Corn-Fed Redhead Bussin Dollar Tree Dinners...,

zerohedge  |  With rising inflation putting pressure on household finances, some low-income Americans have turned to "Dollar Tree Dinners" as their meal of choice.

Rebecca Chobat's TikTok videos have garnered the interest of budget-conscious shoppers, particularly as food inflation continues to persist at its highest level in four decades. Through her videos, which reach an audience of 742.5k followers, she explains how to make meals using products from the discount retailer with a weekly budget of $35.

Chobat has published numerous videos showcasing "unique recipes and cooking ideas from the Dollar Tree." Some of her video titles include "Dollar Tree Gumbo" and "Dollar Tree Beef Pot Pie." 

Although consumers can save money by consuming Dollar Store meals, there are some negative aspects to consider: 

The Institute for Local Self-Reliance recently published a report expressing worry about the absence of fresh produce in discount stores. Most food sold at Dollar Tree contains highly-caloric and heavily-processed items, which are not considered nutritious options.

However, due to negative real wage growth taking a toll on household finances, some individuals have no alternative but to turn to Dollar Stores for food. For some, even Walmart has become too expensive. 

Since the 2008 financial crisis, there's been an explosion of Dollar General, Dollar Tree, and Family Dollar stores nationwide as the vast majority of folks are getting poorer. All three discount retailers operate 34,000 stores nationwide and are set to open thousands more in the coming years. 

Chobat told Bussiness Insider these videos are having a real impact on people saving money in these challenging times. 

"I get those messages fairly frequently but that one really struck home for me," she said. 

Regularly consuming food from discount stores could lead to health issues in the future. Therefore, it is imperative to revitalize local economies and supermarkets to promote the availability of fresh food products.

 

Is It The Food That's Causing Digestive Traffic Jams?

mashable |  In the last few years, corporations have been trying to capitalize on Pride month — usually by adorning rainbow logos and releasing rainbow merchandise. This year, however, Pride campaigns are cranking up the sexual innuendo (all while conservatives are calling us "groomers," but I digress). Burger King Austria, for example, released their "Pride Whopper" featuring burgers with either two "top" buns or two "bottom" buns.

How did we go from delivering dinner to anal sex??

— Love Right (@Blacktallbig) June 9, 2022

Food delivery app Postmates is now taking it a step further with Eat With Pride, a first-ever "bottom-friendly" menu. 

“Bottoming” pic.twitter.com/BM4TNJaUic

— Soya (@Soya112233) June 9, 2022

Postmates partnered with anal surgeon and sexual health and wellness expert Dr. Evan Goldstein to develop a menu for those who want to be penetrated during anal sex without mess.

"If you're a top, it seems like you can eat whatever you want," says the ad narrator, comedian Rob Anderson. "But if you're a bottom, you're expected to starve? Not this Pride!" The tops are portrayed as eggplants and bottoms as peaches, of course.

👋 pic.twitter.com/kH5xejvs3T

— GuessWho (@AmicaIncongnita) June 9, 2022

The ad goes on to list some foods that a bottom should avoid in the day before sex — like whole grains, cauliflower, and legumes — that contain insoluble fiber. This means they can't dissolve in water, and are harder to flush out...if you catch my drift. Instead, Postmates and Dr. Goldstein recommend foods with soluble fiber and protein, such as white rice, citrus, and fish, as these digest easily and slowly. The menu will offer "bottom-friendly" dishes from restaurants in New York and Los Angeles.

 

U.S. Elites Haven't Yet Provided Ole'Cornpop An Approved Roadmap For Agriculture

politico |  President Joe Biden needs the help of the powerful farm industry to reach his sky-high climate goals. But his plans for cutting agricultural emissions might not have enough teeth to take a big bite out of global warming.

Biden on Thursday pledged a drastic reduction in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. But the White House hasn’t set any specific targets yet for agriculture, which accounts for 10 percent of all U.S. emissions, according to the EPA. Those discharges mostly stem from fertilizers, livestock and manure.

“To be realistic, the administration has to look at cutting some of the existing emissions,” said Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine), who sits on the House Agriculture Committee. “We are going to have to talk about cutting emissions from farms and changing some of the practices.”

