Pie Fight

Why the fat face?

A well written article on the role of environment, architecture and work in shaping people's bodies. Nothing new here, but nicely put. However, the following assertion is overstated:

In forgetting to think about how our environment shapes us, it becomes easy to think that our food is made for us. The difficult truth is that, increasingly, capitalism makes us for our food.

No, capitalism does not 'make us for our food'. But it would be very fair to say that our food is not made for us, it is made for our lifestyles (and those are to a large degree made by capitalism).

Middle class myopia about the socio-economics of food

UPDATE: While my criticism of Blythman's article focused on the idiocy of her belief that public health policy can be based on middle class behaviour and assumptions, the article also deserved a right royal bollocking for its dodgy use of research. Adopting the faux objectivity characteristic of so much of the American press, it pretended to present two sides of the story by: A) offering accepted scientific evidence, then B) providing oppositional critiques of the mainstream science. See the trick here? It presents two sides of teh argument, but only lets one side critique the other. Thankfully, wiser men than me have called her on it. The best bit is the second letter, which points out that one of her key critics of putting folic acid in bread runs an online health food shop that sells - you guessed it - folic acid. Joanna, you got played.

This is one of the most egregious, up its own ass articles I've ever read. Joanna Blythman's normally pretty good, but in this piece she seems to be willfully myopic about the ways that socio-economic realities and the diets of the poor. Eg, she quotes, approvingly, this guy:

"It is noticeable that the FSA isn't proposing adding it to wholemeal bread because it already contains it. Why doesn't the FSA just tell people to eat more wholemeal bread?"

Um, because that wouldn't work, especially not with the mums who need this. (Hint: they don't have the same approach to food as you.)

Ok, that's one stupid question answered; how about another one?

The other main objection is that fortification is a sledgehammer to crack a nut. The estimate is that adding folic acid to bread will save 120 babies in the UK every year from spina bifida, but for every baby saved, half a million people, male and female, will have to take the added folic acid. "Why not target potential young mothers rather than mass-supplementing the population at large ?" asks Holford.

Hey, toughie! How about 'Because the young mothers who need this don't respond to government messages on health and diet?' You do; they don't - wishing ain't gonna change that. Or maybe the poor all quit smoking when I wasn't looking.

Pathetic.

Via Ezra Klein, here's an american example of the genre, in which well-off journalists who work from home bash those who don't make the time to cook proper meals after a 10-hour day.

Starbucks spreads the love

Via Drezner, persuasive evidence that in the US, Starbucks not only created teh coffeehouse market, but that its presence enables teh existence of more independent coffeehouses than would otherwise be around. That is, while it almost certainly runs some independent java joints out of business, it also creates the conditions to allow more indies to open up (whether they do well or not, I don't know). This is credited to STarbucks as a Coffeehouse 101 for those who might not otherwise try non-drop coffee. Once they've had starbucks, some of those newbies move on to more independent brands.

The Specialty Coffee Association of America, a leading trade group, tracks American retail sales. In 1989, the SCAA estimates there were 585 coffee houses operating in the U.S. By 1995 that number had risen to 5,000. By 2003, there were 17,400 shops in operation.

Starbucks growth is notable, but it's far from the sole factor driving these new shop openings. The SCAA reports that 57% of the shops open in 2003 were independent, having only one to three locations. Microchains (4-9 units) made up another 3% of the market. All the large chains combined make up the remaining 40%. [Source .pdf]

....

According to the Portland Yellow Pages, before Starbucks came to Portland in 1989, there were 28 coffee shops in the city. Today, there are 91 non-Starbucks coffeehouses in Portland proper, compared with the chain's 48 stores within city limits.

Food poverty

Will food poverty contribute to intergenerational deprivation? I feel taht I've read about recent studies looking at poor children's behaviour and attention spans being negatively effected by their disproportionately poor diets, but I'm also interested in a potentially more long-term effect of poor maternal diets on fetal develoment and poor early childhood diets on long-term cognitive development.

No time just yet to look into it yet, but if these things are happening, the following graph might unnerve those who hope for more social mobility. For many, it will be a lesson in the fact that we have to do a better job of teaching the poor what to eat. For me and other perhaps more fatalistic or deterministic observers, it's yet another argument for why we need to strive desperately to reduce poverty. (My feeling being that in the aggregate the poor of any nation are going to tend to make a host of bad decisions - which make short-term sense to them but may make bad long-term sense - and that we are not going to be able to eliminate that tendency. Rather than firefighting each bad decision, we should fight the root cause of most bad decision making, poverty itself. But that's just my opinion right now, and it may change later as I learn more.

Graph taken from Breadline Britain:

Is advice on reducing salt proven not to work?

This article looks at earlier results to argue that the FSA's anti-salt campaign is likely to be a big fat waste of money. I instinct is to agree - and with 75% of the nation's salt intake coming from processed foods, wouldn't it be far more efficient to get industry to decrease their sodium use?

