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Monkey Monday: news and upcoming awesomeness 14 September 2009 3:46 pm

Posted by Tracy in : agriculture,events,fangirl,geekery,local food,Marion Nestle,news,nyc,politics,school , 2 comments

Holy cats, readers. I take a little break from class readings to check the news, and find out that Norman Borlaug is dead. Cue big hot flashbacks to my UO sustainable agriculture class, two and a half years ago. If you don’t know his name, maybe you’ve heard of a little agricultural transformation called the Green Revolution? The Nobel Peace Prize? You get the idea. End of an era and all that. I find myself wanting to reread Warren Belasco’s Meals to Come: A History of the Future of Food but long story short, if you believe that the solution to world hunger is baking a bigger pie, then thank Norman Borlaug for providing extra flour for the crust. For what it’s worth, Borlaug was also a fan of the “fewer place settings” approach to solving hunger, but was much less successful in arguing for population control. Me, I still hold out hope for teaching everybody better table manners, and yes, I’m paraphrasing Belasco wildly here, and wish I had a copy of his book handy because I’m pretty sure he’d want me to give credit to his sources, too.

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Suddenly I’m not as interested in snarking about Michael Pollan’s “big food versus big health” fantasy New York Times op-ed. Suffice it to say I think the diet industry would be the real winner in that fight. And speaking of dieting, I have more than a few bones to pick with the cover of this week’s New York Times magazine. Stay classy, guys. Especially since freaking Newsweek is all over how B.S. like that is the real public health problem. Gah. And that’s without getting into the NYT Mag article that goes with that cover. Seriously what now? (more…)