Extra Matter

A real Roman bread for Fornacalia

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My visit to Ostia Antica last year, guided by the wonderfully knowledgeable Farrell Monaco, was destined to end in more than a podcast. There was no way I was going to be able to avoid attempting a panis quadratus of my own, and what better time to make the effort than during Fornacalia?

How did it go? You’ll have to head over to my breadsite.

Podcasts

Unconditional cash to improve nutrition Maybe what poor people need is money, not aid

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Villagers in Malawi learn about Give Directly

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 18:11 — 16.7MB)

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Mobile phone showing cash transfer withdrawal

Despite large investments in aid programmes, poverty and hunger remain persistent problems in many parts of the world. Most aid, though, gives people what the donors think they need. What if you give poor people cash, to spend as they see fit? The leader in this field is a charity called Give Directly, started by students at Harvard and MIT after their research showed that a lot of philanthopy was both very inefficient and not very effective. Unconditional cash has greater impact, at lower cost, than skills training, microcredit, farmer field schools and just about every other form of aid.

Does cash enable people to improve their food security and nutrition? That’s what I wanted to find out from Give Directly staff in Uganda and Malawi.

Portraits of Miriam Laker-Oketta and Esnatt Gondwe-Matekesa
Miriam Laker-Oketta (left) and Esnatt Gondwe-Matekesa (right)

Notes

  1. The impact of unconditional cash is seen in many areas, not just health and nutrition. Give Directly’s research on cash transfers provides summaries of evidence.
  2. The specific study Miriam Laker-Oketta referred to is Benchmarking a WASH and Nutrition Program to Cash in Rwanda.
  3. Photos taken from the Give Directly website.

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Podcasts

Ten thousand years of yoghurt It’s all a matter of culture

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stacked yoghurt pots at a market in Beijing

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 23:56 — 22.0MB)

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June Hersh
June Hersh
The story is that way back when, Neolithic people discovered that they could eat milk that had gone sour with impunity, even though ordinary milk upset their digestion. The sour milk allowed them to get the nutritional benefit of milk, and also favoured anyone who could actually tolerate a little lactose. And thus was the culture of yoghurt born, helping those Neolithic farmers to move into northern Europe. Fast forward 10,000 years or thereabouts, and the bacteria that soured milk were held to be responsible for the extreme longevity of Bulgarian peasants. That theory gave birth to a craze for Lactobacillus bulgaricus, as it was known, and yoghurt.

All this and more I learned from Yoghurt: A Global History, a recent book by June Hersh. What I still don’t know is why those Neolithic people were even trying to drink milk, if it upset their stomachs. They were keeping sheep and goats, sure, but why were they milking them?

Notes

  1. Yoghurt: A Global History is available from Reaktion Books, and for a discount enter Yoghurt21 at checkout.
  2. Metchnikoff is a pretty fascinating character quite apart from his role in the rise of yoghurt. His Nobel biography is an interesting starting place, which naturally leads to a book extract about his public lecture.
  3. It really is very easy to make your own yoghurt at home, though not as easy as kefir.
  4. Here is the transcript

    5. .

  5. Banner photo from Nikolaj Potanin on Flickr.

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For Supporters

Black Diamond Feedyard, Herington Kansas

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Black Diamond Feedyard, Herington, KS

Dear Supporter,

Hello, and welcome. I’m so glad you found your way here. As I mentioned in my email, this post isn’t exactly private, more hidden by obscurity. My hope is that it is a way to give you something without needing you to sign up or log in or whatever.

The Mishka Henner image that I really liked was the one you see above, of Black Diamond Feedyard in Herington, Kansas. It just seemed such an unlikely shape for a massive cattle-feeding operation. But of course, there’s a story behind it …

You can see the site for yourself at 38.692°N, 96.800°W and you will notice something odd if you do; the main runway (at the top of the diamond photo) is actually on the west side of the site. So the image isn’t, precisely, upside down. It is just rotated through 90°.

What I didn’t realise, until I came to research this little piece, is that Black Diamond is probably less damaging than the huge feedlots, and not only because it is smaller. You can read more in this profile of the operation.

All the best

Jeremy