7 August 2017

1. I hadn’t been planning to see the new film Okja – “the story of a big corporation’s effort to develop and market a genetically modified pig in a way that will make it appealing to the masses” is how David Berriss describes it in his review – but on the strength of that review, I just might give it a shot.
2. Berriss talks about that stock trope, “the evil corporation that controls our food supply”. Perdue Farms is dipping its toes into the “Don’t Be Evil” water, and I for one welcome this move from our chicken overlords. I’m not even going to question their motives.
3. Step aside, Antoine-Augustin Parmentier; there’s a new European potato hero in town. Eva Ekeblad, celebrated in a Google Doodle did much to change the agricultural economy of Sweden by making alcohol from potatoes, freeing grain for more nutritious uses. (I missed the Doodle because I don’t use Google.)
4. This is frankly weird. The health benefits of the Mediterranean diet in Italy are restricted to higher socioeconomic groups. The original paper suggests that even in groups scoring the same for their adherence to the Mediterranean diet, there were differences in what they ate: “These nutritional gaps may reasonably explain at least in part the socioeconomic pattern of CVD protection from the MD.”
5. An article on strawberries claims it can “teach us a great deal about politics and colonialism,” and that’s true.
6. How much more exciting, through, is what strawberries teach us about money, power and intellectual property. My compadre Luigi has been following the Strawberry Wars assiduously, from the opening skirmishes, through a broken ceasefire and a fresh offensive to a recent declaration of victory though not, as yet, news of the peace treaty and reparations, which had been due to be formalised on 6 July.