Saturday, October 19, 2013

This week's compost



1    1.   Food swapping: a fast way to free homegrown food.

“Apples for Eggs now has 159 registered swappers and events in York, Ormskirk, Henley and Stoke, with Brampton in Cumbria the newest swap. There are many similar events across the UK (find them at foodswapnetwork.com) and in Brazil, Denmark, France and the Netherlands.’

Anyone know anyone in Oz doing this?



2    2. After wine, Chinese consumers want a slice of cheese

“When I heard that Asia, and particularly China, started to show interest in cheese, I automatically assumed that the French would be leading the race of cheese exports to the region. How wrong I was. Australian and New Zealand producers will have the most to gain from a booming Chinese demand for cheese...[ ] it was certainly the international fast food chains and their offerings of pizzas and cheese burgers that shaped the taste of cheese of China’s biggest cities...’

But it’s processed cheese, apparently, not the so-called “Old World” cheeses that a strongly odoriferous and tasty. Though a new Beijing cheesemaker Le Fromager de Pekin is counting on this changing.


The article does mention that lactose intolerance is common in China  as high as 90% of the population being affected - but does not suggest how people are overcoming this in what is apparently a general push to get dairy products into the Chinese diet.

http://bit.ly/16jkxpE
 
3.      Taxing fresh food could have a big, bad health impact
“If the price of fruits and vegetables were to go up by 10% (the current level of GST), consumption can be expected to go down by about 5%. Our modelling suggests that, over time, this could lead to around 90,000 extra cases of heart disease, stroke and cancer; this might cost between $0.5 billion to $1.8 billion to treat, on top of a loss of 60,000 to 145,000 healthy life years. One healthy life year is the equivalent of a year in full health, and losses can be due to reduced quality of life while living with disease, or due to being dead.”
So, let me get this straight. If a GST is put on fresh fruit and vegies, it would raise money that would go into general revenue out of which comes funding for health which would now including spending billions on treating people for illnesses they developed because they reduced their intake of fruit and veg because they were being taxed in the first place. 


4   4. Food and Words 2

And a word of congratulations to Barbara Sweeney on a very successful second year of Food and Words event at the Mint this week. A terrific range of speakers that were never less than interesting on a range of topics well outside the mainstream foodie talk.

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