Hi Everyone,
Thanks for a lovely Food class last time; we had some interesting and fun presentations, thanks to all of our presenters and everybody else too!
Ray introduced Jane Goodall's book Harvest for Hope: a Guide to Mindful Eating; in which the author "encourages us to consider the significance of our daily food choices." I'm planning to read it too now, and maybe some of you will consider checking it out as well. Andrea shared information about a healthier way of eating, based on the diet of people who live around the Mediterranean Sea: heavy on grains, vegetables, and fruit, and light on meat, and she shared the positive effect it's had on her own health. Then Taiya plunged us into the joys of beef and told us exactly where the different beef cuts come from and what they're best used for; she gave us a diagram and we even learned why meat from the "loin" is so juicy, while the meat from the "chuck" and "round" is so tough. Jerry finished up the night with a presentation on the first time he made Chinese meat pies, complete with photos, and everyone was very interested in his recipes, and also interested in persuading him to give us a taste of his cooking!
Next Thursday, I'd like to continue with the theme of food, and delve into the darker side of food, if you will... Why we do things to our food that makes it unhealthy for us, and why so many people on our planet don't have enough food to stay alive.
"Some sources estimate that 20 million people die each year of hunger-related causes. FAO estimates that at least 435 million people are seriously undernourished in the world today. Other estimates, which use poverty as an indicator, suggest that 800 million people are threatened by hunger, either temporarily or in the long term."
"Amartya Sen won his 1998 Nobel Prize in part for his work in demonstrating that hunger in modern times was not typically the product of a lack of food; rather, hunger usually arose from problems in food distribution networks or from governmental policies in the developing world."
"Both of the world's leading authorities on food distribution (the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization [FAO] and the World Food Programme [WFP]) are very clear: there is more than enough food for everyone on the planet. The FAO neatly summarizes the problem of starvation, saying that "the world currently produces enough food for everybody, but many people do not have access to it." Food is a lot like money: just because some people have none doesn't mean that there isn't enough of it--it's just spread unevenly."
So the topic of the first half of our class will be Hunger and Starvation: if there's more than enough food for everyone on the planet, why are there so many hungry people, and what can we do about it?
Then for the next half of class, I'd like to continue the discussion of pesticides that we touched on last time. I'd like to hear more of your opinions about pesticides, and I'm hoping we can experiment with a debate as well. Please come ready to talk about both the pros and cons of pesticide use. What do you think: do we need pesticides?
Some information against pesticides can be found here:
"Because pesticides are selected for their ability to kill living things, whether plant, insect or animal, it's perhaps not surprising that they can also harm unintended targets such as people, wildlife and in general the environment."
and information against them can be found here as well:
Information supporting pesticide use can be found here:
"Although often taken for granted, without these important products (pesticides), food production would decline, many fruits and vegetables would be in short supply and prices would rise. Far more of our parklands and natural habitats would have to be turned over to food production to meet the demands of a growing global population. Insect-borne diseases such as malaria, dengue, and west Nile virus would proliferate unchecked."
Here are two sources which have nice outlines of both the pros and cons of pesticide use:
And if we have time, I'd love to discuss some of the ways we can improve the ways that humans produce and distribute the food we eat, so please bring all your ideas to share with us.
See you on Thursday!
Sincerely, Abbie