The administration has steered clear of discussing stricter environmental regulations that could scare off the largely conservative farm sector, as well as the rural lawmakers that Biden will need to advance many of his environmental goals. Farmers have been slow to wake up to the reality of climate change, though increasingly extreme weather of late has hammered farm country and forced a reckoning.

A summary of Biden’s climate pledge notes that agriculture is both a source of greenhouse gases and potentially a key piece of the solution by capturing and storing heat-trapping carbon dioxide in forests and farmland. Environmental advocates, like the left-leaning Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, say the White House needs to address both sides of that equation to make a dent in global warming.

 

Po Folk Best Behave Themselves If They Want Any Of This Food!!!

theweek  |  Over the last week, just under 1 million people filed for ordinary unemployment benefits, plus another half-million under the special pandemic unemployment program for people who don't ordinarily qualify, a substantial decline from some of the numbers seen since the beginning of the pandemic. At this rate, by mid-September or so, new unemployment claims will be merely as bad as they were during the worst of the Great Recession.

Those unemployment benefits, however, because this country has systematically stripped and sabotaged its safety net, are extremely meager and often nearly impossible to actually get. Hundreds of thousands of private citizens who have lost their jobs are flocking to Reddit for help and advice, as state unemployment bureaucracies are so janky and swamped they often can't deal with the flood of applications.

In the past week, the r/unemployment subreddit has taken a dark turn with the expiration of the CARES Act's super-unemployment and the failure of Republicans to even come to an agreement about what they want in the next round of pandemic relief. It's become a de facto support group for people whose lives are collapsing around them for simple lack of income or jobs, and talk of suicide is common.

One wonders: Is America about to see bread protests, or even riots?

People around the country have been testifying how they are down to their last dollar or flat broke, facing eviction or living on the street, unable to afford vital prescriptions or even food. "I've got $18.91 in my bank account this morning. My cupboards are getting low, my dog will have to eat whatever me and my kids eat and my gas light will be back on shortly," wrote one Redditor recently. 

"My car payment was due today and I'm still $200 short, 500 counting last month's. My phone bill is due in a few days. I'm a month behind on the electric bill. I have about $60 to my name, I'm not going to make rent and my [landlords] have already said they will not be giving any allowances," wrote another. "Well I've waited and now my power turns off at the end of today, in a house where my entire family has moved in with me … worst of all I have two toddlers and virtually nowhere to go. 

'Rona and the government have picked off my family one by one and this seems to be the final nail in the coffin," wrote a third.

FOH with Caloric Restriction! Ashy-Assed Betas are Simply Ashy-Assed Betas...,

technologyreview |  My bitterness peaked midway through day four of the “Fast-Mimicking Diet,” when a parent arrived at my daughter’s softball game with doughnuts. As little girls and fellow coaches crowded around the box, I stood apart, glumly sipping out of my special water bottle with its “proprietary” blend of nutrients.

For breakfast, I’d consumed a nut bar the size of a small cracker and a couple of vitamins. Lunch was five olives from Seville.

Frankly, I’d begun to resent Valter Longo, the inventor of Prolon, the five-day, $250 fad diet causing my misery. True, the Italian-born biochemist had seemed perfectly nice when I’d reached him at his office at the University of Southern California’s Longevity Institute a few days before to speak with him about the science behind the diet and what it might do for my general health and longevity. He had patiently explained how the diet would temporarily shift my body into a starvation state that would prompt my cells to consume years of accumulated cellular garbage before unleashing a surge of restorative regeneration. Getting rid of garbage had sounded like just what I needed. But now I blamed him for my predicament. I wanted a doughnut.

My Prolon “meal kit” had arrived in a white cardboard container a little bigger than a shoebox. Inside I’d found a meal program card spelling out the menu, a large empty water bottle emblazoned with the word “Prolon,” and five smaller cardboard boxes, each labeled with a corresponding day. I opened the box for day one, billed as a higher-calorie “transition day,” and was pleasantly surprised. It didn’t look so bad. I’d be sampling many of the diet’s highlights: a small packet of kale crackers, powdered tomato soup blend, algae oil supplements, a bag of olives, herbal tea, and not one but two nut-based bars (albeit distressingly small).

