A Thinking Reed

"Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed" – Blaise Pascal

Food

  • Friday Links

    –Why unions are essential for the future of liberalism. –Maryland is very close to legalizing same-sex marriage. –Indiana is very close to passing a draconian, Arizona-style immigration law. –International aid groups appeal to Congress to restore funding for humanitarian aid. –A slideshow and discussion on the question “Is meat green?” –How much would a government Read more

  • Friday links

    –The Australian broadcaster ABC’s Religion and Ethics site has a series of articles by Martha Nussbaum on democracy and education: parts 1, 2, and 3. –Coal is not cheap. –Vegan nutritionist Virginia Messina argues that healthy diets can include meat analogues. (A corrective of sorts to anti-processed-food extremism.) –At the great metal blog Invisible Oranges: Read more

  • Meat industry starting to feel the heat

    Via Mark Bittman, an article on the effect that efforts like the “Meatless Monday” campaign are having on beef and pork producers: Efforts like Meatless Mondays are yet another headache for the beef and pork industries. They have been struggling to cope with the soaring cost of corn for feed and to hold on to Read more

  • Friday links

    –Augustinian and Pelagian software. –A John Polkinghorne lecture on science and religion. –Batman as plutocrat. –Korn and Limp Bizkit: the soundtrack to nihilism. –Martha Nussbaum on John Stuart Mill: between Bentham and Aristotle. –The disconnect between the science and economics of climate change. –Peter Berger, who describes himself as a political conservative and a theological Read more

  • Beneficiaries of farm subsidies fret about big government

    I didn’t watch much of the Super Bowl, but I did catch this (rather poorly-produced, IMO) ad against the menace of new “food taxes” on things like soda and other sugary drinks. The ad doesn’t specify which taxes it’s arguing against, but supposing that someone is proposing such taxes, I’d like to make a counter-proposal. Read more

  • Small is beautiful?

    Matt Yglesias asks a fair question of Mark Bittman’s food manifesto, specifically his proposal that we shift subsidies away from big agribusiness and toward “small” farmers: It seems to me that what we want from our farms is farms that are as efficient as possible in their use of resources like land, labor, water, etc. Read more

  • Bittman’s agenda

    Speaking of food politics, Mark Bittman has retired his long-running “Minimalist” cooking column in the New York Times dining section and is moving over to the opinion pages, as well as writing for the Times Magazine. In addition to teaching people how to cook for themselves, Bittman has criticized the standard American diet and even Read more

  • What to eat

    Food writer and activist Marion Nestle has a good post parsing the just-released USDA 2010 food guidelines: Here are the take-home messages: Balancing Calories • Enjoy your food, but eat less. • Avoid oversized portions. Foods to Increase • Make half your plate fruits and vegetables. • Switch to fat-free or low-fat (1%) milk. Foods Read more

  • Varieties of “humane”

    From Grist, a run-down of the various schemes to label meat and other animal products as “humane” or its equivalent. Some key points: – There are no legally enforced definitions of “humane” (the same holds for “all-natural,” “sustainable,” “cage-free,” etc.); only products labeled “organic” are legally required to meet certain standards. – There are both Read more

  • Food politics: it’s not about “freedom”

    The new “culture war” over food safety and regulation is a perfect example of the misleading way these debates are so often framed in American public life, a framing that uncritically swallows conservative rhetoric about “freedom.” The debate (over, for example, the food safety bill currently working its way through Congress or the Hunger-Free Kids Read more