Writing this post from the campus of Northeastern University in Boston. I'm at a conference of food activists, attending workshops and the like.
This post is going to be a bit diffuse and broad-brush, a summary of all the cool things I learned this morning. A lot of these issues require much more in-depth research and discussion. So I'll come back to many of them in future postings. For now the smorgasbord:
State-Owned Banks
This is an issue I had not thought or heard about before today. North Dakota is an example of a place with a state-owned bank. The advantage is that the bank can respond to regional issues in a way that multinational corporations like Bank of America or Chase simply cannot do. For example: a hail-storm wipes out all the crops in North Dakota. BoA has no sympathy. A state=owned bank, with closer ties to the farmers, can forgive that year's payments because it understands the local issues. In other words, local economies require local financing and a fundamental overhaul of the American monetary/banking system. Oregon and Maryland have state-owned banks in the works.
/Nutritional mythology and misleading terminology
Is sugar really just an empty calorie? A more accurate term might be anti-nutrient, since sugar impairs the body's ability to absorb b vitamins and minerals.
Is childhood obesity an epidemic? Or is it just a symptom of declining childhood health, which actually contributes to a host of diseases such as asthma, eczema, diabetes, and cancer.
More later...
