Category Archives: On Agriculture and Food

A Very Creative Menu

Posted on by under My Travels, On Agriculture and Food

I don’t write as much as I should about the variety of food that I come across when I’m out traveling. I will try to better! (Food culture is after all one of my main interests!) In the meantime, I came across this very creative children’s menu at one of our regular dinner places (Restaurant Dali) here in Podgorica. It has dishes like “I’m not hungry”, “I don’t want anything”, “I don’t like”, “I can’t”, and “I ate”. Seems like Montenegrin kids can be as picky about food as kids in Sweden and the U.S.!

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Quick Update from Podgorica

Posted on by under My Travels, On Agriculture and Food

I am out traveling again. Nowhere new I’m afraid, but nevertheless in one of my favorite countries – Montenegro. It is the first time I’m here this late in the fall, and it’s been raining beyond belief since we arrived on Tuesday. It even pored into the breakfast room one morning, but that’s another story. It is a very busy stay here this time, but since I work with agriculture, I still had a chance to go outside the city on Saturday to meet with several farmers. It rained almost all day and was quite cold, but it cleared up a bit while we visited a goat farm up in the mountains and we had a chance to enjoy the fresh air and beautiful surroundings. My colleague told me that Montenegro is number 2 on Lonely Planet’s Top 10 Countries for Best Travel in 2013 and I am not surprised – I can really recommend a stay here (though perhaps not during the rainy season)! Here are some pics from my farm visits:

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Visits to a goat farm and a dairy farm on  Saturday. Livestock is an important source of income in rural  Montenegro. 

Not Much Happening Here, Really Enjoying the Little Things

Posted on by under On Agriculture and Food

Being an whole food advocator, I probably shouldn’t reveal here that I buy corporate brand ice cream. But with the gelato offer here not being the same as in Southern Europe or even NY (i.e. non-existent in my neighborhood) and me being too lazy to make my own ice cream, I have to admit that I do now and then pick up a package of ice cream. And this one must be the best ever! Mango ice cream – so good!! I can really recommend it! And no, not much happening here these days… Only nine days left until my dissertation is due…

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Three Reports on Food and Agriculture in the World

Posted on by under On Agriculture and Food

As I wrote in my previous post (and in a few others these past months…), I’m in the middle of my dissertation writing. One of the best thing about doing this is all the reading that I get to do. I have come across so much interesting literature and I wanted to share three very good reports with those of you who are interested in better understanding where our agro-food systems come from, where we are today, and where we are heading vs. where we need to go.

The State of Food and Agricuture 2000: The 2000 issue of FAO’s annual report SOFA gives a good summary of the growth of global agriculture in the 20th, which only over a fee decades multiplied yields and grew beyond that of population. The report is surprisingly silent on the agricultural policies that to a large extent drove this growth but also distorted markets, but if keeping this in mind, it explains well what impact modernization of agriculture had on those who couldn’t keep up in quantity focused production systems.

Food and Agriculture: The fiture of Sustainability is a new study published by the UN that gives a good overview of the environmental impacts from the agro-food systems that we developed in the 20th century and why they are not sustainable. The study also suggests alternative paths for future food systems in order to cope with an increasing population, climate change, and nutritious diets.

The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2012: This year’s issue of FAO’s annual publication SOFI gives a good overview of the changes in diets that are taking place all over the world, or the nutrition transition as it is called. (This is also the topic of my dissertation.) This transition is partly good, i.e. the shift to more diversified diets is essential for food security in many parts of the world. However, many times, this also means diets that are higher in salt, sugars, and saturated fat, which has negative health implications. Similarly, the shift to more animal-sourced and often more processed foods has implications for the environment. It gives a good overview of where global food consumption is heading. It is up to you to determine if you think this is realistic or if we all need to make changes.

