Wal-Mart has just announced that it's moving into India, partnering with Indian telecoms giant Bharti Enterprises. The Financial Times today reports that

Allowing in Wal-Mart through the back door will test the government's determination to open the economy. By some
estimates, the Indian retail sector is worth $250bn, roughly a third of India's entire gross domestic product.
With sales of more than $312bn last year, Wal-Mart benefits from massive scale economies and an ability to procure
globally, squeezing suppliers.
Indian "mom and pop" stores, by contrast, tend to be below 50 sq ft in size, run from stalls and mobile handcarts ... read more »

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Ch. 8. Supermarkets | India | supermarkets | Wal-mart

Posted on 28 November, 2006 - 17:08

The BBC, quite rightly, asks "Are fast foods really any worse for us than posher alternatives?". Comparing similar meals at KFC and Nando's, Domino's and Pizza Express, and McDonald's and Ed's Diner, the second, more upmarket chain comes in more expensive, and wiht more calories. So why is it that the cheaper option gets a bad rap? ... read more »

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Posted on 28 November, 2006 - 06:16

The Guardian carries a story on the attempts by the British telecommunications regulator, Ofcom, to ban the advertising of junk food to children. How do they administer the ban?

if the proportion of the audience under 16 is more than 20% higher than the proportion of under-16s in the UK population as a whole, the programme is defined as one which attracts a significantly higher than average proportion of viewers in that age group.

And for such programmes, the advertising of foods high in fat, sugar, and salt (HFSS) is prohibited. It's a smart move. For every $1 spent on promoting healthy food, $500 is spent on junk food - and the desirability of junk food explains, in no small part, the increasing rates of childhood obesity, as Marion Nestle has argued in the New England Journal of Medicine. ... read more »

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Posted on 28 November, 2006 - 05:52

The Hindu carries a report today in which Maharashtra's Chief Minister, Vilasrao Deshmukh, comes to the same conclusion as Stuffed and Starved: Farmers' suicides happen all over the world.

But that's where the similarity ends. For Deshmukh

"The goal is to fully rehabilitate the farmer," Deshmukh said adding the state government was striving hard to ensure that farmers get the market price for their land and employment to a family member.

Suicide is a crime in India and, even if dead, the farmer is a criminal. 'Rehabilitation' for the dead farmer means that the (usually-male) farmer's family gets paid, and then sent to the city. Or to one of a humber of 'special economic zones' - of which the state of Maharashtra has the highest number in the country. From the field to the maquiladora, from the devil to the deep blue sea. There's little chance that the Minister could concieve of rural change owned and driven by rural people, and with income redistribution concomitant with that. But then this kind of myopia is also, sadly, global. ... read more »

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Posted on 28 November, 2006 - 03:25

Joel Bleifuss, investigative journalist extraordinaire, has a fine article up at In These Times dealing with the the real source of the E.Coli contamination. Yes, we know it comes from poo, but quite how did we end up eating so much shit? Bleifuss nails it with customary precision:

where others see a mountain of E-coli 157 contaminated, factory farm cow shit, the sludge industry—which lobbies under the National Biosolids Partnership (a joint venture of the National Association of Clean Water Agencies, the Water Environment Federation and EPA)—sees opportunity: Tons upon tons of cattle feces waiting to be processed. ... read more »

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Posted on 27 November, 2006 - 07:29

The BBC informs us that among the many services immigrants are offered when they come to the US, is a

state-funded programme to improve the nutrition of refugees who are being re-settled in the land of plenty.

"First we are most concerned about whether they will understand how to eat American food," says Shana Willis, with the non-profit refugee resettlement agency Heartland, one of the project co-ordinators.

"They did not only not understand how to eat American food, but they went immediately to the junk food and it was then that we realised, this is going to have a much more important impact than we anticipated." ... read more »

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Posted on 26 November, 2006 - 21:42