When I opened up day two, however, I began to get a better sense of what I was in for. One of the puny nut bars had been replaced by a glycerin-based “energy” drink, which I was instructed to add water to and sip on throughout the day. There was more herbal tea—hibiscus, mint, and lemon (I don’t even like herbal tea)—plus a couple more powdered-soup packs and two tiny packets of olives. Where was the rest of it?

Food is a Substitute for the Female Body

QZ |  Original recipes in a cozy home kitchen, intimate details about family life and domestic bliss—and painstakingly arranged food that oozes sexual overtones. These are the features of a successful food blog.

Often referred to as “food porn,” the trendy phenomenon highlights the seeming contradiction between femininity and feminism while also allowing women to shape the possibilities for women’s identities in online spaces. In contemporary social culture, women are encouraged to be feminists and pursue professional ambitions while still maintaining their femininity and domesticity. Their chief value in society is to reproduce and feed their families while denying their own appetites. These blogs reflect the digital identities of women who have been required to embody multiple contradictions—and look delectable while doing so.

In the food blogosphere, some of these sexualized conventions include the overabundance of “oozing” food, including runny egg yolks that are captured dribbling over neat vegetable beds, chocolate lava cakes with molten centers that drizzle over porcelain plates, and frosted cakes depicted with glazes dripping down their tall sides. There is also something sexually tinged about many food blogs’ penchant for “cheeky peeks,” a photographic motif that peers inside the hidden layers of elaborately decorated cakes. Examples of this include cakes stuffed with candy, desserts whose batter is painstakingly dyed and assembled to reveal ombre and checkerboard patterns when sliced open, and an array of gravity-defying layer cakes.

Pornographic imagery is built upon women offering their bodies to the male gaze, but food porn recognizes and appreciates the creative and technical skills of the woman behind the camera. In this way, food is used as a substitute for the female body; food bloggers offer intimate domestic details from their kitchens, rather than their bedrooms. Food porn can therefore be seen as a way of recognizing the active and creative capacities of women’s bodies rather than the more passive and objectified positions of traditional erotica.

Bún Thịt Nướng - Bún Bò Xào

theculinarychronicles |  Truth be told, most of my “mom-meal knock offs” aren’t 100% authentic. But that sure isn’t do to lack of trying! She was so quick maneuvering around the kitchen–throwing a little of bit of this and a little bit of that into pans that we could never keep up. Let’s not even begin to get into how she never measured!

So, on one recent weekend, I found myself recreating a meal that we often had growing up– Bún Thịt Nướng or Vietnamese Grilled Pork over Vermicelli Noodles. It’s not a dish that I eat (or more like “order“) often these days but when I do get the chance to enjoy it, I am reminded of how it really is a great depiction of Vietnamese cuisine. An extremely savory and mutli-layered flavor protein, combined with tons of fresh herbs, pickled veggies, cold noodles, various textures, and all enhanced by a spicy nước chấm (dipping sauce). And like many Vietnamese dishes, Bún Thịt Nướng is not difficult to make but it does take some time preparing as there are many steps and components to the dish.

I spend most of the time below describing steps to preparing the pork so if you have any questions, about the condiments in particular, feel free to shoot me an email. Since I was too lazy to pull out the grill, I ended up using my tried and true All-Clad grill pan to cook the pork. It worked fairly nicely but if you want the true authentic flavor, I’d recommend using an outdoor grill with with one of those wire mesh grilling baskets. You can pick one up for really cheap at most Asian grocery stores. You can’t beat the slightly charred flavor produced by cooking it that way. Plus, if you’re ever in Việt Nam, you’ll see that it’s the way my peeps do it.

I was quite pleased with the final dish. The warm grilled meat over the cold veggies and noodles are a perfect pairing–particular for warm summer days.

foodforfour |  This refreshing vermicelli noodles with wok-tossed beef is our family’s favourite during the summer months. Thin juicy slices of beef with beautiful flavours of lemongrass is served on a bed of cold vermicelli noodles, fresh herbs, topped with sprinkles of fried shallot and chopped peanuts, and drenched in fish sauce.

