Rob Bennett for The New York Times
Sell-by dates: maybe not so ironclad.
The San Francisco Department of Public Health released a map that shows just how many full-time minimum wage jobs you’d need to rent a two-bedroom apartment in San Francisco at fair market rates. The number of jobs ranges from three to eight.
From The Atlantic: how being poor affects your cognitive abilities. The gist is that poverty imposes such a crushing cognitive load that the poor have little remaining mental bandwidth to do many of the things that could lift them out of poverty. Related: Canadian anti-poverty activist Nick Saul is warning Great Britain against adopting the food bank model—”privileged people helping the underprivileged, perpetuating an us-and-them atmosphere”—because it fails to address the root causes of hunger.
In that vein, here’s a tale of two farmers markets—one in a relatively affluent area and one in a poor area—in Maryland, and what it can teach us about helping others.
According to a new report, use-by dates are contributing to millions of pounds of wasted food each year. As it turns out, these dates actually aren’t related to the risk of food poisoning or foodborne illness. More on food safety: Perhaps Homeland Security should divert some of its attention from Al Qaeda to cantaloupe, as Americans are 110 times more likely to die from contaminated food than from terrorism. Plus this: A new report from the Centers for Disease Control found that two million people in the United States acquire antibiotic-resistant infections, and 23,000 die from them every year. Blame factory farming.
As I’m sure you’ve heard, the House voted to cut $40 billion from SNAP, but before the vote, Rep. Jackie Speier spent five minutes on the House floor calling out Republican lawmakers for taking lavish trips to foreign countries and spending more in a week on wining and dining than a food stamp recipient would spend in a year. Meanwhile, Panera Bread C.E.O. Ron Shaich is trying to get by on the average amount allocated SNAP participants—$4.50 a day for a week. It’s not going well. “I can’t even go into a Panera,” he said.
Doug Rauch, the former president of Trader Joe’s, is launching a project called The Daily Table, which will sell prepared food, fruits and vegetables that are past their sell-by dates yet are still deemed safe to eat. Rauch aims to use some of the industry’s estimated $47 million of food that’s wasted each year to help feed lower income communities.
Here’s a depressing new gallery of cafeteria lunches submitted by random high school students from across the country. And more potentially bad news: Chinese-processed chicken—from a country with troubling safety standards—may appear on American school lunch trays, as school districts source considerable amounts of their food from private vendors. Speaking of China, this man turned green from eating too many fried river snails in Guizhou Province.
Burger King’s Satisfries have 30 percent fewer calories and 40 percent less fat than a similar serving of McDonald’s fries. Meanwhile, Chipotle has taken the bacon out of their pinto beans. Progress on the fast food front?
Interesting: Popular Science is shutting down reader comments. Why? “A politically motivated, decades-long war on expertise has eroded the popular consensus on a wide variety of scientifically validated topics. Everything, from evolution to the origins of climate change, is mistakenly up for grabs again.”
Guess who’s jumping on the meatless Monday bandwagon? Iran and Israel. (If that’s what it takes, that’s what it takes.) First meatless, next eggless? Noting that 70 percent of the cost of an egg comes from chicken feed, Hampton Creek Foods in San Francisco is searching the world for plants that can do everything an egg can do.
A previous version of this post misstated the location of two farmers markets. They are in Maryland, not Virginia.