1. Global threat to food supply as water wells dry
up, warns top environment expert
Water futures trading can’t be far off. I was talking with a
woman who has been doing work in Alice Springs over the last few months where
the aquifer is estimated to have about 400 years of water left at the current
rate of usage. They are developing a water usage reduction program targeting
the top 1000 households identified in a massive survey of use. The greatest
waste was from leaks that were undetectable by the householder except where the
cistern just kept dribbling, and watering of lawns. But of course big users of water are the
Council and government Departments in town and it is to these that they are
next turning. While there is water enough, the quality is getting poorer, more
saline. Interestingly they have no water restrictions at all at present.
Apparently people from States where they have/have had water restrictions have
been taken aback by this. There as a community wide consultation to discuss
mandatory restrictions but voluntary restrictions was all that was agreed to
with a waterwise type programme being rolled out.
Courtesy of Helen Greenwood is this offering about coffee houses from an eastern
perspective. The parallels between them and English coffee houses are striking,
both in what they provided as social meeting spaces for men and also in
government attempts to close them.
3. Margarine v butter: are synthetic spreads
toast?
“And yet, and yet. I'm looking at a tub of Pure Dairy-Free Soya Spread.
It contains 14g saturated fat per 100g, compared to butter's 54%. For many
consumers, such stats still outweigh taste when it comes to deciding what's on
their toast. And what about vegans, and those with lactose intolerance?
Margarine can fulfill needs that butter can't. It will never win any taste
awards, but there is still a place for margarine on the supermarket shelves –
even if there isn't one for it in most food lovers' fridges.”
It must have been in my last year in Sri Lanka – 1961 – when some
relatives of mine came back from the US on a visit and brought with them an
enormous amount of margarine. It caused a sensation because it wouldn’t go off
in the heat, and I recall being highly excited when we were due for a visit
there because I knew I could get a thick
slice of puffy white bread spread with this extraordinary yellow oily tasty
stuff. In Australia we began with butter but switched to margarine like many
other households did in the sixties and that continued into my adolescence and
early twenties living in communal houses. Now the home fridge has butter (the
delicious Pepe Saya’s – the butter, not Pepe), Nuttlex for my vegan niece,
sometimes that olive oil spread, and good old imported Sri Lankan ghee without
which some dishes just don’t taste right, like smore, the slow pot roast which
has to be seared in ghee once done before serving.
4. Beer brewers tap
growing economic clout to fight for clean water
“Whether brewers are creating ales, pilsners, porters, wits
or stouts, one ingredient must go into every batch: clean water,” says Karen
Hobbs, a senior policy analyst at NRDC. “Craft brewers need clean water to make
great beer.”
It’s almost counter intuitive (hey, that was a totally
unconscious pun): beer makers standing up for water, but what a great venture.
Anyone know if local craft brewers are doing anything similar?
http://bit.ly/14YWLJX
5. McDonald’s goes belly up in Bolivia
“After 14 years of
presence in the country, and despite all the existing campaigns and having a
network, the chain was forced to close the eight restaurants that remained open
in the three main cities: La Paz, Cochabamba and Santa Cruz de la Sierra.
It is a question of
the first Latin-American country that will remain without any McDonald’s, and
the first country in the world where the company has to close because it
persists in having their numbers in the red for over a decade.”
No me gusto Big Mac!
http://bit.ly/12iJvhk
6. Hey mom and dad
what’s in that burger?’
‘According to
Oliver, the fatty parts of beef are “washed” in ammonium hydroxide and used in
the filling of the burger. Before this process, according to the presenter, the
food is deemed unfit for human consumption.
According to the
chef and presenter, Jamie Oliver, who has undertaken a war against the fast
food industry: “Basically, we’re taking a product that would be sold in the
cheapest way for dogs, and after this process, is being given to human beings.”
Besides the low
quality of the meat, the ammonium hydroxide is harmful to health. Oliver calls
it “the pink slime process”.’
This story makes a
good pair with the one above, and much as I have been known to rail against the
man he does good stuff.