This dish is really easy to make and also very versatile. The vermicelli noodles salad and fish sauce forms the basis of many popular Vietnamese dishes as the beef can be substituted for another type of protein. Other Vietnamese vermicelli noodle dishes are served with pork skewers (bun nem nuong), grilled pork ( bun thit nuong), spring rolls (bun cha gio), sugarcane prawn (bun chao tom) and grilled fish.

The trick to preparing this dish is to prepare all your ingredients before you start to stir fry. Fish sauce dipping sauce can be made the day before to save time.

Nước Chấm

wikipedia |  Nước chấm (Vietnamese: [nɨ́ək tɕə̌m]) is a common name for a variety of Vietnamese "dipping sauces" that are served quite frequently as condiments. It is commonly a sweet, sour, salty, savoury and/or spicy sauce.

Nước mắm pha (mixed fish sauce) is the most well known dipping sauce made from fish sauce. Its simplest recipe is some lime juice, or occasionally vinegar, one part fish sauce (nước mắm), one part sugar and two parts water. Vegetarians create nước chấm chay (vegetarian dipping sauce) or nước tương (soy water) by substituting Maggi seasoning sauce for fish sauce (nước mắm).^{[citation needed]}

To this, people will usually add minced uncooked garlic, chopped or minced Bird's eye chilis, and in some instances, shredded pickled carrot/white radish and green papaya for bún. Otherwise, when having seafood, such as eels, people also serve some slices of lemongrass.

It is often prepared hot on a stove to dissolve the sugar more quickly, then cooled. The flavor can be varied depending on the individual's preference, but it is generally described as pungent and distinct, sweet yet sour, and sometimes spicy.

Nước Mắm

wikipedia |  Fish sauce is an amber-colored liquid extracted from the fermentation of fish with sea salt. It is used as a condiment in various cuisines. Fish sauce is a staple ingredient in numerous cultures in Southeast Asia and the coastal regions of East Asia, and features heavily in Burmese, Cambodian, Filipino, Thai, Lao and Vietnamese cuisines. It also was a major ingredient in ancient European cuisine, but is no longer commonly used in those regions.

In addition to being added to dishes during the cooking process, fish sauce is also used as a base for a dipping condiment and is prepared in many different ways in each country. It is eaten with fish, shrimp, pork, and chicken. In parts of southern China, it is used as an ingredient for soups and casseroles. Fish sauce, and its derivatives, impart an umami flavor to food due to their glutamate content.

looting on the rise as venezuela runs out of food and electricity...,

panampost |  Despair and violence is taking over Venezuela. The economic crisis sweeping the nation means people have to withstand widespread shortages of staple products, medicine, and food.

So when the Maduro administration began rationing electricity this week, leaving entire cities in the dark for up to 4 hours every day, discontent gave way to social unrest.

On April 26, people took to the streets in three Venezuelan states, looting stores to find food.

Maracaibo, in the western state of Zulia, is the epicenter of thefts: on Tuesday alone, Venezuelans raided pharmacies, shopping malls, supermarkets, and even trucks with food in seven different areas of the city.

Although at least nine people were arrested, and 2,000 security officers were deployed in the state, Zulia’s Secretary of Government Giovanny Villalobos asked citizens not to leave their homes. “There are violent people out there that can harm you,” he warned.

In Caracas, the Venezuelan capital, citizens reported looting in at least three areas of the city. Twitter users reported that thefts occurred throughout the night in the industrial zone of La California, Campo Rico, and Buena Vista.

They assured that several locals were robbed and that there were people on the street shouting “we are hungry!”

The same happened in Carabobo, a state in central Venezuela. Through Twitter, a journalist from Valencia reported the looting of a deli.

The crime took place on Tuesday evening amid a wave of protests against prolonged power rationing and outages in multiple parts of the country.

Food for 15 Days 

Supermarkets employees from Valencia told the PanAm Post that besides no longer receiving the same amount of food as before, they must deal with angry Venezuelans who come to the stores only to find out there’s little to buy.

Purchases in supermarkets are rationed through a fingerprint system that does not allow Venezuelans to acquire the same regulated food for two weeks.

hundreds of thousands to lose SNAP benefits...,

cbpp |  Across the country, food banks and other organizations that serve the needy are preparing for long lines as childless adults begin losing SNAP (formerly food stamps) benefits due to the return in over 20 states of a three-month time limit for able-bodied adults.  Federal law limits adults aged 18-49 who aren’t raising minor children to three months of SNAP out of every three years unless they’re working at least 20 hours a week or participating in a job training program at least 20 hours a week.  More than half a million people will lose SNAP over the course of the year due to the time limit.

