Category: Uncategorized

Q: Do you have a food message that you want to convey?

A: Part of my live show is a 20-minute political diatribe called “10 things I’m pretty sure that I’m sure about food.” It’s basically a slide-show lecture wrapped up in a rant. I think that my overarching message in it is, “Look, we’ve gotten to where we’ve idolized food to the point that we’re missing the experience.” You know, the most magical thing about food is its ability to connect human beings to one another. That’s the real miracle of food.

But if you’re looking so closely at the food that you miss the people you’re sitting with, then food is no longer a good thing. Then it’s a bad thing. I think those of us in the food media have to be very, very, very careful how much we objectify the food itself.

From a Q&A with Alton Brown in the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

Jeffrey Sachs … holds to a model of economic development in which poverty cannot be broken piecemeal, but must be attacked on all fronts at once. Perhaps people cannot save for the future because they are too poor or too unhealthy, or both; perhaps they cannot improve their health or their productivity without the investments that depend on saving; or perhaps their productivity is low because they are not adequately nourished which, in turn, comes about because their productivity is so low. These vicious circles cause “poverty traps” from which people cannot escape except through a “big push” from outside. “In order to make lasting changes in any one sphere of development, we must improve them all”, argues the website of the Millennium Villages, where “all” comprises eight categories: education, mother and child health, business and entrepreneurship, gender equality, technology, the environment and intervention, water and energy, and food. (Note the “we”, which presumably means the western visitors to the website.)

Continue readingAngus Deaton on Development Bloat

Click here for an answer (whose language is slightly NSFW…)

Joking aside: I know blogging has been light these past few weeks, but with the start of classes and seeing six job-market candidates (all of whom I have to meet with, attend a seminar by, and have dinner with), there has been little time for anything else. Regular blogging should resume next week.

(ht: Mathieu Lalonde.)