At the start of last year, the wonderful Cochrane Collaboration - a group that searches out all the evidence on particular health topics, then brings it together as sensibly as possible - looked at advising people on eating less salt. It treated the advice as if it were a drug. If you tell people to eat less salt, do they get healthier as a result? If you lecture them, do they profit?

It turns out that they really don't. The average blood pressure drop in the 3,500 people enrolled in the 11 published proper trials was vanishingly close to none at all. One millimetre of mercury. "Not enough to expect an important health benefit," said the review. Not enough to bother with.

To make the finding more relevant, let me explain that they weren't looking at the effects of a public-health campaign led by a slug. They were going for something meatier. They looked at studies where people weren't just advised to eat less salt and left to their own devices. They were given individual counselling, or had nutritionists turn up at their homes to hand out cookbooks. They had local bakers sending them deliveries of specially made low-salt breads. They had detailed advice - and frequent lectures - on what to eat, when to eat it, and how to conduct the rest of their miserable low-salt lives. All of that, and it didn't matter at all.

Fast Food Nation as analysed by a Very Big Brain

Russell Arben Fox whumps out umpteen thousand words on Erich Schlosser's Fast Food Nation. No time to read it right now, but with Fox's brain and reasoning, I'll be getting to it asap.

Speaking of brains, if RAF finds himself floating around the fucking backwoods of the US looking for permanent work, and Dan Drezner can't get tenure at U Chi (I can understand this one more - it's very competitive in there), then what sort of fucking argument for pursuing academia is that? I want to get my PhD, but I'm not willing to be a drifter in seek of tenure. My god, can you imagine wendy and I in York?

Obesity is a function of social progress

So says Zoe Williams, and quite rightly too. What can be done about it? Less than nothing, she says - it's a function of societal genies that can't be put back in the bottle. But  that notion that there's nothing we can do so we really shouldn't try, is that  the blitheness of someone who's very well off indeed and who has far less to worry about than most of the people who suffer from obesity? Not Zoe - she wouldn't do that.

In broader terms, what she's arguing is important for social policy in general. When can you afect change and accomplish good things, and when are there just too many factors stacked against you? In a world where there's lots of battles to be fought, knowing which ones can be won is important.

Fish ear, catnip!

From the NCB weekly news roundup:

Research by Oxford University shows that giving children essential fats, which are found in nuts and fish, could improve their brainpower. The study involved 100 children with physical coordination problems. They were given daily supplements with omega-three essential fats. Forty per cent of the children made dramatic improvements in their concentration and behaviour. The study is reported in the US journal Pediatrics. (Guardian, 2 May 2005, p2; Mail, 3 May 2005, p2; Guardian, Life, 5 May 2005, pp4-5)

A report by the Department of Health shows that more than a quarter of children aged between two and 11 are overweight and one in seven is obese. Doctors are alarmed at the steady rise in children's weight over the past eight years. Using data from the official Health Survey of England, the report shows that obesity among boys rose from 9.6 per cent in 1995 to 14.9 per cent in 2003. Among girls it went up from 10.3 per cent to 12.5 per cent. The proportion of overweight boys went up from 22.5 per cent to 29.6 per cent while for girls the increase was from 22.9 per cent to 25.9 per cent. However, the report says the gradual rise masks important differences in age groups. Obesity rose sharply among children aged eight to 10 from 11.2 per cent to 16.5 per cent, and least among two to three-year-olds - from 9.4 per cent to 11.2 per cent. Children living in deprived areas - in terms of income, education, employment and skills etc - were more likely to be obese. Children with obese parents were more likely to have weight problems. In households where both parents were obese, 20 per cent of children were too, compared with 6.7 per cent of children whose parents were not overweight. (Express, 30 Apr 2005, p24; Guardian, 30 Apr 2005, p1; Independent, 30 Apr 2005, p18; Mail, 30 Apr 2005, p4; Mirror, 30 Apr 2005, p23; Sun, 30 Apr 2005, p6, p35; Times, 30 Apr 2005, p14)

Can't have dessert until you finish your 25-year dinner

Hey look! PFI is stymying free market competition and - surprise, surprise - making things worse for end users. The Guardian has an article on councils that want to serve better school meals (or parents who want them to), but who can't get out of their onerous, often 25-year long PFI contracts. In one case that's mentioned, said contract is subbed out three times - and for each of those three levels that are squeezing a profit, kids are losing out.

And whaddaya know - they get letters. I'd be careful if I were the head of Merton council. This is an issue on which not much will probably change - but to be seen on the wrong side of the battle, and to be arguing that nothing's wrong with the system, is going to piss people off and may cost you dear in the future. Being the figurehead for the "kids' meals are alright" movement isn't exactly a winner.

Uppity workers

Honduran farm workers sue over pesticide damage