Check out this excellent article detailing the thankfully widening appreciation that meat consumption at the levels we see in the West is simply not sustainable, especially on a global scale. China is entering the global food import market and the relative affluence developing there and in other countries is going to make it impossible for meat consumption to continue as it is.

You simply cannot feed millions of tons of grain to animals in order to eat them and ignore the fact that this food goes a lot further when fed directly to humans. It is deeply ironic that China, with a diet typically very low in dairy and meat produce, may well be the deciding factor as to whether people in Western countries do or don’t have meat on their plate most days of the week in 5 years time.

One thing’s for sure - its going to become a lot more expensive, which is as it should be. The gap between non-organic and organic prices is likely to narrow as the bottom-of-the-barrel produced meat prices increase due to scarcity. This is probably a good thing in the long term, as people will have notchoice but to eat less but better reared meat and dairy products. It might even in time turn around the prospects of our respective nations’ health - but possibly not so for the Chinese.

I was in London the other day and noticed a lot of Cadbury chocolate adverts for Dairy Milk bars, along the lines of  "There’s a glass and a half of milk in every bar". This is a very disturbing ploy for which the ASA should be punishing Cadbury - effectively trying to sell their awful chocolate (which it has been argued can’t be called chocolate due to the high level of fats relative to cocoa) as a "healthy" food on the basis that most people, incorrectly, believe cow’s milk to be a healthy food product.

The conspiratorial side of me wondered if there was a joint promotion going on between the Dairy Council and Cadbury to do what is effectively promotion of both products.

Instead, I happened on a link of sorts. Yahoo appear to be in the beta testing phase of a new service called Yahoo Kids! One presumes this is to protect children from all the potentially offensive and/or insanely boring parts of Yahoo - or you could argue its to collate as much marketing information on children as possible… there is a caveat at the footer of their pages about collection personal information.

Anyway, I found the Food and Eating section. Oh the horror. Take out a couple of entries from oxfam about chocolate and tea, and you have direct links to:

• 4 (yes you read correctly, four) Cadbury chocolate sites, presumably "educational" in nature
• The British Egg Information Service - hey we all need more cholesterol
• Kellogg’s - those bastions of sweet cereals
• A site selling sweets
• The Dairy Council’s website - cow’s milk is for… cows
• Ribena - mmm more sugar
• Walkers - makers of crisps (who notably -do- make unsalted crisps)

There’s a couple of minor information sites there too, but that’s the section so far. No doubt Yahoo! will say it is early days yet, but I have this one question:

How long will it be before advertising regulations on children’s junk foods are extended to places where children will be given false "educational" material on the web?
You can bet this tactic is in use elsewhere on the web, where frankly pathetic people are paid to find sites like this to list links to the "educational" content they are providing to suck kids into their products.

The cake shown here is a completely different vegan chocolate fudge cake… but isn’t it delicious looking! Anyway, Demuths is one of the few “gourmet” level vegetarian eateries in the UK. The food is just brilliant. There’s also a new cookery book in the pipeline, which I’m really looking forward to.
As a person who works with a fair amount of web content, you simply cannot emphasize enough the important of great imagery. If you have a “small” (read: low budget) website out there but it really matters to you in commercial terms, you simply have to spend some money on getting a great photographer to take those killer images you need to get your point across. On the web a lot of people see more than they read.

I quote:

"Because it contains no calories, aspartame is considered a boon to health-conscious individuals everywhere; and most of us, if we think about it at all, think it is safe. But independent scientists say aspartame can produce a range of disturbing adverse effects in humans, including headaches, memory loss, mood swings, seizures, multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s-like symptoms, tumours and even death."

The full article is available in the print version of the magazine, and includes a timeline since 1965 covering the development of the chemical through to today, including the various tactics used to gain FDA approval including fraudulent trials and hiring FDA staff after approval. Oh, and "all-round good guy" Donald Rumsfeld is implicated - appointed as CEO to Searle (the company behind Nutrasweet) and later when the Reagan administration begins, magically the product gets FDA approval within a year after languishing unapproved for 15 years.