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This post from Nate Silver’s new Five Thirty Eight caught me eye. Researchers observed that many cartoon characters appearing on cereal boxes are looking down, which means they could be trying to make eye contact with kids. Could this matter? Of the 86 characters that appeared on 65 boxes, the researchers noted that 57 were looking downward (they found that these cereals tended to be placed on…

On Getting Near the Center of the Bullseye

Quickly and With Some Degree of Confidence This essay has moved to a new home at FAFDL.org.  

This week’s must read comes from Susan Freinkel writing for FERN in The Nation on long term research into the impact of pesticides on the children of farm workers in California: When Eskenazi and Bradman began visiting the valley, they were met with some wariness. Growers feared they had an anti-pesticide agenda, and farmworkers worried they could lose their jobs if they agreed to participate.…

Improved small ruminant value chains in Ethiopia focus of new Livestock and Fish project

#Organic #Farmers Face Their Own Version of Baumol's Disease #foodecon #agchat

Nathanael Johnson’s recent interview with veteran organic farmer Tom Willey made about a dozen great points and raised about a dozen vexing issues. I’d like to look at just one of them. In the interview, Willey is outlines two problems with one solution. One of those problems is going to get more difficult for organic producers over time. Willey says: [On the value of farmer’s labor] Because we…

Last Week I Went to a March

Last Week I Went to a March.via Last Week I Went to a March.

In an effort to address the naivete and sentimentality that people have about agriculture, we continue our look at contemporary selective breeding. After looking at the state of the art of dairy cow breeding, I thought we’d take a look at some recent articles about the state of the art in non-GMO plant breeding. In Scientific American, Ferris Jabr takes a long and careful look at a new breed of…

Ed Yong has a fascinating post about a new evolutionary biology study on cow milk and the differences for male and female offspring. If you are interested in animal husbandry and/or evolutionary biology it’s an interesting read especially if you follow through with the links, especially this one. For the purposes of this blog, I’d like to underline something that Ed’s post alludes to but doesn’t…

Marion Nestle flags a chart from the USDA’s Economic Research Service: Measured against the Dietary Guidelines recommendations, two recent ERS studies find that consumers are underspending on vegetables, fruit, whole grains, and low-fat dairy and overspending on refined grains, fats, sweets, and convenience foods in the grocery store. Food choices when eating away from home are even more of a…

DAILY ESSENTIALS | 19 SEPTEMBER 2013

HOW TO EAT ON NATIONAL TALK LIKE A PIRATE DAY Jesse Rhodes | Food and Think | Smithsonian From a food standpoint, a pirate’s life was problematic. Being at sea and without easy access to major seaports meant that there was rarely a steady supply of food and hunger was a regular aspect of day-to-day living. Much of their lives were spent on board a ship, and perpetually damp conditions put normal…

The Kids Aren't Alright... with Michelle Obama's #schoollunch

… with Michelle Obama’s school lunches. There were three big problems with the well intentioned overhaul of the nutrition standards of the federal school lunch program. Inadequate funding, insufficient planning for implementation and a boneheaded decision to put caps on total calories. You can see all three on display as kids tweet their displeasure and disgust at their school lunches at the…

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A recent discussion I had brought to mind this post from SciAm’s Food Matters blog on the low numbers of African American organic farmers and efforts to increase those numbers:

Despite contributions made by African Americans, the most recent Census of Agriculture found that of the 2.2 million farms in the United States, 83 percent have white males as principal operators; African Americans…

The Ethics of the Séralini Retraction and When and Why Charges of Conflict of Interest Are Valid

Writing for the Hasting Center’s Bioethic Forum blog, Adriane Fugh-Berman and Thomas G. Sherman ask some tough questions regarding the Séralini retraction.

According to SpinWatch, a European muckraking organization, 11 of the authors of letters to the editor slamming Séralini’s study had undisclosed financial relationships with Monsanto. In 2013, Paul Christou, the editor of Transgenic Research,…

Incentivizing Work in #SNAP with #Vegetables

Louise Putnam | Missouri State Archives

Against the backdrop of the foolish pearl clutching that has greeted the CBO report that shows Obamacare will give people the freedom to choose to work less, I stumbled across a piece by Reihan Salamon Representatives Nikki Tsongas (D-MA) and Tom Petri’s (R-WI) push for a commission to improve co-coordination between federal and state anti-poverty programs.…