Links I liked

1. What's really good and green in food... a GREAT guide that I've started using for food.

2. A refreshing look at the new MBAs, who actually have a conscience and believe in changing the world in the right way.

3. Is venture funding really the best way to get funding for your startup?? Maybe there's a better system.

4. Recycling bins from around the world.

5. How two friends built a $100M company for household cleaning products.

Links I liked

1. Married for 50 years. A photoessay of love. Who would've thought that in this day and age, marriages like this still exist!

2. Top 10 Reflections of a First-Time TEDster. If you want to know why people spend $6000 for a 4-day ticket to this conference, some every year, then read the post!

3. How to solve our the US Credit Crisis. This cracked me up, but is also SO totally true!

4. Ten most bizarre soft drinks (I would assume that they are all being consumed, else they wouldn't be sold now, would they!). Warning: high queaziness factor here!

5. Bearing children is not always a woman's choice. More of the world needs to understand this.

6. What the hell is going on with the Ivory Coast?? Can reporters get it right already!!

Eco Seafood and a TED update

Via a friend, JB, these links for "eco seafood":

http://www.edf.org/page.cfm?tagID=1521
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/seafood/red-list-of-species
http://www.msc.org/where-to-buy
http://assets.panda.org/custom/flash/fishdish/index.html


On a separate note, I'm very sorry about the lack of posts last week. I thought I did a good job of channeling the TED Fellows' blog through Tworque, but obviously that went terribly wrong, because I don't see anything! Just go directly to the blog and subscribe there.

For the most part, most of us were fairly quiet largely because TED was just too intense and we were all just too busy overloading on our experiences to take time out to blog. To be honest, I didn't get the people who sat around with their blackberries and looked bored. I hope I never get that way!

Public Health Tweets

1. Chris Blattman blogs about Dr. Gary Sultkin, a public health warrior and peace crusader, who has started an organization called Ceasefire to stop unnecessary shooting and killing, using public health techniques. I must say, its very cool to see how medical principles can be applied (with successful results) outside of just medicine!

2. Shawn blogs about his mosquito bednet project on Uncultured.com. I think bed nets ROCK! Personally, they have saved my life (and my sleep) a number of times. Bed nets are SO cheap and effective against malaria that I think its a crime for any government to not provide one with the birth of every child.


3. The food crisis has gotten so bad that the poor in Haiti are eating mud. Can someone, anyone explain to me why we are fighting a war that no one wants, while people are eating mud??

4. I've been reading some of the comments on the CBS 60 Minutes website in response to Paul Farmer's segment that aired today. I was truly taken aback by the anger and bitterness against Paul Farmer, whom many accuse of being a "traitor" and "turning his back on his own." This says a lot about how one of the world's wealthiest nations is failing its people most. At the same time, i need to stand up for Paul and all the aid workers who go out on a limb (I like to call it America's good and peaceful force) everyday to undo the damage caused by the American Administration. Were it not for their heroic deeds, we'd have been blown out of the water years ago!

Food supply comparisons around the world

Some pictures speak a thousand words. In light of the food crisis, I saw one of the most interesting picture posts that compared a week's worth of food supplies for an average semi-middle-class family (I say "semi" because some countries lack a middle class) in different countries around the world: Italy, Germany, USA, Mexico, Poland, Egypt, Ecuador, Bhutan, and Chad. I've visited quite a few of these countries for extended periods of time; they are (unfortunately, in some cases) quite representative of the typical meals you'll find when you visit.

http://dalesdesigns.net/food.htm

(In addition, for some reason I'm trying to figure out where GDP, health, and/or happiness fit into these pictures. Any thoughts??)

On that Food note again

Right, I'll be quiet after this one (I think). Here's a great site about sustainable food and cooking and all (this is all a result of watching King Corn!).

http://cookingupastory.com/index.php/category/food-news/

Here's one of their stories about a guy who envisioned a sustainable restaurant:

Food Technology: Plumpynut

An extremely malnourished child is fed PlumpyNut (source: CBS 60 mins)

Once in a moment of desperation, I was trying to figure out how to become rich in the developing world - help people and get rich at the same time. So I got together a group of international development folks from different backgrounds and they all agreed that the best way was to start a Plumpy'Nut factory in Africa. The only problem is that Plumpy'Nut is patented and I don't have their formula. And I think my riches would be gone if I stole their recipe and they sued me.

Plumpy'nut has revolutionized malnutrition management in the developing world. Like ORS (Oral Rehydration Salts) it has brought people back almost from the brink of death. Considering the food crisis and the topic of the day, I thought I'd just highlight this technology.


Technology Name: PLUMPY'NUT

Description:
Plumpy'Nut is a high nutrition paste that combines fortified peanut butter, milk, and vegetable oils in a foil packet.

