COP27 is the term used to refer to the 27th annual United Nations Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC [United Nations Framework on Climate Change Conference) taking place last week and this week in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.

The New York Times has a COP27 explainer with a Q and A

What is at stake at COP27?  This conference will test whether the international community can respond to the increasing urgency of the crisis.  Alden Meyer, an environmental activist and policy analyst who has attended 25 of the past 26 COPs said the global negotiations must evolve from haggling over verbiage in legal treaties to helping countries meet their emissions pledges in time to avoid more climate catastrophes and protect the most vulnerable nations.

This may be the 27th such conference, but it is the first to deal with the intersection of food production and consumption with climate change: how climate change affects agriculture and food systems and how agriculture and food systems affect climate change.

For the first time, several pavilions are devoted to food systems, this one specifically.

Food Tank is managing some of the programs at these pavilions.  Its president, Danielle Nierenberg, reports on them daily at this site

The official UN news site is here.

On November 12, agriculture was the theme of the day.   This is explained in a short video. 

Water was yesterday’s theme.

I’ve been trying to follow the events from Nierenberg’s comments and from the occasional article in the New York Times, for example, here (what the fights are about), here (videos of speeches), and here (protest and hunger strikes).

The Food4Climate pavilion’s YouTube channel for live streams and videos is here.

The Rockefeller Foundation is involved in COP27.  It sponsors a food and agriculture pavilion.

The Foundation also has produced a film, Food 2050.  The trailer is here.

I’m particularly interested in this film because Rupa Marya, who is attending the conference, says I’m in it and sent me this screen shot (I’m not in the trailer).

Will anything good come out of this COP27?  I’m inspired by this speech from the head of the World Health Organization.  Bringing these issues to public attention might help.

Since 2020, the food & energy sectors’ fortune has grown by $382 billion, while 3+ billion people can’t afford a healthy diet. Food systems have become a top contributor to environmental degradation, threatening health. That’s why the #ClimateAction & Nutrition initiative is key. pic.twitter.com/dNIR1cQsX4

— Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (@DrTedros) November 12, 2022

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Hat tip to Matthew Kadey for this one.  It’s a great example of a study title that makes me want to know : Who paid for this?

• The study: Randy L. Aldret, Michael McDermott, Stephanie Aldret, Greggory Davis and David Bellar. The Acute Effects of a Maple Water Drink on Exercise Responses, Oxidative Stress and Inflammation in Overweight College Males. Journal of Food and Nutrition Research. 2022; 10(9):593-599. doi: 10.12691/jfnr-10-9-2
• Rationale: “The purpose of this study was to examine the acute effect of maple water on exercise responses and biomarkers of post-exercise inflammation and muscle damage in an overweight male college population.”
• Method: “The treatments for the study consisted of 12 fluid ounces (355ml) of pure MW (Drink Simple Maple Water, Drink Maple LLC) or an identical volume of distilled water flavored with maple extract to mimic the smell and taste.”
• Conclusion: “Early outcomes indicate maple water has positive benefits for those that exercise in the areas of cardiovascular fitness and post exercise inflammation.”
• Competing Interests: “The authors declare the following real or perceived conflicts of interest in the context of this study: financial conflict of interest, as this study was funded in part by grants from Drink Simple LLC (Grant #370261).”
• Comment:  The comparison here is maple water versus plain water.  Maple water contains sugars and electrolytes (potassium, manganese, calcium); the water placebo does not.  The result seems predictable from the funder, as is the study design.

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I’ve been doing this blog for years, but have very little idea of whether anyone looks at it or whether it is at all useful.  But every now and then, I hear that it just might be.  Here is an example with a happy ending.

Harold McGee just sent me a copy of the new paperback edition of his book, Nose Dive, with a note saying “Thanks for the index.”

The book, as I explained in my first post about it in 2020, is a marvelous encyclopedia of everything known about the sense of smell and the smells of everything from from foods, of course, but also everything else that smells from soil to armpits to flowers.  I thought the book was amazing—right up there with his classic On Foods and Cooking.  Alas, I had one serious complaint about it.

But uh oh.  How I wish it had a better index. 

For a book like this, the index needs to be meticulously complete—list every bold face term every time it appears—so readers can find what we are looking for.  This one is surprisingly unhelpful.

I found this out because I forgot to write down the page number for the fatty acid excerpt shown above.  I searched the index for most of the key words that appear in the clip: fatty acids, short and branched; butyric; methylbutyric; hexanoic; cheesy; intersteller space. No luck.  I had to check through all of the fatty acid listings and finally found it under “fatty acids, and molecules in asteroids, 19.”   Oh.  Asteroids.  Silly me.