The time limit is “going to increase hunger among some of the most vulnerable Mississippians,” says Matt Williams of the Mississippi Center for Justice.  “I think it will further stress service providers who are already trying to fill a gap in the available food assistance programs, and I think we will see their resources stretched to the max with increased demand.”  In Mississippi alone, 50,000 people may lose benefits this year due to the time limit, the state estimates.

In New York State, Erica Santiago of the Food Bank for Westchester predicts, “We're not going to run out of food, but it may mean that people get three days’ worth instead of seven days’ worth. . . .  This will also impact people who aren't losing their benefits — there's a trickle down effect.”

Under the time limit, people can lose benefits even if they are looking for and can’t find work, or if no spots are available in a job training program.  The time limit “was based on the assumption that there are work programs to help these people and there are no programs. They cost too much,” Lucy Potter of Greater Hartford Legal Aid in Connecticut says.

The time limit is especially difficult for people with barriers to work, such as limited education and skills.  Most childless adults aren’t eligible for other forms of government assistance, and their incomes while receiving SNAP average less than one-third of the poverty line.

is there such a thing as dietary racism?

prisonplanet |  An article featured in the left-leaning news outlet Mother Jones this week declares the act of eating three meals a day to be racist.

In a piece entitled, “Why You Should Stop Eating Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner,” writer Kiera Butler asserts that strict adherence to mealtimes is not only “anti-science,” but “racist” as well.

“When European settlers got to America, they also imported their meal habits,” Butler says. “They observed that the eating schedule of the native tribes was less rigid—the volume and timing of their eating varied with the seasons.”

“Sometimes, when food was scarce, they fasted. The Europeans took this as ‘evidence that natives were uncivilized…’ So fascinated were Europeans with tribes’ eating patterns… that they actually watched Native Americans eat ‘as a form of entertainment.’”

Butler’s article goes on to chronicle the rising prevalence of meal schedules and their dominance in modern Western culture, insinuating that the tradition’s white European roots make the very practice inherently racist.

“Dogmatic adherence to mealtimes is anti-science, racist, and might actually be making you sick,” Butler writes.

While such absurd claims are often praised by hoards of “social justice warriors” scouring the depths of the Internet, commenters of the article were quick to reject the daft declaration.

“Add ‘eating’ to the list of ‘everything is racist…’” the article’s top comment states.

“I never realized that oatmeal was racist. I feel so ashamed!” another joked.

The obsession by some to label everything as racist is so pervasive that focusing merely on the topic of food can yield countless similar stories.  Fist tap Big Don.

kashrut law

wikipedia |  Kosher foods are those that conform to the regulations of kashrut (Jewish dietary law). Food that may be consumed according to halakha(Jewish law) is termed kosher in English, from the Ashkenazi pronunciation of the Hebrew term kashér (כָּשֵׁר), meaning "fit" (in this context, fit for consumption). Food that is not in accordance with Jewish law is called treif (Yiddish: טרײף or treyf, derived from Hebrew טְרֵפָה trāfáh) meaning "torn."

A list of some kosher foods are found in the books of Leviticus 11:1-47 and Deuteronomy 14: 3-20, as are also certain kosher rules. Reasons for food not being kosher include the presence of ingredients derived from nonkosher animals or from kosher animals that were not slaughtered in a ritually proper manner, a mixture of meat and milk, wine and grape juice (or their derivatives) produced without supervision, the use of produce from Israel that has not been tithed, or the use of non-kosher cooking utensils and machinery. Every law of kashrut, according to all Rabbinic authorities of the ages in a rare agreement, makes the assertion that the laws can be broken when human life is at stake. Among the dozens of sources for the laws of pikuach nefesh (the Jewish term for saving any life) are the multiple discussions in the Talmud, for instance B. Yoma 83a, "We have agreed in the case of saving a soul he may be given [by a doctor in this case] to eat even unclean things, until his eyes are lightened from death".

bugs for slum-dwellers around the world...,

cbcnews | A team of McGill University MBA students has won the $1 million Hult Prize for a project that aims to improve the availability of nutritious food to slum dwellers around the world by providing them with insect-infused flour.

