Consumption – Page 2 – Food (Policy) For Thought

October 31, 2015October 31, 2015

The Meat-Cancer Link In the Media

I’m sure you’ve heard. On Monday, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), part of the World Health Organization, published a heavy anticipated report categorizing the consumption of processed meat as “carcinogenic to humans” (Group 1) on the basis of sufficient evidence for colorectal cancer. Additionally, the consumption of red meat was classified as “probably carcinogenic to humans” (Group 2A). … Continue reading The Meat-Cancer Link In the Media

October 24, 2015October 31, 2015

Global Meat Consumption – The Visual

I’ve been playing around a bit with Tableau, a data visualization tool that is seriously so much fun! It has great interactivity too, so feel free to play around with it! Embedded on this site! The future is now! Basically, this shows meat consumption data that I downloaded from the OECD by country and region … Continue reading Global Meat Consumption – The Visual

October 22, 2015October 31, 2015

Please Don’t Stop the Moo-sic: Is Less Meat Still No Option?

As we are approaching our hottest year yet and historical climate talks, meat-free diets are still a political taboo. Even the official sustainable menu of COP21 has eschewed opening this Pandora’s box. Yet, animal agriculture is one of the greatest contributors to global warming and resource overuse. How long can we keep up the pretense? An … Continue reading Please Don’t Stop the Moo-sic: Is Less Meat Still No Option?

October 6, 2015October 31, 2015

Food: Wasted, Celebrated, Fought Over. A Cross-Section.

For cultures of the past facing the vagaries of an unpredictable environment, wastefulness was often dangerous. It invited death. Modernization has largely enabled us to turn our backs on that mindset. We’ve created a decentralized waste machine, easy to overlook at the local scale, but devastating from a larger perspective. Starvation may seem impossible when … Continue reading Food: Wasted, Celebrated, Fought Over. A Cross-Section.

October 4, 2015October 31, 2015

Urban Gardens and Lifestyle Choices

Aaand… back to regular scheduled programming. The past month has been pretty overwhelming with writing assignments, seminars, cross-Atlantic flights and the like. Now I’m back in my Costa Rican garden and a somewhat more relaxed schedule, and have so much to talk about up my sleeve! Thanks for the patience. As a group, the Mercator … Continue reading Urban Gardens and Lifestyle Choices

July 23, 2015

Hey Mon, What's Up with Jamaican Coffee?

Coffee is known to have some of the most volatile prices of any agricultural commodity. The crux of agricultural markets is this: There is always an imbalance of supply and demand. If supply is smaller than demand, prices soar. This animates more producers to plant the crop in the following year to reap high earnings. … Continue reading Hey Mon, What's Up with Jamaican Coffee?

July 20, 2015

State-Sponsored Food Security: The Cuban Case. Does It Work?

I peek around the corner of the grocery store. Well, I guess ‘store’ is a misnomer – distribution point, maybe? I am shy at first because I am wary of being an obnoxious foreigner, treating Havana as an open-air museum full of entertaining quirks that actually make up Cubans’ reality. But the clerk waves me … Continue reading State-Sponsored Food Security: The Cuban Case. Does It Work?