a book on The British Table. I’m staying well out of the way.
-
So, why the hope for change in global food systems? A couple of rather interesting papers in Nature:
- A new global research agenda for food: “Ten ways to shift the focus from feeding people to nourishing them.”
- Fix food metrics: “For sustainable, equitable nutrition we must count the true global costs and benefits of food production.”