Mohammed Ashour, Shobhita Soor, Jesse Pearlstein, Zev Thompson and Gabe Mott were presented with the social entrepreneurship award and $1 million in seed capital by former U.S. president Bill Clinton in New York City Monday evening at the Clinton Global Initiative’s annual meeting.

The money will help them grow Aspire Food Group, an organization that will produce nutritious insect-based food products that will be accessible year-round to some of the world’s poorest city dwellers.

“We are farming insects and we’re grinding them into a fine powder and then we’re mixing it with locally appropriate flour to create what we call power flour,” Ashour explained to CBC News.

“It is essentially flour that is fortified with protein and iron obtained from locally appropriate insects.” Fist tap Dale.

imf austerity hunger has spaniards foraging in the dumpsters for food...,

NYTimes | On a recent evening, a hip-looking young woman was sorting through a stack of crates outside a fruit and vegetable store here in the working-class neighborhood of Vallecas as it shut down for the night.

At first glance, she looked as if she might be a store employee. But no. The young woman was looking through the day’s trash for her next meal. Already, she had found a dozen aging potatoes she deemed edible and loaded them onto a luggage cart parked nearby. 

“When you don’t have enough money,” she said, declining to give her name, “this is what there is.”

The woman, 33, said that she had once worked at the post office but that her unemployment benefits had run out and she was living now on 400 euros a month, about $520. She was squatting with some friends in a building that still had water and electricity, while collecting “a little of everything” from the garbage after stores closed and the streets were dark and quiet. 

Such survival tactics are becoming increasingly commonplace here, with an unemployment rate over 50 percent among young people and more and more households having adults without jobs. So pervasive is the problem of scavenging that one Spanish city has resorted to installing locks on supermarket trash bins as a public health precaution. 

A report this year by a Catholic charity, Caritas, said that it had fed nearly one million hungry Spaniards in 2010, more than twice as many as in 2007. That number rose again in 2011 by 65,000.

As Spain tries desperately to meet its budget targets, it has been forced to embark on the same path as Greece, introducing one austerity measure after another, cutting jobs, salaries, pensions and benefits, even as the economy continues to shrink. 

Most recently, the government raised the value-added tax three percentage points, to 21 percent, on most goods, and two percentage points on many food items, making life just that much harder for those on the edge. Little relief is in sight as the country’s regional governments, facing their own budget crisis, are chipping away at a range of previously free services, including school lunches for low-income families.

For a growing number, the food in garbage bins helps make ends meet.

18 million u.s. households struggling to feed themselves

yahoo | Almost 18 million American homes struggled to find enough to eat in 2011, including 3.9 million homes with children, or 10 percent of all families with children, according to numbers released on Wednesday by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Even worse off were single mothers and black and Latino households, the survey found.

As NPR notes, "People went hungry."

The survey tracked families who had some issues with finding enough food, dubbed "food insecure," and those deemed "very very food insecure," who lacked basic nutrition at some point during the year. The latter category includes some 6.8 million households nationwide in which adults skipped meals, couldn't afford balanced meals, and worried about having enough money to buy food several months out of the year.

In all, the "food insecure" represented 5.7 percent of American households. It's not much of a change compared with 2010, but it's 2 percent more—thousands of people more—since 1998.

did cooking make you human?

We are the only species on earth that cooks its food and we are also the cleverest species on the planet. The question is: do we cook because we're clever and imaginative, or are we clever and imaginative because our ancestors discovered cooking? Horizon examines the evidence that our ancestors' changing diet and their mastery of fire prompted anatomical and neurological changes that resulted in taking us out of the trees and into the kitchen. The question is do we cook because we are clever and imaginative, or are we clever and imaginative because our ancestors discovered cooking?

