“One picture is worth a thousand words” department: The Time feature I linked to in an earlier post has a fascinating photo essay associated with it, showing the weekly food consumption of 16 families around the world. I hadn’t noticed it until Jeremy pointed it out to me. Seems to me that if you’re trying to stay away from processed foods and have a nice, healthy, balanced diet you’re best off living in Sicily, Egypt, Mexico or Bhutan. Would be great to do something similar at the variety level, for example looking at the diversity within potatoes or wheat used by different families around the world.
Pharaonic eats
Ancient Egyptian cooking.
More on trade liberalization
Before you all start responding to my recent post by pointing me in the direction of the 2002 Convention on Biological Diversity paper on the impact of trade liberalization on agricultural biodiversity, let me say that I have read it, and that I stick to my call for more thorough analysis. First, despite its title, the CBD paper concentrates on the presumed effects of liberalization – via changes in land use and production intensification – on biodiversity in general rather than agricultural biodiversity in particular, something that was also discussed by an older IUCN paper. Second, it repeats a few too many times how complicated the issue is. And finally, it provides little in the way of empirical data.
African veggies
Papers on African leafy vegetables online.
Baguette to the future
A history of french bread.