Tag: Food

Why are food is making us fat

Hank Cardello, the former head of marketing at Coca-Cola, tells me that in 1984, Coke in the US swapped from sugar to HFCS (In the UK, it continued to use sugar). As a market leader, Coke’s decision sent a message of endorsement to the rest of the industry, which quickly followed suit. There was “no downside” to HFCS, Cardello says. It was two-thirds the price of sugar, and even the risk of messing with the taste was a risk worth taking when you looked at the margin, especially as there were no apparent health risks. At that time, “obesity wasn’t even on the radar” says Cardello.

Read more

Source : The Guardian

The Changing Face of Urban Farming in London

The presence of Spitalfields and other farms not only demonstrates ways in which Londoners are attempting to remain connected to how food is sourced and produced (as evidenced by the rise of boutique markets such as Borough and Brixton), but also serves as a means to maintain a multicultural identity and re-establish communal urbanism in a city that increasingly isolates its citizens.

Read more

Source : Polis

Honeybee problem nearing a ‘critical point’

Unfortunately, it was the EPA itself that green-lit clothianidin and other neonics for commercial use, despite its own scientists’ clear warnings about the chemicals’ effects on bees and other pollinators. That doesn’t bode well for the chances of getting neonics off the market now, even in light of the Purdue study’s findings.

Read more

Source: The Guardian

#38 Collected Reading – A year in review 2011

A selection of my favorite collected readings from this year. I hope you have enjoyed reading them. Happy new year!

1.Design Thinking 

Design should not be seen as a discipline in the same way as geography or physics. It is a method: a method to join together separate ideas, information, emotions and organize them to develop a thought. None of the books listed below have any real examples of what is traditionally thought of as design. There are no glossy photos, models or “concepts”. Instead they are books which develop a way of thinking, a method which realizes that what is made is only as good as the way an idea is framed. There is no style, no “big idea”, just different ways to help you see the world you live in and how to rearrange the complexity of that world in a way that makes sense of things.

-KP

Read more

 

2. The food edition 

This week I have collected together a series of recipe videos I made. Most of them were made on a recent visit to London in my mum’s kitchen.

-KP

Read more

 

3. Thinking about the present

A collection of thoughts around thinking, work and how to be in the present. 

“Today is a gift.
That is why they call it the present.”

-Eleanor Roosevelt

Read more

 

4. Introduction : Sherlock Holmes and the design process

After reading a collection of  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes short stories and novels,  I was struck by how much the process of detection has in common with the process of design. I have picked out some of the best quotes which illustrate these ideas.

-KP

Read more

 

5. Free markets and democracy 

“And so, the balance of business expenditures shifts from product research to market research. The television commercial has oriented business away from making products of value and toward making consumers feel valuable, which means that the business of business has now become pseudo-therapy.”

– Neil Postman

Read more

 

#18 Collected Reading

Quote of the week

“I never arrived at the perfection I had been so ambitious of obtaining,
but fell far short of it, yet I was, by the endeavor, a better and a
happier man than I otherwise should have been if I had not attempted it;”

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
by Benjamin Franklin


1.Facebook and Twitter fuel iPhone and Blackberry addiction, says Ofcom 

“Of the new generation of smartphone users, 60% of teenagers classed themselves as “highly addicted” to their device, compared to 37% of adults.

Mobile, UK, Culture

Source :The Guardian

2. Israel’s secular middle class strikes back

“Israel’s school system is in the pits with class sizes of about 40; many Israeli women cannot afford going to work because childcare is very expensive; the public transport is that of a third-world country.”

Israel, Policy, Culture, Protest

Source : The Guardian


3. America’s First Great Global Warming Debate

“As a gentleman farmer in Virginia, Jefferson had long been obsessed with the weather; in fact, on July 1, 1776, just as he was finishing his work on the Declaration of Independence, he began keeping a temperature diary. Jefferson would take two readings a day for the next 50 years. He would also crunch the numbers every which way”

Environment, USA, Global, Culture, History

Source :Smithsonian Magazine

4. The Illusion of the Free Internet

“Since life expectancy in Nigeria is less than 50 years it is a fair assumption most people in Ogoniland have lived with chronic oil pollution throughout their lives,” the report says.”

Environment, USA, Global, Culture, History

Source : Slow Media.net

5. Why India Can’t Feed Her People

“As much as 40 per cent of all the fruits, vegetables and food grains grown in India never make it to the market. The country wastes more grain each year than Australia produces, and more fruits and vegetables than the U.K. consumes.”

India, Culture, Food, Policy

Source : The Star

Hope you like this collection. Please comment, share and most of all enjoy.

– Kaushik

#11 Collected Reading July 3rd, 2011

Quote of the week

“It is the difference between the “organic” solution (solving the problem by returning to the purity of the original non-corrupted system) and the truly radical solution (identifying the problem as the “symptom” of the entire system, the symptom which can only be resolved by abolishing the entire system)”. – Living in the End Times –  Slavoj Zizek

1.Bottom’s Up! A Look at America’s Drinking Habits

“Soda is still the most-consumed beverage in the U.S., with the average consumer chugging nearly 45 gallons of the fizzy stuff last year. So it’s no coincidence that three of the biggest measured-media budgets in the beverage category belong to soda brands.”

