Over the next couple of months, you'll be seeing some changes here at Stuffed and Starved. I'm going to be writing not only about food but about other stuff too, as I once used to at my old blog Class Worrier, where my tastes ran from science fiction movies to an occasional series entitled "We're All Going to Die" to, yes, food.

I'll also be migrating this blog over to my personal website at RajPatel.org and learning to tweet -- more on that in the near future.

For now, though, things will continue to be relatively quiet here - I'm coming to the end of the next book, and doing some research on the Gates Foundation's work in Africa, but it all looks like it'll be over by the end of July. ... read more »

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Posted on 27 June, 2009 - 06:33

The French philosopher Michel Foucault is often quoted as saying "My point is not that everything is bad, but that everything is dangerous, which is not exactly the same as bad." His critics accused him of ethical paralysis, where nothing could be done, for fear of danger. Foucault's response was this: "everything is not equally dangerous."

Of course, the trick is to know which things are more dangerous than others. And, in the food world, new information on the dangers of food comes thick and fast. Not all of it is reliable, of course. But a good source is the University of California, San Francisco, where Robert Lustig recently announced that fructose was a poison. ... read more »

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Posted on 27 June, 2009 - 06:16

I finally got to see The Anthropologists' Give Us Bread on Thursday. On paper, a project to write a play about the 1917 food riots in New York City has the potential to become painfully earnest and preachy. It would almost certainly end up that way if I were to try my hand at playwriting, and it's best for everyone that I don't start.

Luckily, the women behind this particular play have talent in spades. It's gripping pretty much from the start, with fantastic characters, subtle acting, and a plot that grips you from the first scene and never insults your intelligence. ... read more »

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Posted on 13 June, 2009 - 22:36

Some good news from South Africa, the pesticide industry's beachhead on the continent. In 2000, Biowatch a South African public interest NGO applied for information about the government's regulation of biotechnology. The government dragged its feet. So Biowatch sued the government. Monsanto piled in on the government's side to prevent access to the information. In court, the government lost. But Biowatch was told to pay costs.

Last week, after appeal to South Africa's Constitutional Court, that decision was overturned. Full press release below the fold. ... read more »

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Posted on 10 June, 2009 - 16:48

Yay! I think I just broke the back of the new book. Watch this space for more on that front. But now that I've a draft that I'm reasonably happy with, I can return to more posting here, more activism, and a little bit more going outside than I've managed this year.

With that in mind, I've two events coming up over the next couple of days. If you're in New York and are interested in the food riots that happened there in 1917, I'll be talking tomorrow after a performance in Downtown Manhattan of Give Us Bread. I've written about this project before, and I continue to think it's terrific. Do support them if you can, and if you're free tomorrow night, do come along. Tickets here. ... read more »

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Posted on 10 June, 2009 - 16:08

One of my oldest friends, Sasha Abramsky, has turned his incredible journalistic eye away from the prison-industrial-complex (on which he has written many fine books), to looking at the food system. The fruits of his labours will soon be available, and Breadline USA is well worth the read. ... read more »

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Posted on 29 May, 2009 - 08:07

Previously at Stuffed and Starved, we've had posts with names like Let them Eat Rats and Let them Eat Mud. Today, it's Let them Eat Cash - the title of Fred Kaufman's fine new Harpers article on the Gates Foundation's answer to the problems of hunger in Africa.

The article is only available to subscribers, but highly recommended, not least for this splendid exchange where Fred - in a first I think for any journalist - actually manages to call Bill Gates on his shit. ... read more »

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Posted on 22 May, 2009 - 18:14

I'm very much looking forward to seeing the new film by Steve McQueen (no, this Steve McQueen) about hunger-striking IRA prisoners, entitled Hunger. I'll write about that when I've seen it, but in the meantime, here's another film, La Faim - 'hunger' in French - that remixes ideas of hunger, gluttony, desire and fear. It's an entirely captivating eleven minutes long, and one of first 1970s stabs at computer animation.

... read more »

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Posted on 17 May, 2009 - 15:28