Junk for junk?

I really do think the BBC Food Programme is about the best of the food podcasts.  I particularly enjoyed a recent episode on "free from" foods http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01dhcg2 which presented what I found to be a balanced approach to food allergies and intolerances and the food industry's response.

Some of the things I noted:
There is a difference between allergy and intolerance.  I recall trying to explain to someone years back the difference between a dairy allergy and lactose intolerance, but the distinction applies to many more foods - not just milk and wheat.

There's a lot of self-diagnosis, often because GPs are ignorant of dietary issues - but that doesn't mean that self-diagnosis is always correct or helpful.

There are many reasons for increases in food allergies and intolerances.   With globalization of the food supply and the migration and mobility of people, most of us eat a much greater variety of foods that our parents and grandparents did, and source our diets from greater distances.  Our environments are too clean, and at the same time filled with 10s of thousands of human made chemicals.   Some food additives have introduced populations to ingredients from foods with high incidences of sensitivity - like protein from lupines.

And what about the anti-gluten mania?   The percentage of folks with celiac disease remains constant, but gluten intolerance or sensitivity may be increasing simply because there is more of it our diets.   When I was a child, for example, spaghetti or macaroni and cheese was an occasional food.   Now many people eat pasta several times a week or more.   The wheats used to make industrial bread are higher in gluten.   And wheat is just more common in our diets.   We know that with global urbanization portable foods where bread is central - the sandwich and its variants - are ubiquitous.

The "free from" foods in our markets are, for the most part, highly processed foods.   I'm not talking about the silliness of labeling foods like olive oil "gluten free".   I'm talking about the gluten free cookies, "breaded" frozen foods, alternative milks with a long string of ingredients, etc.  So a question that remains is are we substituting one highly processed food for another, rather than getting back to simpler, whole foods, or home prepared alternatives?

How much do food issues contribute to violence?

I began reading The Big Thirst a couple of days ago, and was startled by a statistic about how many Syrian grain farmers walked away from their land and losses in 2010 after several years of extreme drought.

Now I must confess that I get tired of listening to news from the Middle East.  It seems that whenever I set my clock radio for, when it comes on NPR is reporting on the Middle East.   So sometimes I don't really listen...

I did a little searching and learned that after those years of drought, unusually heavy rains wiped out a chunk of the 2011 crop.  Meanwhile, many who left the land have fled to the urban areas around Damascus, while hungry refugees from Iraq also streamed into the country.

It seems to me that hunger and despair are surely helping to fuel the strife in Syria.   I'm not saying that their political leaders aren't despots, only that a hungry, displaced population must be contributing to the situation.

Now reactions to the civil war (are we calling it that yet?  sure sounds like we should) have caused the EU to stop importing Syrian oil.   So, less money to buy grain from other countries.   And even if they could buy enough, would it get to the hungry?

What a tangled mess.   And nevermind the feedback loop - that anthropogenic climate change from burning all that oil may have contributed to the climate extremes causing the staple food shortages.

I'm just thinking that sometimes we may need to look to the basics of human life - like our food system - to understand the factors contributing to political strife.   And I wonder why such things don't make the news a little more often.   I might wake up and listen.

Sometimes it isn't helpful to be a critical thinker when listening to the news.

This story on NPR ruined my breakfast:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129456485

Of course it is news that Russian fires and droughts are driving up wheat prices, but the story left me with far too many questions. Here are some of them.

Why, if we have record wheat crops in the U.S. this year, are the prices of goods containing wheat going up?

Why are we subsidizing a crop so that agribusiness speculators can profit from it?

And what about making half a million in a good year on a subsidized commodity?

How is urbanization, which increases the demand for wheat (people in cities all over the world are no longer close to supplies of local staples and traditional cultural foods, and tend to eat more bread) contributing to escalating wheat prices?

How is global warming affecting wheat production? to what extent might it have contributed to the poor year for Russian wheat? (or for that matter, the good year in Colorado?)

And what is driving up those fertilizer prices? Might it just be the upward trend in petroleum prices as the quantity and quality of oil decline (peak oil)?

Is it moral to speculate on a crop while more than one billion people on the planet go hungry?
What did Jesus say about bigger barns?