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from Photographers Blog:

Obesity in America

By Rick Wilking

Almost 2 years ago I started work on a photo documentary simply titled “Obesity in America.”  It's a simple title but with complex subject matter.

Getting the access, the various permissions from individuals and institutions and working through the convoluted American HIPPA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) that protects patient privacy to extremes was quite a challenge. But trying to tell a story with this many layers and permutations was even tougher.

It was a hot topic back in 2010 when I started, with obesity-related stories moving frequently on the Reuters wire but with few images to go with them. I set out to change that and decided to work the project in multiple chapters.

Since I last blogged about the documentary, I have shot several more chapters and learned a lot more about how complicated this topic is.

from Breakingviews:

“Cabbage in formaldehyde” is toxic dish for China

By John Foley

The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

China’s food industry is accident-prone. Milk laced with melamine, fake eggs, glow-in-the-dark pork and cadmium-tainted rice have all made headlines. Now there is formaldehyde-laced cabbage, found in Shandong province. Thus treated, the vegetables will last for a week. The economic effect of food-scares can last far longer.

Food accounted for just 2.8 percent of China’s overall goods exports in 2010, according to the World Trade Organisation. But the WTO reports that food exports - such as seafood, apple juice and garlic - have tripled since China joined in 2000. Food scares are toxic for trade. Since chemical-tainted milk killed six children and sickened 300,000 in 2008, China’s exports of powdered milk collapsed to almost nothing, while imports have roughly quintupled. Non-food products too may suffer from a kind of reverse halo effect.

However, the gravest side-effects of food scares are domestic. Cabbage fears are likely to lead consumers to pay up for guarantees of safety. That’s inflationary, since fruit and vegetables have the third largest weighting in the China inflation food basket, according to Rabobank. The poor get the worst deal, since they can’t afford to buy organic, or foreign goods as an alternative.

More subtly but more profoundly, such scandals undermine Chinese consumers’ faith in the country’s institutions and systems. Lack of trust lies behind many of China’s distortions, from too-high savings rates to frequently fraying tempers. Each report of poisoned meat, contaminated vegetables or undrinkable tap water erodes consumers’ sense that the rule of law is taking shape.

The answer is partly economic. Cabbage growers seemed to have used the poisoned spray because long transport times lead to rotting produce. Specific investments - think refrigerated vans and more mechanisation - can reduce this waste.

from The Human Impact:

Solutions for a hungry world

By 2050, experts say, the planet will need at least 70 percent more food than it does today as its population soars, cities sprawl and climate change takes its toll. Will it be possible?

That’s a question AlertNet put to hunger fighters worldwide for a special multimedia report out today probing the future of food. Their answer: The planet can feed itself – but only if two “revolutions” happen, and happen soon.

The first would involve sweeping changes to entrenched policies and practices that are, in the end, unsustainable. Policies such as spending trillions on agriculture and fuel subsidies. And practices such as eating so much meat and dairy.

This would mean radical policy shifts including potentially a ban on turning grain into biofuel, or placing limits on food speculation. It would mean persuading millions of newly affluent people in China and India not to take on Western-type diets.

Luckily, the second revolution seems a little more in our grasp. That’s because it’s already happening – in farms and fields, in laboratories and government offices, in factories and markets.

Unlike the last century’s “Green Revolution”, which relied on new high-yielding crops and more irrigation to boost production, this revolution relies on countless "green bullets" to tackle hunger.

For our special report, we’ve broken these solutions into four “how-to” categories:

from Photographers Blog:

Snails as food, snails as business

By Yiorgos Karahalis

One of my fondest memories is of the snails my mother harvested after the rains. I couldn’t wait for her to get home so that I could grab those tiny animals and play with them for hours, all the while looking forward to the next day’s lunch! Little did I know then that this childhood pastime was also a big business.

Perhaps it was my memories that led me to be intrigued by the story of Greece’s Fereikos Helix snail farming company, a successful business started by two sisters, Maria and Panagiota Vlachou.

“I was having dinner in Zurich as I was speaking to my sister on the phone. I told her that I ordered snails for near 37 euros. And she joked with me, saying we must start growing and trading snails,” Maria Vlachou said, explaining what motivated them to start their business in 2007.

from Global Investing:

Interest rates in emerging markets – - harder to cut

Emerging market central banks and economic data are sending a message -- interest rates will stay on hold for now.  There are exceptions of course.

Indonesia cut rates on Thursday but the move was unexpected and possibly the last for some time. Brazil has also signalled that rate cuts will continue.  But South Korea and Poland held rates steady this week and made hawkish noises. Peru and Chile will probably do the same.

The culprit that's spoiling the party is of course inflation. Expectations that slowing growth will wipe out remaining price pressures have largely failed to materialise, leaving policymakers in a bind. Tensions over Iran could drive oil prices higher. Growth seems to be looking up in the United States.

On top of that, all the major central banks in the developed world are intent on flooding the world economy with cash and some of it will inevitably make its way to emerging nations. So while economies could do with a good dose of policy easing, most central banks cannot afford to let their guard down on inflation.

Take China where January inflation came in well above expectations on Thurday, with food prices up 10.5 percent on the year. Expect no cuts to the policy rate this year, warn analysts at RBC. Over in Seoul, Bank of Korea governor Kim Choong-soo said policymakers needed to be "on alert" for inflation risks and described inflation expectations as "considerably  high." The verdict from Barclays:

Taken together these comments reflect a tilt in concern towards inflation.

