- Nobellist praises biodiversity, ignores food.
- TED video on world-saving mushrooms.
- God: “Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yieleling seed; to you, it shall be for meat.“
- Pollan: “Vote with your fork, for a different kind of food. Go to the farmer’s market. Get out of the supermarket… Plant a garden… Declare your independence from the culture of fast food.”
- Rodale Institute: “Yield data just by itself makes the case for a focused and persistent move to organic farming systems.”
R&B
A large number of variations on one simple (and very nutritious, being as how one is a cereal and one is a pulse) dish: rice and beans. Everyone who’s anyone (at least in the pressure cooker world of US-based food blogging) is there, with some nifty ideas on that lysine-tryptophan feasteroni.
Nibbles: Early diet, Rice, Veggies, Barley, Research, Taiwan, Coffee trade
- Early Peruvians didn’t brush their teeth. On the plus side, they had a tasty, varied diet.
- Mangrove rice farming in West Africa: The Book.
- “Could it be that vegetables are the new meat?“
- Wild relative rescues barleys threatened by Russian pests.
- Gates supports McKnight supports poor farmers.
- Vavilov does Formosa.
- Ethiopian Commodity Exchange gets to grips with coffee. Starbucks unavailable for comment.
High food prices and PLWHA
You’ll remember that I recently bewailed the lack of studies documenting and promoting the use of agrobiodiversity in coping with HIV. But Peace Nganwa, an intern at the African Centre for Food Security, University of KwaZulu-Natal, must have access to some relevant data on this because she suggests that recent food price increases have resulted in reduced dietary diversity, among other things:
In the face of these price hikes, households and communities have to adopt coping strategies to enable them to survive. Some of these coping strategies include: change in diet such as reduced food intake, lower food quality and reduced dietary diversity; seeking wage employment; temporary or in the worst case permanent migration; sale of productive and non-productive assets; and withdrawal of children from school.
In a very cogent article at AllAfrica.com she describes why good nutrition is particularly important to those living with HIV.
Firstly the infection-illness period, which on average is about eight years, can be extended by a good diet, among other things. People infected by the virus have up to 50 per cent more energy requirements (100 per cent for children) than people who are not infected. Secondly good nutrition both in quality and quantity is vital in the prevention of opportunistic infections which occur because of reduced body immunity. A sound diet may therefore prolong life; more especially delay the progression of HIV to AIDS. Thirdly adequate nutrition is of utmost importance to the patients on anti-retroviral therapy. Some drugs must be taken with food and most are not effective if the patients are malnourished.
I just don’t get why there seem to be so few studies and interventions out there trying to help PLWHA by promoting diverse crops for diverse diets, especially in urban settings. Tell me I’m wrong. Please.
Aren’t steroids illegal?
Karl, from Inoculated Mind, describes Nature magazine’s selection of plant scientist Richard Sayre (as one of five crop scientists who could change the world) as “a good pick.” Sayre’s pet project, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is to build a super cassava; 500 g will contain the daily requirements of protein, vitamin A and E, iron and zinc. Karl describes BioCassava Plus as “like golden rice on steroids.” And I guess whether you think that’s a good thing or not depends on what you think of Golden Rice and what you think of steroids.
We’ve crossed swords on Golden Rice before now; I’m not going to go there. I’ll just repeat that I remain unconvinced that Golden Rice will measurably increase the nutritional health of people outside the mostly urban market economy, and that if they were to increase their vitamin A precursor intake with other foods it would, in my view, deliver greater total good.
I’ve made my thoughts on super cassava known too. And again, I repeat the fundamental question; when you have engineered one variety of cassava and planted it across Africa, how are you going to respond when the entire population falls prey to a newly virulent form of some disease?
The answer to nutritional deficiencies is not a super variety of any staple. It is diversity. People in the cities might be able to afford super-staples, and the farmers supplying it might do OK. But they will not help poor farmers either to earn a living or to improve their own nutrition.