1. Birth and Dearth of Street Food – a report from the World
Street Food Congress held in June 2013 (why didn’t I know about this L)
My thanks to Helen Greenwood for
sending this on to me. So glad to see street food getting the attention it
deserves. I am intrigued by the four part typology summarised in the article
and of course want to critically engage with it, and hopefully will get the
time in the next week to do so and post on my foodie blog.
huff.to/13QN1SP
2. The Okinawa diet: could it help you live to 100?
"All of these diets work on
similar mechanisms," Mather tells me. "One hypothesis is that the
secret about ageing is to avoid accumulating molecular damage, and eating fish,
beans, nuts, seeds, legumes, whole grains, and not so much red meat, dairy or
sugar may help us to reduce that kind of cellular damage." Sadly, the
professor is dismissive of silver bullets: "In the early days we did try
to link health with specific foods or nutrients, but now we look more
holistically at dietary patterns."
Exactly, so can we stop already
with the Okinawa diet, the Mediterranean diet, the Scandinavian diet, Susquatch
diet (I made that one up but may very well patent it) and just the message out
about the general principles articulated in this quote and stop people food
fadding to stop their padding.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2013/jun/19/japanese-diet-live-to-100?CMP=ema_632
3. Kalei applies are Aussie to
the core.
Dumbo me had no idea that
pink lady apples are an Australian breed and that it was released over 20 years
ago – here I thought it turned up from some ancient regime solo tree found in a
disused orchard in some more apply natural clime. Anyway, nice to see a new
breed that’s been another 20 non GM years in the making and it’s apparently
tasty as well as having natural black spot protection – Joni Mitchell will be
pleased, and it’s her 70
th birthday. Scary fact though is that there
are only 5 or 6 key apple varieties grown in Australia.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/breaking-news/queensland-launches-loveable-apple/story-fn3dxity-1226345640536
Thanks Paul for another interesting selection of links. I like the sound of the Nordic diet - because I like cheese. Isn't that the way of all these fads? We like the diets that suit our own preferences, i.e. cherry-picking items from a diet based on a whole cultural/social way of eating.
ReplyDeleteMy favourite counter-example is how I've seen my Ghanaian family members chew bones. Chicken bones, fish bones, crab shells, all get crunched up, although not always swallowed. If you followed the traditional diet without doing that I suspect you may not get enough calcium, because I don't think there are a lot of other sources in their diet. E.g. they didn't eat a lot of dairy before Milo and ice-cream came along (although they do eat a lot of greens). But I've seen people point to traditional diets as examples of how we can eat without dairy products (which are the trad source of calcium in my cultural diet). Well yes you can, but not if you only cherry-pick the bits that appeal and don't look at what & how people are really eating.
I'm sure that it's similar for lots of other fad diets, although the missing nutrients or supposed benefits are obviously different in each case. I just use calcium as an example cos, well, I am a woman of a certain age so it's on my mind.
I just think: eat well and varied - fresh, seasonal, not in excess. And enjoy life. Live long and prosper ;)