Culture, Health, Food

Source :Adage

2.Donors Are Settling for a ‘Bronze Standard’ for Measuring Charities – The Giveaway

“Many donors do care about how their money is spent. Brian Walsh, director of global social engagement at Liquidnet for Good, pointed to a recent study that showed 85 percent of donors say they care about performance. Nonetheless, only one third say they conduct research before they make a donation and only 3 percent say they make gifts based on a charity’s performance”

Nonprofit, Grants, Culture

Source : Philanthropy.com


3. Museum 2.0: A Simple Outcome of Visitor Participation: Delight

““But maybe it should be. For me, a professional who is pushing every day to make a struggling museum relevant and sustainable, I find incredible joy in these simple visitor comments.” 

Place, Culture, Museum

Source : Museumtwo

4. No Pension, No Security

“Combined with Social Security benefit cuts, the rise of 401(k)s has led to growing retirement insecurity and an increase in the labor force participation of older workers. Still, workers with only 401(k)s are better off than the nearly half of full-time workers with no retirement plan at all.

Economics, Culture, Work

Source : EPI.org

5. Risk, probability, and how our brains are easily misled

“If we really want people to understand a given probability, then we have to play to the human brain’s strengths, and adjust how we present the information.”

Technology, Humans, Culture

Source : Arstechnica

Hope you like this collection. Please comment, share and most of all enjoy.

– Kaushik

#10 Collected Reading June 26th, 2011

Quote of the week

“Ignorance is the mother of arrogance – Hans Hoffman”

1.René Magritte: enigmatic master of the impossible dream

“Like every good artist, he makes us see the everyday differently but he does it without the pretension of so many other artists.”

Art, Commentary, Everyday

Source :The Guardian

2.Get them while they’re young

“Everything I’ve ever learned about marketing, I learned in church,” says Andrea, one of the people featured in this film.”

Marketing, Ritual, Culture

Source : The Guardian


3. What’s pushing up food prices?

““After intense lobbying, banks won deregulation of commodities markets in the US in 2000, allowing them to develop these new products. Goldman Sachs pioneered commodity index funds” 

Food, Poverty, Policy

Source : The Guardian

4. The Social Network’s Aaron Sorkin quits Facebook

“I acknowledge that video games could be an amazing art form – but not until the people making them go back a bit, to the Aaron Sorkin way of thinking about character and motivation.”

Writing, Culture, Stories

Source : The Guardian

Hope you like this collection. Please comment, share and most of all enjoy.

– Kaushik

#9 Collected Reading June 19th, 2011

Quote of the week

“We weren’t just at the art exhibition – we were the art exhibition, the art incarnate and the sixties were really about people, not what they did. – Andy warhol”


1.Forty years of Friends of the Earth – in pictures

“The group was founded in 1971 in Roslagen, Sweden, by environmental activists from France, Sweden, the UK and the US who saw the need for an organisation that would address wider environmental and social issues.”

Environment, Photography

Source :The Guardian

2.The Dark Side of the Free and Open 

“The Dark Side of the Free and Open (For Artsworld Magazine)Geeks, programmers and computer scientists are very much in demand in society. Without them all infrastructure collapses. This is (unfortunately) not the case with artists. So far geeks have never had any problems securing an income, even if we take global outsourcing of their work into account. As a result they have little idea what happens if you transport the free and open mantras into other contexts where people are working under harsh neoliberal circumstances struggling to make a living.”

Internet, Work, OpenSource

Source : Network Cultures


3. USDA Replaces Food Pyramid with MyPlate 

““The USDA’s new plate icon couldn’t be more at odds with federal food subsidies,” says PCRM staff nutritionist Kathryn Strong, M.S., R.D. “The plate icon advises Americans to limit high-fat products like meat and cheese, but the federal government is subsidizing these very products with billions of tax dollars and giving almost no support to fruits and vegetables. Congress has to reform the Farm Bill to support healthy diets.” 

Food, Poverty, Policy

Source : PCRM.org

4. California Senate Votes to Ban Styrofoam Containers!

“It’s ironic however that a product used to keep something as short-lived as a milkshake will last many thousands of years in the environment. Studies show that the material accounts for up to 15% of storm drain litter, and it’s the second most prevalent type of beach debris.Read more: California Senate Votes to Ban Styrofoam Containers! | Inhabitat – Green Design Will Save the World”

Environment , Policy, Design

Source : Inhabit

5. Website to catalogue impact of arts funding cuts

“Every £1 invested in the arts produces £2 for the economy, and yet the arts and culture sector is currently suffering from disastrous local authority cuts, as well as the cuts that the Arts Council has had to make after its 30% cut from the government,” he said.”

Arts, Funding, Policy

Source : Lost Arts.org

Hope you like this collection. Please comment, share and most of all enjoy.

– Kaushik