We Are What We Pay To Grow

Interesting article in the New York Times caught my eye recently. Entitled "You Are What You Grow", the article seeks to explore why the most reliable predictor of a person's obesity in America today is that it is inversely proportional to a person's wealth, which doesn't make sense, intuitively. Why do poor people get fat which rich people stay thin?

The answer lies in the number of calories available per dollar in American supermarkets. Cheap processed foods and snacks lack vast amounts of calories, whereas fresh produce is more expensive and has far fewer calories. So for example, 1 dollar can buy you 1,200 calories of coolies or potato chips but only 250 calories of carrots; 875 of soda but only 170 calories of fresh orange juice. So the rational economic strategy if you are eating on a restricted budget is to eat cheap processed foods, from which you can get all your necessary calories but which make you fat.

This perverse situation is due largely to America's Farm Bill, a relic of the 1930s which heavily subsidises five crops- corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton and rice. As a result, it is far cheaper to make and sell a heavily processed food or drink item out of these products, even with all the necessary industrial inputs and energy costs, then it is to grow and sell produce. Thus, the price differential in the supermarket.

What really interested me is how this Farm Bill not just dictates the American food system, but has a massive impact on the global food system. This system has impacts on the environment, on poverty, and even on immigration. Most directly, it impacts our own food systems and diets all over the world. By depressing the price of basic crops, it enables many of these unhealthy products to invade foreign dining tables all over the world and push aside healthier local varieties of food.

It's not just America, either: Europe has lived with the Common Agricultural Policy for much too long. But I believe with the growth of the organic movement (which seems to have taken a very firm hold here in Britain) will come increasing awareness that legislation like the Farm Bill and the CAP artificially distorts the market and increases the cost of eating healthily, hitting our waistlines. Perhaps this will convince voters in the first world to act: It's one thing to be concerned about the plight of African farmers in an abstract way, but it's a much more effective tool to change peoples' minds by telling them that their food is artificially expensive and their health and waistlines are suffering as a result.

Let's Play Monopoly

My take on the Ministerial pay increase:

The People's Action Party likes to talk about the government of Singapore as if it were a company. If we work with that assumption, then the PAP is selling us a service, and it's a monopoly. As a monopoly, it can charge whatever price it wants for its service. Thus, if we want competitive pricing for the service, we have to break the monopoly and introduce competition. In the absence of an anti-trust authority, there is only one body that the PAP is ultimately responsible to: the voters.

So, if are angry and upset about the ministerial pay increase, let the PAP know- vote. If you are upset about falling levels of income, or lower standards of living, or the rising cost of healthcare, let the PAP know- vote. Let's be honest: the PAP is not going to lose the next election. But they have taken for granted the votes of our electorate for too long, and we need to remind them that the job of government is to serve its citizens.

Historically, the one thing that the PAP have always respected is the ballot box. Vote, and they will listen.

"The Chap" on University

From The Chap:

Whilst this magazine offers much advice and counsel to those people to whom Chappism does not come naturally, it is vital that attention is paid to the next generation of gentlemen. Callow-faced youths may be too easily distracted from the path of dignity and sophistication by the barbaric caterwauls of popular music, or worse, the lure of denim and nylon. They may never know of the joy of the briar, the sparkle of a vodka martini or the pleasure of relieving Mr Ladbroke of 60 guineas after the 3.15 at Doncaster. The young are at their most vulnerable on fleeing the security of the family home or the public school, and being surrounded by like-minded ingrates who may have the audacity to assume that seventeen pints of “snakebite” in a sticky floored “nightclub” is the essence of existence. Thus, this guide is aimed at those young people thinking of or already attending university. By following these instructions, a member of the younger generation can maintain their respect and be looked upon by the general public as an example of unbridled panache and elan, rather than a tax-dodging, bedizened loafer.

There is, of course, only one university in Britain, and that is Oxford. Many other cities and towns claim that they also have similar establishments, but a true chap would blush from spending three of their formative years in some concrete monstrosity of the Midlands, or the dark satanic mills of the North. One is not to be fooled either by members of the royal family who opt to join the arts-and-craft communities of our Caledonian cousins. Intelligent homosexuals are permitted to attend the University of Cambridge, which offers a variety of courses on espionage leading to worthy careers working for the KGB in mysterious buildings south of the Thames.

Oxford, as you are doubtless aware (but those you wish to influence may not be) is made up of a number of colleges, and it is essential to chose appropriately. Otherwise one will be mired in some Stygian examination-factory full of northern scholars and other low personages, and one will but hear rumours of gentle sophistication, and occasionally catch a glimpse of fine fellows clad in finest tweed in retreat from lecture theatres in search of splendid beverages. Christ Church and Keble come highly recommended, Keble particularly, as it has high church connections, which always come in useful when explaining one’s actions to the magistrate. Lincoln is also tolerable, and possibly Magdalen (although our old scout warns us that they admit what he calls “grungy sorts” as well these days).

If these fail, then St John’s, Trinity, University, Worcester and St Benet’s Hall will suffice, although you will be in a minority, and must treat your time there much as a nineteenth century missionary would have in attempting to spread the Chappist credo. Sadly, even Oxford has its hot-beds of all-embracing radicalism and rent strikes which must be avoided at all costs: for example Pembroke, and to some extent Wadham, Somerville, Exeter, Hertford and Queen’s. Balliol can have its over-enthusiastic students, but has enough of a tweed-clad contingent to make it bearable.