I also forgot to note the page for the CAFO quote.  CAFO is not indexed at all, even though it appears in bold on the previous page, and neither does its definition, Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation.

McGee refers frequently to “Hero Carbon,” the atom basic to odiferous molecules.  I couldn’t remember where he first used “Hero” and tried to look it up.  Not a chance.

This book deserves better, alas.

Penguin Press:  this needs a fix, big time.

I talked to McGee about the index problem.  Penguin had given him a limit on index entries.

He wrote me recently that when Penguin asked him to file any corrections for the paperback edition,

I sent them your review and told them I’d be willing to redo the index myself, stem to stern. After several weeks they agreed. It was exhausting. But the paperback came out last week, so now there’s a decent index available. Maybe I can put it online for hardover owners.  So: thanks again for taking the trouble to make the case!

Happy ending indeed.

Have anything like this you want complained about?  I’ll be glad to help.  Sometimes complaints get results.

And thanks Harold, for this truly remarkable book—and for making me think doing this blog is worthwhile.

The Food Foundation in Great Britain has produced a report on the status of the British food industry.

The full report is here.

Here’s what the writers of the report would like the food industry to do:

Like American food companies, British food companies put profits to shareholders as their top priority.  Knowing this, the report calls on government to set mandatory standards.

We need to do this too.

Here’s a report worth reading:

For reasons of history—and, alas, racism—laws requiring minimum wages do not apply to restaurant workers, farm workers, and home employment workers, all mostly people of color.

This report focuses on restaurant workers who depend on tips:

Unique among pay inequities, the subminimum wage for tipped workers was an original pay gap created intentionally to deny Black women any wage at all, forcing them to live on tips. This original and intentional pay inequity has been compounded over the last 160 years since Emancipation by ongoing inequities in hiring by employers and tipping and harassment by customers — resulting in an unlivable situation for Black women. The fact that Black women persist in the restaurant industry is a testament to many of these workers’ pride in their work as hospitality professionals who deserve to be remunerated as such.

The report offers three key findings:

• Black women in the industry continue to earn less than white men.
• Black women are more likely to not earn enough tips to bring them to the minimum wage, and more likely to experience customer harassment.
• Black women are leaving the industry, but are more resilient than others.

It presents data arguing for having minimum wage laws apply to all workers.  Seven states have passed such laws; the rest need to.

A big question for discussion is whether plant-based meat alternatives are better for health and the environment than regulat meat.  Are they?  Here is one study.

Plant-based animal product alternatives are healthier and more environmentally sustainable than animal products.  
Christopher J. Bryant.  Front Nutr.  2022 Jul 19;9:934438.   doi: 10.3389/fnut.2022.934438. eCollection 2022.

Rationale:   There are strong reasons to move away from industrial animal agriculture for the good of the environment, animals, our personal health, and public health. Plant-based animal product alternatives (PB-APAs) represent a highly feasible way to reduce animal product consumption, since they address the core consumer decision drivers of taste, price, and convenience.

Method: This paper reviews 43 studies on the healthiness and environmental sustainability of PB-APAs compared to animal products.

Findings:  In terms of environmental sustainability, PB-APAs are more sustainable compared to animal products across a range of outcomes including greenhouse gas emissions, water use, land use, and other outcomes. In terms of healthiness, PB-APAs present a number of benefits, including generally favourable nutritional profiles, aiding weight loss and muscle synthesis, and catering to specific health conditions.

Conclusion:  As more conventional meat producers move into plant-based meat products, consumers and policymakers should resist naturalistic heuristics about PB-APAs and instead embrace their benefits for the environment, public health, personal health, and animals.

Conflict of interest: Although there is no specific conflict of interest or funding related to this project, the author is an independent research consultant and works with alternative protein companies.

Comment:  You would think that plant-based meat alternatives would be better for the environment than beef but without an agreed-upon method for assessing environmental impact, much depends on researchers’ assumptions.  This literature review was done by a consultant who does research for companies making alternative-to-meat proteins.   His conclusion based on his study—the takeover of small plant-based meat companies by Big Meat is a Good Thing—is predictable from his conflicted interest.  I’d prefer an independent assessment of the environmental implications of these products.

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TODAY: Seattle Town Hall, 7:30 p.m.  Information is here.

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For 30% off, go to www.ucpress.edu/9780520384156.  Use code 21W2240 at checkout.