If your moral sense needs some baffling, consider this video posted by someone showcasing their “random act of kindness” in which they share food with a homeless person. Considering all the other things people do to attract attention, this is a commendable act. But to take this at face value, well …
I haven’t written many posts lately … I have been traveling. Here is a nice quote I found recently:
Every increased possession loads us with new weariness.
- John Ruskin
I have always wondered about how and why we develop preferences and aversions to different foods. Chili pepper is a particularly interesting case. When I was a little kid I was puzzled why my father would eat food that caused pain. It just didn’t make sense. Now I am 31 and a lover of hot foods. How did this happen? Just taking a peek at the literature on this subject, I have come across a few fun articles. Anyone looking to come up with a name for their new recipe of super-hot chili sauce should adapt some of the jargon they use. Here are some quotes:
Rosin and Schiller (1980): Chili eaters “like the same burning sensation that deters animals … there is a clear hedonic shift”.
I really enjoyed the first sentence of their article:
“The majority of adults in the word ingest, every day, at least one innately rejected substance.”
If you want to read something less psychological and more biological, check out “Vanilloid (Capsaicin) Receptors and Mechanisms” by Szallasi and Blumberg (1999). This piece delves into the pharmacology of Capsaicin, the active chemical in spicy foods. It also contains some background on the natural history and varied uses of chili. Paradoxically, capsaicin can be used an anesthetic. Exposure to capsaicin in turn desensitizes one to other pain sensitivity. Chinese emperors put this property to a cringe-inducing use long ago.
“eunuchs serving the Chinese Emperors were castrated after their scrotums had been repeatedly rubbed with hot pepper extracts”
I wonder if anyone has thought about reconstructing the recipe they were using, and marketing it? Hmmm …
Anyone who knows a farmer can tell you they loathe to talk about good economic conditions. This is understandable. So any information about rising farm incomes might be scarce, but it is worth knowing about. In this vein, I wonder if rising food prices might not be helping some of the poorest folks on earth: rural farmers. The increasing price of basic food commodities is indeed a problem for poor urban households, but are there any advantages for poorer rural households, who could receive increased income for their agricultural work? Most of the world’s poor live in rural areas, and are agricultural producers. In places like Tanzania and Uganda, the majority of the population lives in rural areas, and depends upon subsistence agriculture and the selling of their surplus production on the market. In Tanzania, agriculture “is the economy’s lead sector, accounting for 45 percent of GDP and about 60 percent of export earnings” (UN Draft Country Programme, Tanzania, 2007-2010). Moses Byaruhanga, a special adviser to the president of Uganda, reports that “increased prices are good for the Ugandan manufacturer and farmer.” (allAfrica.com) Lower worldwide food prices limit the ability of African farmers to export their crops, so increased worldwide prices will lead to an opening of additional export markets, and a boost to this most critical economic sector of these economies. In the “The End of Cheap Food” The Economist published a piece that (surprise) heavily criticizes governmental intervention, but also reports some important facts about global food prices, and discuss some of the social benefits and economic opportunities that increases might bring.
Here is a well written, alarming article in the NYT that addresses the varied causes and consequences of a global rise in food prices, seen from Haiti, Egypt, Niger and elsewhere. The multifaceted role of the UN in this crisis is quite interesting: in Haiti they help feed the hungry and yet also protect a leader who seems unable or unwilling to adequately feed his people.
I have been searching for information on the causes and consequences of the current rise in the world prices of food. I got sidetracked, exploring the website of the UN World Food Programme (WFP). They provocatively describe their work as a “battle against humanity’s oldest enemy”. I have focused on learning about the UN World Food Programme via its Country Plan for Tanzania, a country I know and love.
The UN World Food Programme:
has 10,587 employees on contract
Expended $2.9 Billion in 2006, all provided by donation by states, organizations, and individuals. Plans are to expend $40 million in Tanzania between 2007 and 2010, providing about 70,000 metric tons of food.
In their country program for Tanzania, the WFP describes “school feeding” operations, in which food is supplied to schools and students. School feeding appears to have contributed to drastic increases — up to 40% — in school attendance in some areas. This is a fantastic result. But someone please add milk and cookies to the menu!
“WFP will provide a daily individual ration of a morning drink made from blended food, such as corn-soya blend (CSB), and a cooked meal of cereal, pulses and vegetable oil.”
It came as news to me that the World Food Programme engages in food-for-work exchanges. In their guide for Tanzania, these activites are described as follows:
“Beneficiaries will receive food rations as an incentive to participate in asset creation activities during the lean period when food access is poor and commodity prices are high. Food aid will also encourage beneficiaries to participate in training modules. Family take-home rations of maize, pulses and vegetable oil will be provided according to the number of workdays completed by each beneficiary and the nature of activities performed”
In Tanzania, between 2007 and 2010, the WFP will put just over $7 million (about 20% of their country budget) into food-for-work operations. Most of the food payments are meant to pay for the construction of public goods, such as irrigation canals, roads, water lines, and terracing. The fact that food is used as payment for work by the UN leads to all sorts of interesting questions. Why not pay for the labor directly, using the cash that donors originally provide? Do ration payments improve nutrition more effectively than direct cash payments? Does a market for reselling rations exist?
It is well worth checking out the UN World Food Programmes site, so that you might help fight hunger, or are just curious what “filling the cup” is all about.
An article by Knafo et al. published in Genes, Brain, and Behavior
(Genes Brain Behav. 2008 Apr;7(3):266-75. Epub 2007 Aug 13.
)
This paper examines genetic correlates to more altruistic play during the famous economic experiment known as the Dictator Game. The study finds a positive association between the length of the vasopressin receptor gene AVPR1a RS3 and altruistic play. So, sharing behavior is under some genetic influence. But how much of the behavioral variance is explained by genotype?
Lots of irony and misfortune in this story. A mother and her child steal food from the *Free Will Baptist Church* and then are arrested. I wonder if churches and other charitable institutions face a greater or lesser threat of theft than private institutions? I could imagine moral arguments running both ways in the mind of a thief.
Here is a somewhat older news release that describes the work of archaeologist Timothy Jones, who has sought to document the amount of food that is produced within the US that ends up being discarded rather than eaten. His estimate — that up to 40% of the food is discarded — seems quite high.
For the last eight years, Jones has spearheaded a government-financed study that has documented how more than 40 percent of food grown in the United States is lost or thrown away - at a cost of at least $100 billion annually to the economy and over-taxing the soil and environment.
Here is a fascinating story about Buddhist monks in Myanmar, who hold their “begging bowls” or “alms bowls” upside-down, refusing to receive contributions from the military. An example of the rich meanings — spiritual and practical — of begging for Buddhist practitioners.