Felix Salmon gives the case for not donating money to Japan: In the specific case of Japan, there’s all the more reason not to donate money. Japan is a wealthy country which is responding to the disaster, among other things, by printing hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of new money. Money is not the bottleneck Read More
James McWilliams is spouting nonsense again. In an earlier piece, McWilliams makes the argument that no matter how meat is raised, eating it is bad – essentially, we should all be vegan. Only, McWilliams dances around his veganism and never unequivocally cops to it. Apparently, being vegan in no way makes you biased and perhaps Read More
In his piece for the Root, McWhorter argues that food access is not really a problem, and that it is not related with obesity levels. He gets many things very, very wrong.
It took a lame duck session and some nasty compromises to do it, but the House finally passed S. 3307, the Child Nutrition Reauthorization bill, which is aimed at feeding more children in school (and making that food more nutritious). The Senate version differs significantly from the (better) House version of the bill (comparison Read More
The USDA’s Economic Research Service put out its latest figures for food insecurity hunger in the U.S. yesterday. From the press release: In more than a third of those households that reported difficulty in providing enough food, at least one member did not get enough to eat at some time during the year and normal Read More
Apologies for the lateness of the recap- I had to watch this one again. This episode begins to hit the crescendo of the story arc for the whole season: Don’s self destruction. The real world keeps intervening on the neat little life he constructed. Anna dies. His assumed identity costs SCDP a major client, at Read More
New York City has asked the USDA if it can ban the purchase of soda for people participating in SNAP (the Supplementary Nutrition Assistance Program, better known as food stamps). Here’s an editorial by Thomas Farley and Richard F. Daines, the New York City and New York state health commissioners, respectively (emphasis added): This policy Read More
In my little (and decidedly liberal) corner of the blogosphere, it has now become inappropriate to use the word “illegal” when referring to immigrants. Colorlines, one of my favorite PB-based blog discoveries, has launched a site called “Drop the I-Word.” From the site: How is the I-Word inaccurate – isn’t some illegal action happening here? Read More
SNAP (food stamp) participation at an all time high. Slightly better, yet still outrageous, are global hunger numbers. People, in case you haven’t noticed, are hungry. My day job deals with food policy (and hunger). I’ve subjected almost everyone I know (and if I haven’t, your turn is coming) to my rants about food and the Read More
On Twitter, PB’s Blackink called out this essay on why black people don’t tip. G.D. and I argued over how much of the piece is tongue-in-cheek (maybe I’m just hoping most of it is it is), but here’s some poorly written armchair psychology as to why: And that’s the problem. Like it or not, as Read More