20121020-105841.jpgPumpkins again, this time from Whole Foods

Post-it Creativity

Posted on by under My life, On Agriculture and Food, On Books, Movies, Education, and Conferences

All I’ve done these past few days is writing, on reports and my dissertation. Well, with a small exception of a coffee at Le Pain Quotidien with Mr. M on Saturday. (Or coffee and LPQ’s lemon tart – one of my favorites sweets!) The dissertation is slowly but surely starting to get some structure, although it is far from in the shape it ought to be at this point. I guess that is my curse – I am always late with things. Regardless, it has been interesting working with it and I have learned a lot about nutrition transition, and managed to develop some of my own theories around the topic. Here is where it was at an early stage:

The Weight of the Nation

Posted on by under On Agriculture and Food

When searching for publications on nutrition transition and global dietary patterns, I came across this HBO documentary, The Weight of the Nation. I have only watched two episodes so far, but I highly recommend it. I am not sure if those of you who are outside the U.S. can watch it, but if you can, do! Even though this documentary is about the U.S., overweight and obesity are spreading like an epidemic around the world with chronic diseases like diabetes following. As for the U.S., the problem has reached almost unthinkable levels. Two third of adults and almost a third of all children in this country are overweight or obese, and it is estimated that one in three American children born in the year 2000 will develop diabetes in its lifetime. For black or hispanic children, this figure is one in two. And that is only a small part of the human and economic cost. Incredible when the solution really is so easy.

In Moldova Again!

Posted on by under My Travels, On Agriculture and Food

After a quick stop in Stockholm, during which I had both breakfast and dinner with my neighbor M, lunch with Mia-Lotta, and dinner with Therese, I am now in Chisinau since yesterday and my social agenda is equally booked here. I haven’t been in Moldova since the spring 2010, so it’s been a while. For those of you who recently started to read my blog, I lived in Moldova for two years in 2006-2008. Admittedly, I enjoyed living in Chisinau much more than in DC and it is wonderful to be back! I am staying with my friends E and C and today, I had lunch and dinner with several other friends and visited my colleagues in my old office. An added bonus to my stay here is the fantastic fresh produce that they have in Chisinau. I had completely forgotten how amazing the fruits and vegetables are here but was quickly reminded when I entered E and C’s kitchen and saw the apple tray. Every meal has since been a joy! Tomorrow is N’s wedding and I will treat myself to a manicure – anther thing that they do better in Moldova than anywhere else! (Source: a DC based colleague of mine, my own manicure experience is rather limited…)

Real apples, neither gased not vaxed!

Food Insecurity in the World

Posted on by under On Agriculture and Food

An exposition at the UN on the Millennium Development Goals reminded me of why I work with food and agriculture. Despite the proximity to food production, poverty and food insecurity is often higher in rural areas than in urban, and agricultural development is central for increasing incomes for rural inhabitants. With a higher share of populations living in cities, sustainable food production and inclusive food markets will be critical over the next decades. Also, the fact that we with our global abundance let one person in seven go hungry on this planet is something that I think coming generations will find very difficult to understand.

 

Urban Lunches

Posted on by under On Agriculture and Food

I took a break from my dissertation the other day and snuck in to an exhibition at the New York Public Library where I study. The library has really good exhibitions and I had been to one on Jack Kerouac and On The Road a few years ago that I liked a lot. This exhibition was called Lunch Hour and was about lunches in New York over the past 150 years. My excuse for spending valuable study time on this was that it was related to food and that anything that is somehow connected to the topic is in my interest to explore.

The exhibition, however, turned out to be much more of interest to me than I had expected as it was in fact about the nutrition transition of the lunch meal in New York City. The topic of my dissertation is about nutrition transition in low and middle income countries, and I learned a lot from seeing how the market for one meal evolved in a city like New York. The offer of meals was for example much more influenced by convenience, quick service, appeal to female professionals, and urban demography than by food budgets. The offer therefore changed substantially and the quality of food services declined with the middle class move to the suburbs in the 1950s, despite the increases in American incomes. Here are some pics:

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Horn & Hardart’s Automats (above) were a revolution for lunch eaters in New York: put a coin in a select your meal. Everything was originally made from scratch in the restaurant, and later at a centrally located kitchen. 

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