Tag: Food

Sugar & substance abuse [Article]

Scientifically speaking, a drug is any substance that alters normal bodily function when absorbed into the body of a living organism.  Students have been overdosing on sugar, says the Guardian, & appeals to them to just say no. Sugar has been shown to have the same impact on the human body as heroin.

We don’t think of sugar as a drug: it’s found in most of the foods and drinks we encounter every day. And at university, where stress levels can be high and fast food is cheap, it’s all too easy to reach out for the comfort blanket it provides.

Many students’ diets consist of pizzas, take-aways and chocolate bars. Whether you spend your time raving or revising, there’s always something better to do than think about eating healthily. And with university halls often providing only the most basic cooking facilities, a well-balanced diet simply doesn’t feature in most students’ lifestyles.

There are those that grow, and those that destroy [Article]

Economics makes the world go round, right? What happens when the ones who wield the clout bet on both sides? Ever wondered why so many people go hungry in the world while so much food is wasted elsewhere in the world? Or why the ones who grow the food you & I eat find it incredibly difficult to even cover the costs of producing such food? What about the economics of food? & what do bankers have to do with food? Goldman Sach’s Food Speculation Turns Global Hunger Into Wall Street Profit

Dosa remixed [article]

JP Rangaswami (@jobsworth) is the Chief Scientist at Salesforce, but that doesn’t detract him from speaking his mind on things he is passionate about. I love how he is able to weave a story around the past & the present while helping to shape the future. He does that splendidly while writing about two things he is passionate about – food & software – in this blog article titled “On Habanero Dosas, platforms & makers” .

Stuffed with memories [article]


This explains my constant hunger! Maybe I’ll pay more attention to my lunch (& dinner) – just after I finish reading this report! 
“We’ve known for a while that people who are distracted while eating — such as by watching TV or typing — are not really thinking about what they’re eating. They’re not making memories of the food, and may be setting themselves up for later hunger.” 

The Refrigerated Workforce [Article]

This interview with Nicola Twilley about food ends with the following poignant statement about the direction that people who spend their working hours in refrigerated spaces are going in ” 
When you spend a lot of time in refrigerated spaces, you slow down. In a lot of the frozen food warehouses, workers are not allowed to work alone. You don’t even realize that you are slowing down, and eventually you stop moving. We have these buildings that we maintain at extraordinary expense that we, physically, are not optimized for all. We are not optimized for spaces that slow down decay, to preserve “freshness” — whatever that means — in our fruits, vegetables and meats. On the temporal level, what refrigeration does is so weird. It is an extension that slows everything down. 
 

What can the food industry do? [Video]

A medical doctor was invited to speak at a food conference. And then was dis-invited (if that is a word!). As he says in this video, since he had all the slides ready, why not post it on the Internet, where more people could hear his message? Dr. Yoni Freedhoff exposes the hypocrisy of the food industry. He also has some thoughts for anyone who eats. Definitely worth your time.