Plumpy'Nut Specs:
Inventor: Michel Lascanne and Andre Briend, Food Scientists and Nutritionists
HQ: Nutriset (founded by Lascanne)
Year of invention: 1997
Franchisees: 4 (Democratic Republic of Congo, Malawi, Niger, Ethiopia, with one set to open soon in the Dominican Republic)
Calories per packet: 500 kCal (usually 1 packet = 1 meal)
Cost per packet: $5

My review:
I heard about Plumpy'Nut from aid worker colleagues when I was taking nutrition classes a year ago. I was so fascinated by the product that I went straight back and did a bunch of research on it. Then CBS 60 Minutes and Anderson Cooper did a whole thing on it and that got the world talking. I recommend watching it.



The good:
Plumpy'Nut does not require dilution and can be eaten as is. This is really critical, because for a long time powdered mixes didn't work because clean water in disaster zones could never be guaranteed. Plumpy'Nut takes that major concern away. It can also be used by babies from 6 months up (most babies cannot have food other than milk before).

Plumpy'Nut is amazing and a lifesaver. I can't say more.

The what:
The main complaint from aid workers is the cost. US$5 per meal may not seem like much to you and me, but in a country where an entire family can eat sumptuously on that money, it seems ridiculous. After all, milk, peanuts and oil are ubiquitous in Africa and should be able to be combined locally to make this product. So why is it so expensive??

Well, Plumpy'Nut is patented and they won't sell their formula to anyone. You can only buy the product from one of their franchisees, and the only people who can afford it are the aid agencies and the military.

Lascanne insists that he is not profiting from the sales of Plumpy'Nut, only fueling the money back into R&D (Research and Development) of other products and for salaries. They won't reveal how high salaries are. I believe him, but I also think there needs to be a way around this cost (atleast its not $90 for a plastic drum, like with Hippo Roller!). Maybe the WHO can subsidize Nutriset's R&D and operating costs, and let the products be priced at cost, so that more people can access and afford it (rather than having to come to a refugee camp or aid clinic).

I must say that it is testament to Lascanne that no one has taken the sample and studied it to come up with their own competitive formula (I'm sure any food scientist could do this).

Variations I would suggest:
None. But the cost is a very frustrating component. Maybe competition would be good in this field.


Other reviews/information:
The official Plumpynut Page
Wikipedia: Plumpynut
Nutriset's page
CBS 60 mins: PlumpyNut
http://lookingglasslandblog.blogspot.com/2005/08/plumpynut.html
http://www.idpas.org/InfantIronDef/PlumpyNutwebpage.html
There were quite a few articles from 2005 that were excellent but that I can't find links online to. If I could upload a pdf here, this would help!
Thurow, R. (2005), In Battling Hunger, A New Advance: Peanut-Butter Paste. 12 April 2005,
The Wall Street Journal.

King Corn (on the subject of the food crisis)

The King Corn guys: showing us the life cycle of corn from field to dinner plate. (source: Readexpress.com)

I don't watch TV so much to begin with. For one our only TV from 1982 has a regular set of scraggly lines across it that make me cross-eyed and cranky; it makes me fat, and finally, probably as a result, we have no cable (but really, except for Comedy Central, Nat Geo, and Discovery, there isn't anything on!).

So I was lucky on thurs night when I turned on PBS to see a hugely entertaining, but powerful documentary film featured on their Independent Lens show called King Corn. King Corn follows two recent college grads as they unravel America's corn obsession. The two rent an acre of land in Iowa to farm the corn, perform all their farming duties, and spend whatever time they have (which seems like a lot) following the corn from the farm to the dinner plate...

Against the backdrop of our food crisis, King Corn provides fascinating (and humorous) insight into American food policy, our own health crisis of obesity and diabetes, and the larger world food crisis.

The Food Crisis Debate: What are the causes??

I think we are all aware of the major food crisis we are finding ourselves in. It may not seem like such a big issue in the United States, where food still abounds (and I see plenty of wastage) and the prices have increased by a relatively small margin. But in other parts of the world, where 20 cents is the daily income of a majority of the workers, this has sparked famine and riots.

On wednesday, April 13, NPR (National Public Radio) did an excellent interview with four influential international policy thinkers who debated the causes of the food crisis: was it a lack of technology? was it climate change? or was it poor policy decisions (like bio-fuels, etc)??

(note: Diane Rehm who conducts the interview, is actually an excellent journalist. Most first timers can get frustrated by her achingly slow interviewing process, but keep in mind that it is because of a neurological condition that she is battling. So just hang in there...the debate is worth it!)Publish Post

The food crisis, climate change and the role of technology to solve it

A woman walks through a paddy field in southern India (photo credit: Meena Kadri)

Sorry to digress a bit here. There is just SO much going on, and everything is related - poverty, food, energy, water, and climate change, and the growth of technology that could change things for the better. I will have my regular post about water in addition to this.

