I don’t ask, “Is Italy a great country?” Everybody knows that. It produced Dante, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Chef Boy-Ar-Dee. The question before us now is this one: Is Italy the greatest country?
I ask because late yesterday afternoon, I was at Caffe Tancredi, a tiny bar off the piazza here in Norcia, having a Birra Nursia, when the young woman standing next to me struck up a conversation in English.
How does the food we eat affect us as people? Michael Pollan’s books—The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Cooked, In Defense of Food, and others—consider the history and science behind the way we eat, and how our eating habits have changed over time. His books often lead us on a sort of journey: in The Omnivore’s Dilemma, he spends a few weeks farming with Joel Salatin, then goes on to learn how to forage for mushrooms and hunt wild boar. His journeys are usually structured around a question about food and our relationship to it: why do we farm this way?
Presented with little comment but one glance at this idiocy - which ignited the moment European stock markets closed at 1130ET, running stops to last night's API cliff-dive and which snapped US equities higher - and you know what a farce our markets have become...
Seriously...
A Republican member of the New York State Senate wants to introduce a bill to prevent people on food stamps purchasing luxury food items and stop them getting fat. The Independent reports: Republican State Senator Patty Ritchie wants to prevent folks from buying high-end items such as steaks and lobsters. She also wants to limit the purchases of non-nutritional items like decorated cakes and energy drinks.
Submitted by Mark Tovey via The Mises Institute,