How do you fight obesity, food import dependence, global warming and food price inflation, while eating great Japanese food? Live in Japan!

Here's a public service announcement from the world's largest importer of food which ends with a "why can't consumers, producers and the food industry all get along - after all we're all Japanese?" message which ignores the reason we're in this mess at the moment. But the video nonetheless pushes the question - what's your ministry of agriculture doing to join the dots between hunger, obesity and the globalisation of food? [Via DD]

Raj's blog | 24 comments

Posted on 19 January, 2009 - 18:27

An early-era Monty Python sketch has a scene in a bed shop in which all the staff are perfectly normal, but for the fact that you need to divide what they say by ten, or multiply it by two, or not say the word 'mattress'.

And today, as often before, reality has matched the Pythons .

From the open-access journal PLoS Medicine comes an article showing that industry-supported soft-drink science is nearly eight times more likely to conclude that its sponsor's product are beneficial compared to independently funded studies. ... read more »

Raj's blog | 1 comment

Posted on 9 January, 2007 - 18:12

The Meatrix turned over 10 million people on to the dangers of industrial agriculture. Even if its final message ('buy organic') didn't quite get to the heart of the trouble with the food system today, it was vastly entertaining, and a great Food System 101 course in just over two minutes.

Now, they've released not only The Meatrix 2:Revolting but, below, The Meatrix 2½. ... read more »

Raj's blog | 1 comment

Posted on 30 November, 2006 - 22:57

In China, a supermarket has introduced a brand new, whizzbang up to the minute supermarket format – one in which shoppers sit in an electric rollercoaster car and are whizzed around the store, slowing to pluck goodies from the aisles.

As the commentator notes at the end of this wee clip, the only disadvantage is that if you miss something, you’ll need to do the whole thing all over again. ... read more »

Raj's blog | 2 comments

Posted on 30 November, 2006 - 22:17

What do you get when you put together Fox News, the titan of mass media mendacity, with Monsanto’s truth-bending talent?

Here's a clip from the award-winning documentary by Mark Achbar, Jennifer Abbott and Joel Bakan - The Corporation. It's a worrying tale of the suppression of information around Monsanto's hormone products, most commonly found in US milk. ... read more »

Raj's blog | 2 comments

Posted on 30 November, 2006 - 02:06