MORNING DISPATCH 9/5/08: McCain vs. Pharma, Science vs. Cancer Claim, plus Smoking, Shots, and Obesity
This piece first appeared on September 8, 2008 in the New York Post:
If the city Health Department gets its way, government officials -- local, state and federal -- will soon be deciding what you can and can't eat.
Over the past four days, I have described the world food crisis -- and both obstacles to and hopes for coping with it through existing institutions -- and I mentioned that misplaced romanticism often affects these important decisions.
As I suggested in my previous three blog entries this week, as the need for global agricultural expansion continues, Africa is going to be the obvious place where others will seek for food security or that donors will see the obvious potential for food production expansion.
New York, NY -- August 27, 2008. Nuclear energy is the cleanest source of electrical power available today, according to an analysis by scientists associated with the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH). Their main points are summarized in the brochure Nuclear Energy and Health: What's the Story?
Over the past two days, I reviewed reasons for optimism and pessimism about food production. Today, let's take a closer look at how promising technological solutions to the current crisis must be tailored to the geographic regions that might benefit.
In spite of the unimaginable global transformations described in my blog post yesterday, per capita food production and consumption in many parts of Africa has actually declined. Unless there is a massive infusion of aid (from the Gates Foundation and others) for seeds, fertilizer, and infrastructure, the situation could get worse, since in many regions of Africa, farmers are taking more nutrients out of the soil than they are returning. They are mining the soil and destroying its structure.
In describing the current world food situation, let me first give the good news: the long-term transformations that have brought us to the present.
A few interesting nutrition-related items brought to our attention this summer:
As the Olympics began, the group Consumer Freedom noted some amusing differences between champion swimmer Michael Phelps -- a voracious living proof of the calories in/calories out equation for weight maintenance -- and head food nanny Michael Jacobson of the perennially worried Center for Science in the Public Interest.
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