Homo Habilis had a bigger brain (50% bigger) than his forebear, Australopithecus. Was this down to his diet? In Did Cooking Make Us Human?, a clutch of determined scientists set out to discover the extent to which diet played a role in the evolution of the human brain, using a variety of mildly alarming gadgets. Professor Peter Ungar has a contraption he calls the Bitemaster Two, a mechanical chewing machine he has fitted out with genuine Australopithecine gnashers. For the first time in three million years they were set to work on a carrot with success. On raw meat they performed less well, unlike the teeth from a later human ancestor.

Australopithecines didn't eat animals, skulls with fang holes show that it was the other way round. At some point in our evolutionary history it's clear that we developed a taste for animal flesh, but it's not altogether obvious when, or why. Hunting is tricky, risky, time consuming and exhausting, and there is little evidence that Homo habilis, for example, was any good at it. In search of answers Professor Travis Pickering went to meet Namibian Bushmen to get a feel for the hunter gatherer lifestyle. Although it's not glamorous work it takes the Bushmen four hours in 40 degree heat to dig a porcupine out of its hole they left one in no doubt as to its importance. "I don't particularly like eating porcupine," said one of the Bushmen shyly "but meat is meat."

The programme's most interesting contention was that cooking led directly to our bigger human brains. "Cooking is huge," said Professor Richard Rangham. "I think it's the biggest increase in the quality of diet in the whole of the history of life." No one is sure when our ancestors first became chefs estimates range from two million to 800,000 years ago and the fossil record hasn't been much help so far. They've found charred animal bones (evidence of hunting prey with fire) and butchered animal bones (evidence of meat eating) but no charred and butchered bones yet. The advantages of a cooked diet are, from an evolutionary point of view, you absorb more calories while expending less energy, and can make do with a smaller, less elaborate gut.

failed treasury auction portends egyptian disaster

asiatimes | Egypt faces a disaster of biblical proportions, and the world will do nothing about it. Officially, Egypt's foreign exchange reserves fell by half during 2011, including a $2.4 billion decline during December - from $36 billion to $18 billion, or about four months of imports.

But the situation almost certainly is worse than that. More than $4 billion left the country during December, estimates Royal Bank of Scotland economist Raza Agha, noting that the December drop in reserves was cushioned by a $1 billion loan from the Egyptian army and a $1 billion sale of dollar-denominated treasury bills.

The rush out of the Egyptian pound is so rapid that Egyptian investors refuse to hold debt in their own national currency, even at a 16% yield. After Islamist parties won more three-quarters of the seats in recent parliamentary elections - 47% for the Muslim Brotherhood and 25% for the even more extreme al-Nour Party - the business elite that prospered under military rule is counting the days before exile.

The first reports of actual hunger in provincial Egyptian towns, meanwhile, are starting to trickle in through Arab-language press and blog reports. A shortage of gasoline accompanied by long queues at filling stations and panic buying was widely reported last week.

In some towns, for example Luxor in Upper Egypt, the disappearance of diesel fuel shut down bakeries, exacerbating the spot shortages of bread.

After months of refusing to bargain with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Egypt's government has begun negotiations for a $3.2 billion loan, or less than the amount of capital flight in December alone. The involvement of the IMF evidently did little to reassure the Egyptian investors who sat out Sunday's Treasury auction.

It seems unlikely that Egypt's central bank will be able to prevent a banana-republic devaluation of the Egyptian pound, and a sharp rise in prices for a population of whom half barely consumes enough to prevent starvation. The difference between Egypt and a banana republic, though, is the bananas: unlike the bankrupt Latin Americans, who exported food, Egypt imports half its caloric consumption.

Meat imports have already fallen by 60% over the past year, the Egypt News website reported on January 22, [1] reflecting the collapse of purchasing power. More alarming is that bread has become scarce in some provincial cities. In Ismailia on the Suez Canal, the Youm7 website reported on January 22, a bread protest burned cars and blocked a main highway. Similar protests took place in other towns close to Cairo, including Zagazig and Ibousoar.

Anything that can be sold for hard currency - wheat, rice, butane, diesel fuel and sugar - has disappeared from government warehouses during the past year, according to a multitude of reports in local Arab-language media summarized in my 2011 essays. (See When will Egypt go broke? Asia Times Online, July 12, 2011.)