Most central banks in emerging Europe never had much room to cut rates anyway, exposed as they are to the euro zone malaise. But as my colleague Emily Kaiser wrote a week back, policy easing bets in Asia are also being trimmed.

from Africa News blog:

Rape, corruption in camps blight lives of Somali

By Abdi Sheikh

MOGADISHU, Jan 26 (AlertNet) - Nurto Isak's food rations are feeding her, her three children, and -- she suspects -- the militiamen guarding the camp in Mogadishu where she and other uprooted Somalis have taken refuge.

The city is host to more than 180,000 internally displaced people (IDPs) who, like Isak, have fled a killer combination of conflict, drought and hunger back home.

Many risk long, difficult journeys to reach the capital, their sights set on the numerous aid agencies that have set up relief operations to hand out food and treat malnutrition there.

Yet many people at various IDP settlements in the war-torn city complain that food aid is not reaching them and accuse local aid workers working for international and Somali NGOs of taking it to line their own pockets.

"Half of the rations intended for our camp is given to the warlord whose militia are said to be guarding us," Isak told AlertNet (www.trust.org/alertnet), a humanitarian news service run by Thomson Reuters Foundation.

from Breakingviews:

Tesco’s ambitions earthed by UK retail reality

By Edward Hadas

The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

When Philip Clarke took over from the Sir Terry Leahy as Tesco’s chief executive in March 2011, he seemed to have one of the sweetest corporate inheritances around. The company was strong in its British home market and growing well elsewhere, although the U.S. expansion remained a work in progress.

But the Clarke era has seen five consecutive quarters of declining like-for-like UK revenues at the once-almost-almighty retailer. The latest announcement, of a 2.3 percent decline (excluding petrol) over the Christmas 2011 trading period, was a shock. It caused a 13 percent drop in the share price on Thursday.

It’s tempting to think that Leahy left Tesco in less good shape than it appeared from the outside, or that Clarke has mucked things up. Is the company’s strategy – low costs and a steady expansion of formats, product lines and total retailing space – flawed? Was Leahy more charismatic and less efficient than it appeared? Does Clarke lack the inspirational touch?

All of these things may be true. And Clarke can be held responsible for the 2011 price cuts of 500 million pounds, the equivalent of 20 percent of last year’s UK trading profits. But the new man can hardly be blamed for a weak UK economy or competitors who have been strengthened by learning from Tesco. And final judgment on Clarke’s initiative should wait for the end of the full programme for UK revival, which includes investments as well as price cuts. Meanwhile, Tesco’s longstanding effort to build up sales of general merchandise inevitably makes the company more cyclical.

Clarke’s Tesco may always suffer in comparisons to the Leahy era. Such has been the success of the company over the last two decades, it is so big in the UK that profitable market share gains are increasingly hard won. And while its international markets offer higher growth, they also present more challenges. But Tesco’s model is not broken and it is important to note that total sales – in the UK and overall – continue to advance. The Leahy legacy is intact.

from Oddly Enough Blog:

Out of the frying pan and into the fryer…

Blog Guy, I can't wait any longer! Has the Williams-Sonoma December catalog arrived yet? I need to get ready for the big holidays!

Yes, and naturally I was drawn to page 120, the Breville Deep Fryer, $149.95. That's what I want for holiday entertaining, right? I mean, what says, I care about my family's health better than immersing their food in oil? Especially with those recent studies showing we all need to raise our cholesterol levels.

Um, Blog Guy, you are just being sarcastic here, right? Sometimes I can't tell.

Yes, of course. Try to keep up.

But if I DO want a deep fryer, this is the one to get, right?

No, I'm afraid this is the one for sissies. The one you want is on the Williams-Sonoma Website, the Timber Ridge Backyard Host Deep Fryer, just $699.95.

from Oddly Enough Blog:

A goofy Thanksgiving to all!

Happy Thanksgiving, Blog Guy!

Thanks, and the same to you and to all my readers.

So what are you thankful for This Thanksgiving?

Me? I'm feeling very blessed to be surrounded by my dear family and great friends.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course you have to say that, but specifically, what are you thankful for right now, this minute?

Oh. Well, I'm thankful that I live in a country where nobody can force me to watch Charlie Sheen or listen to accordion music or eat Brussels sprouts.

from Oddly Enough Blog:

Want something that’s bad for you, Mr. President?

Hi there, waitress, we're the Corkery family, and we'll be having your family-style breakfast special, where the whole family eats for for $22.95. I'll have the...

Excuse me, Mr. Obama, I know who you are. You're gonna have to go ahead and pay for your own breakfast...

Obama? Hah! I'm Floyd Corkery, but I do hear that a lot. People seem to think I look a little like the president.

So, waitress, the rest of my family will all have the egg-white asparagus omelets, and I'll have El Gordo, the cheese-covered breakfast burrito, with the beer batter fries and barbecue sauce, and on the side, some maple...

Mr. Corkery, will you be ordering anything for those gentlemen over there in the black suits with the sunglasses and guns?

Nah, they're good. But look, if a muscular lady who looks like my wife walks in here, then this kid in the green shirt is the one having the burrito, you undertand?