Using public records of grocery store locations and vehicle ownership, the USDA has mapped the locations of “food deserts,” regions where people lack access to decent food. Such areas have been popular to talk about and speculate about, but this is the first effort that I’m aware of to actually locate and measure them. →
Tag Archives: diet
Links for October 14th
Science News: Columbus Blamed For Little Ice AgeHere's a fun theory of the origin of the Little Ice Age, lasting from around 1550–1850: that massive losses of New World population, as a result of disease spread by explorers, resulted in reforestation of huge swaths of the Americas, removing billions of tons of CO2 from the …
Links for October 5th
Chattanooga Times-Free Press: 96-year-old Chattanooga resident denied voting IDDorothy Cooper even managed to vote under Jim Crow, but the Tennessee Republican Party has proved to be one obstacle she can't overcome. She's never driven, so she has no driver's license. She tried to get a photo ID, but she has to present her marriage certificate, …
The false hope of vitamin supplements.
In the New York Times, Tara Parker-Pope looks at the (possible) false hope of vitamin supplements. Vitamins are essential—we’d quickly die without them. But it’s looking increasingly likely that vitamin supplements—vitamins in pill form—are significantly less effective than vitamins that occur naturally, in food. Vitamins may be what allow our bodies to avoid the sorts …
Corn syrup industry on the defense.
I just saw a sort of a jaw-dropping commercial run by the Corn Refiners Association to promote corn syrup. One woman is telling another that it’s probably not a good idea to give her child a drink from a gallon jug of one of those “fruit drinks” (that come in such flavors as purple and …