It is not clear whether the localized shortages of food and the nationwide shortage of gasoline reflect a buyers' panic, or large-scale theft, or an effort by the central bank to conserve foreign exchange by slowing essential purchases - or all of the above.

the burger that refused to die...,

windsorstar | Whenever Melanie Hesketh's kids get a hankering for junk food, all she has to do is point to the kitchen counter.

That's where she keeps an unwrapped cheeseburger that celebrates its birthday Thursday, and it looks pretty much the same as the day it came off a McDonald's grill 12 months ago.

Mould, maggots, fungi, bacteria — all have avoided the tempting meal that sits in plain view.

"Obviously it makes me wonder why we choose to eat food like this when even bacteria won't eat it," said Hesketh.

The meat patty has shrunk a bit, but it still looks edible and, with a faint but lingering greasy, leathery odour, she said it "still smells slightly like a burger . . . it hasn't changed much."

As a professional nutritionist at Windsor's Lifetime Wellness Centre, Hesketh was already armed with the education and all the proper facts and information to steer her children — ages 13 and 15 — toward the best food choices.

But what self-respecting teen is going to listen to well-meaning lectures from mom, especially on a product sold by the millions annually?

The Internet and social media are filled with tales of fast-food products made for quick consumption but seemingly immune to the ravages of time, and that's how Hesketh got the idea on how best to educate her own kids.

It's worked marvellously. Despite peer pressure to hang out at the cheap and fast burger chain outlets popular with young people, Hesketh said her oldest son has been back "maybe twice" to McDonald's over the past year.

"It's made him more aware, and he makes better choices, definitely," said Hesketh.

The experience has triggered other healthy changes around the Hesketh household, including the family's decision this year to create a garden and start growing some of their own fresh food.

The tough cheeseburger travels well and Hesketh has brought it to work to show off to those, like her teens, who need visuals for extra convincing.

"It's a great eye opener . . . We use it to educate our patients that what they're putting into their bodies may not be healthy," she said.

"I think most people who see this are swayed," said Michelle Prince, a chiropractor who runs Lifetime Wellness Centre.

Calls Wednesday to McDonald's Restaurants of Canada Ltd. went unanswered, but the world's top-selling burger chain, whose menu is increasingly populated by healthier meal choices, has lashed out before against similar criticism.

"Despite the myths out there, our meat is very real!" the company says on its website, adding McDonald's Canada "uses only 100 per cent Canadian, CFIA-inspected beef."

The patties are "sprinkled with salt and pepper at the restaurant during cooking. That's it. No additives, fillers or binding agents," the website says.

But Hesketh points to the "astronomical" salt content in many fast food products when asked to explain how a burger can last so long and still look so good. A McDonald's cheeseburger weighs in at 115 grams at the time of cooking, but delivers 200 calories and 750 milligrams of sodium.

Meat patty aside, Prince points to the perfectly preserved bun and the slice of cheese as areas of concern.

fast food shrinks the brain?

The Canadian | According to a new study published in the journal Neurology, eating fast food is connected with brain shrinkage that can lead to Alzheimer’s. This study, titled “Nutrient biomarker patterns, cognitive function, and MRI measures of brain aging” is one of the first to look at trans fat blood levels and their effects on the brain.A key ingredient found in most fast food items—the dreaded artery-damaging trans fats—are likely the culprit, says researchers at the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, who worked on the study.

Trans fats, which can also be labeled “partially hydrogenated oils” are used to extend the shelf-life, consistency and flavor of highly processed foods such as fast food and processed snack foods. They’re known to increase inflammation, which hardens arteries, affects heart function and increases the risk of heart attack. But the new findings also suggest that the brain may also be at risk of damage from regular exposure to trans fats. In addition to the smaller size, the study participants who had high levels of trans fats in their brain also showed poorer memory, attention, language and processing skills than those who did not have trans fats in the brain.

Conversely, people who consumed diets high in vitamins B, C, D and E and rich in omega fatty acids were reported to have larger brains and showed cognitive abilities that correspond with the brain and its healthy blood vessels. While it’s still not fully understood, the researchers found that the vitamins B, C, D and E worked in synergy affecting the brain in a positive way that helped to boost its volume and performance, and the omega fatty acids were connected with better performing executive function, planning abilities, problem solving and multi-tasking than study participants with low levels of omega fatty acids.