On arrival at one’s college, one must immediately redecorate one’s rooms with black leather wallpaper, peacock fathers, a sheaf of assegais over the chimneypiece, several daguerreotypes of oneself on safari, a collection of shrunken heads, a Nantucket harpoon (“went whaling in me gap year”) and leather-bound, travel-bruised editions of ‘Sapper’, John Buchan, Biggles, “artistic” magazines, Thesiger (Ernest, not Wilfred) and volumes of Symbolist poetry. If one’s finances run to it, employ an amusing dwarf to pass round the cocktails; but if one is financially embarrassed, make do with a pet badger with a tray of canapés strapped to its back.

A miniscule proportion of your time at these temples of education could be spent desperately trying to complete assessments or cram for examinations, so it is essential to chose a course that will pose no intellectual challenge whatsoever (and where you may also meet like-minded gentlemen). Therefore, at all costs, one must choose an Arts subject that one is already vaguely knowledgeable about. No interesting books have been written since Mr Rider Haggard’s splendid King Solomon’s Mines in 1885, so English literature is unlikely to expand in the near future. Likewise History has remained fairly stagnant since the Relief of Mafeking. Foreign languages are also a gentle option, as it matters not if one graduates without being able to speak a word of a foreign lingo, The Chap having recently begun a policy of scattering copies of this august publication overseas. Therefore not only will Johnny Foreigner speak the Chap’s English, they will also be able to advise on the nearest establishment where one’s moustache can be appropriately waxed.

The sciences are to be avoided at all costs. Not only are they exceedingly difficult and require a gentleman to spend inordinate amounts of time in a laboratory staring blankly at the periodic table, but also one will be surrounded by the strangest sort of creature one would fear to meet.

These fellows (there are no ladies in the world of the scientist) will have a complexion that appears never to have seen sunlight, hair that has never been in contact with a barber’s implements, nor even a plunge of brilliantine, and their garb will consist of ill-fitting black “t-shirts” bearing extraordinary messages, such as “Napalm Death” or shiny acrylic garments bearing the legend “Sunderland FC”. A true chap will never gain a degree in science, as the horror of these forced-upon companions will send him fleeing from the building to settle in a dingy cellar for three years’ contemplation with the hookah.

The main dangers to which one’s dignity will be exposed will come from other people. Sadly, as ever in this brave new world, not everyone lives on a diet of couth manners, esoteric literature and impressive liqueurs, and at university one will be exposed to these others, therefore one should choose one’s friends with more care than normal. When joining societies, it is imperative that future implications are considered. What may at first seem like an elegant collection of young gentlemen of the Hellfire Society may soon become a pathetic collection of pock-marked specimens comparing episodes of American television programmes set in outer space and bemoaning the continuation of their virginity in little over two months. However, when one inevitably becomes President of the Union, using nefarious methods made traditional by the least civilised members of the Empire, the opportunity to surround oneself with the most sparkling minds, and perhaps a dazzling lady to make the tea and begin your biography, will present itself. It is at this point that one will require the elimination of the dreadful fellows that were met during the early days of term, with their “I did rather well in my A-levels, two Cs and a D”; “after Coventry I went travelling to Leicester, but it’s simply too commercial and popular these days, so we hitched to Derby and travelled there for a while” and “I do miss my mum, I want to go home, where’s teddy?”

Should the Chap not wish to attend Oxford the only other establishments worth frequenting are the Universities of Heidelberg and Ruritania. At the former one can obtain duelling scars, blood-brotherhood, Palatinate beer and flaxen-haired maidens; at the latter one can wear funny hats, partake in comic-opera revolutions, and end up as Minister of Culture (where one can make statutory the Noonday Absinthe Power Nap). Do not make the mistake of going to the Sorbonne. Instead of sipping a Pastis and swapping bons mots with Henri de Montherlant, one will find oneself ripping up the agreeable cobblestones of the Boul’ Mich’ and lobbing them at blue-chinned riot police – scarcely the way a gentleman wishes to spend his education.

At the end of the academic year, one will spend a few hours in a fractious hall easing through the examinations, where, in three hours, one will produce more written work than has been done in the whole of the previous nine months. Contrary to advice, one should never read the exam questions too closely, but simply write all that one knows about a particular subject, and assume that, in the midst of it, a fusty academic will discover that you are far too clever for his silly questions and award you the highest mark imaginable.

The true ur-chap will, however, never set foot in an examination hall, having contrived to be rusticated mid way through his final year for stoning the college swan to death with empty gin bottles.

Easter Parade

I was recently sent Project Gay's excellent review of Easter Parade. It combines witty commentary with historical insight and clever analysis.

For example:

Someday, we're going to write a treatise on the crazy hats women wear in musicals. We propose that because there was so much sexual repression in these films, the outrageous hats are supposed to represent vaginas on top of their heads. It's why so many of the men had walking sticks too.

Think about it.

Judging by the things Fred did to his walking stick in this movie and in Blue Skies, he had a penchant for self-abuse.

Ah, look how he lovingly caresses his stick.