Today there were two well-written posts, that were separately contiguous.

The first was from the google.org people. Today is World Health Day (who knew!) and the WHO has released evidence stating that Climate Change has a significant impact on food and health. They even have a map showing areas with high death rates as a result of climate change. Not surprisingly, Africa is the worst hit, with a significant region attributing 80-100 million deaths to climate change. Read the whole post here. This was something covered by Al Gore as well in his blockbuster movie An Inconvenient Truth.

The second is from Paul Krugman of the New York Times, who wrote a brilliant summary of the causes of the impending food crisis, titled Grains Gone Wild. The World Food Program (WFP), Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), and the International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD) all UN agencies have stated that 854 million people are starving. Again, this starvation is primarily centered in Africa and parts of Asia, and slated to get worse with population growth. And its related to climate change.

So, the general consensus is that food and health are gravely affected by climate change. But can anything be done?? Well, obviously we (particularly those in the industrialized countries) need to be more aware of these issues and stop our own wasting. We need to stop hogging everyone else's food and messing with the rest of the world's agricultural policies. But that's an aside to my point (which has to do with this blog) about technology.

I think technology can offer a solution in the larger picture. (Please note that I believe in technology being used as an accelerator in solving a crisis; it is not the whole solution and can never be!)

Technology saved the day during the last major food crisis. Post World War II, countries all over the world were struggling with food rationing. There simply wasn't enough food produced (quite different from now, where famine is more a result of a combination of issues). Then advances in technology like pest-resistant cropping started a green revolution in many countries...the most famous of these scientists won a Nobel Prize for his work. Because climate change is such a large problem, advances in technology in every field (energy, food, road/transportation design, etc) are required to quell it. Suddenly the boundaries are blurred, and as a whole professionals and inventors in every field need to work together to solve this problem.

Technology is out there to provide a solution, but we all need to work together to make it happen. This isn't a single technological advancement needed...its a multiple technological advancement that's needed. The food crisis is just one example, one symptom in the larger issue of Climate Change.

The White People's Guide to Field Work: #2

Part two of guest blogger Victoria's post.


source: www.coxandforkum.com


#2 Discern what [behaviors, superstitions, objects] hold special significance and is sacred to the locals, and act accordingly. Discriminate more, be discerning.

I don't restrict this to a religious sense. Beyond shamans and village sorcery, for many traditional cultures there is honor, love and communion attached to mealtimes, to beverages, to wearing clothes, to household cleaning, to certain days of the week, and seating order that the average white do-gooder doesn't appreciate or cannot instinctively feel.

This is because these social rules are observed and learned through socialization over years and since childhood, and in essence forms part of the common language within a society. Take for instance, the social significance and rules for photography, modesty, or whether shoes are allowed indoors. An accumulated amount of these faux pas will force the local to become defensive and angry and reject all things "tainted" by the white foreigner. The white person, if s/he tries earnestly, usually manages to learn a pidgin version of what is sacred, but even to an amateur his/her actions are normally fraught with embarrassing mishaps and sometimes serious offenses. The worst part is that because the white person is trying to help and unable to instinctively feel the guilt and shame of his/her blunder, s/he usually will not apologize to assuage the dishonor. As a result, a lot of developing regions will say: "We want American/European money, but we don't want their representatives," and it isn't to be curt. Truth is, fewer and fewer institutions (brotherly bonds, honoring a marriage for a lifetime, guarding one's reputation) are be-all sacred for modern Western society, particularly the ones where philanthropy is coming from.

This is me again (not Victoria). I have a great story to further illustrate this point. I remember after a particularly grueling field assignment, we had invited our local partners out to dinner with us at one of the expensive restaurants in town. It was to be a celebratory dinner for a job well-done. We were therefore very surprised when only one of the 20 people, the most senior of them all, showed up. When probed, she didn't say much except that they would all join us later for drinks. It was only at the end of dinner, when the bill came out that we learned the truth. Christine (name changed) had ordered the cheapest thing on the menu (again baffling) and had placed a set of bills that covered her meal neatly on the table. It was the first time I had seen this in a developing country (generally in these countries, when you invite someone, you pay for everything)! I asked her to put the money back and explain to us what was going on. It turned out that the NGO had been partnering with U.S organizations for some time and everytime the group went out, they only paid for themselves (a common American custom). The poor NGO workers would often shell out upto a month's salary on a single meal! This was why none of them had shown up; Christine had shown up out of politeness. Since then I've always carried extra money with me to cover for situations like this.