Home of the hamburger, home of ammonia-treated beef waste

'Food' product made from ammonia-treated beef that includes "fatty trimmings the industry once relegated to pet food and cooking oil..."

Oh yuck...

Eight years ago, federal officials were struggling to remove potentially deadly E. coli from hamburgers when an entrepreneurial company from South Dakota came up with a novel idea: injecting beef with ammonia.

The company, Beef Products Inc., had been looking to expand into the hamburger business with a product made from beef that included fatty trimmings the industry once relegated to pet food and cooking oil. The trimmings were particularly susceptible to contamination, but a study commissioned by the company showed that the ammonia process would kill E. coli as well as salmonella.

[...]

With the U.S.D.A.’s stamp of approval, the company’s processed beef has become a mainstay in America’s hamburgers. McDonald’s, Burger King and other fast-food giants use it as a component in ground beef, as do grocery chains. The federal school lunch program used an estimated 5.5 million pounds of the processed beef last year alone.

But government and industry records obtained by The New York Times show that in testing for the school lunch program, E. coli and salmonella pathogens have been found dozens of times in Beef Products meat, challenging claims by the company and the U.S.D.A. about the effectiveness of the treatment.

[...]

In response, the agriculture department said it was revoking Beef Products’ exemption from routine testing and conducting a review of the company’s operations and research. The department said it was also reversing its policy for handling Beef Products during pathogen outbreaks. Since it was seen as pathogen-free, the processed beef was excluded from recalls, even when it was an ingredient in hamburgers found to be contaminated.

[...]

Mr. Roth and others in the industry had discovered that liquefying the fat and extracting the protein from the trimmings in a centrifuge resulted in a lean product that was desirable to hamburger-makers...

This is an extract from a 4 page article from the New York Times. I think any American who is not a vegetarian must be a) extraordinarily conscientious about where they source their food, b) extremely deluded or c) downright insane. I suspect most fall into the latter two categories. There is just so much stuff over there that is sold as food that really has no right to be called such. God forbid that ever happens to our food supply over here to the same extent in Australia. We already have disgraceful conditions allowed for farming of pigs and poultry. Moves are underfoot in New Zealand towards introducing US-style feedlot dairies. Let's hope for progressive, not regressive, policies on food and agriculture in Australia in 2010. Lord knows it's probably too late for the US, poor bastards.

Healthy diet costs double for poor families

Ugh, finally.

For some time now, so-called 'researchers' and academics in Australia have discounted the 'food desert' phenomenon that has been found to exist in the US and Britain. They proclaimed that fruit and vegetables are available even in areas of Australian cities considered to be of low socioeconomic status and that the prices of those fruits and vegetables were not significantly higher, ergo affordability was not a factor in the failure of people from low socioeconomic groups to consume a healthy, balanced diet.

Ignoring, of course, that the proportion of income that a non-wealthy person's food bill consumes is much, much higher and that regardless of equality of cost across urban regions, fruit and vegetables cost exponentially more per kilojoule, meaning it is more cost effective to consume a more energy-dense and less healthy diet.

Finally, someone with more than an ounce of common sense to scrape together has done a study on the bleeding obvious:

A welfare-dependent family of four would spend nearly half of its total weekly income on the healthy meal plan (44 per cent or 38 per cent using generic brands), compared with 18 per cent for an average-income family (16 per cent with generic brands).

Now, considering that rent also takes up a large proportion of poorer peoples' income (often upwards of 30%), that leaves around 25% of a meagre income to cover utilities, clothing, fuel, education etc. Achievable?

New Zealand's international woman of idiocy

I saw a spate of headlines recently, all on the websites of Murdoch-rags, on a 24-year-old moron mother-of-one lost 45kg over 8 months by drinking 'nothing but the energy drink Red Bull'. Somehow it was spun into a story on the dangers of Red Bull, a tale that would take an incredible amount of ignorance to conjure up, and even more to believe.

If this silly young woman did go to such extraordinary lengths to lose that weight, the reason she developed a heart murmur was more probably a result of a nutritional deficiency- my guess would be potassium- than the particular brand of energy drink that she was consuming. Eight months drinking nothing but any kind of fizzy drink, or even coffee and a person would be lucky to be alive. Despite this, talk of bans on the product abounded in the media, with a pretty obvious insinuation that the 'dangers' posed by the product meant the same should happen in countries where bans had not already been implemented (i.e. most of them). As for the 'anxiety attacks' being caused by Red Bull- pffft.

Given that she lost a relatively piddling amount of weight for her eight months on such a stupid diet, I highly doubt the woman's tale that Red Bull and the odd handful of cereal was all she consumed. She lost only 5.6kg per month- about 1.4kg per week, an amount achieveable through a healthy diet or a commercial weight-loss diet such as Jenny Craig. If this woman had consumed only Red Bull she probably would have suffered muscle wasting and lost quite a bit of weight due to that alone.

Not a single article I read on this 'story' bothered to quote a doctor or a dietitian on any of the following:

a) the veracity of the story

b) the likely cause of the health problems attributed to Red Bull

c) the complete and utter stupidity of a 'diet' of this kind and the actual health problems and nutritional deficiencies that could be expected to arise should anyone else (and it's plausible, given the typical readers of the papers this story was printed in) be stupid enough to try it.

Food Investigators fail: In defence of baked beans, common sense

It was much to my surprise that new SBS show Food Investigators and I got off on the wrong foot right from the start. That it improved significantly from their first, pretty disgraceful, gimmick was a huge relief.

What annoyed me so much?

The stupid 'quiz' they presented to people on what contained the most salt 'per serving'- was it baked beans, cornflakes, chips or (bread? I can't remember)?

See, while it's pretty obvious that serving sizes can differ between products for a good reason- you're going to eat a much larger quantity of baked beans as part of a meal than, say, soy sauce, serving sizes can also differ between products as part of a ploy by the manufacturer to make the product look like it doesn't contain a lot of a particular 'undesirable' nutrient.

For example, you might buy a bar of chocolate and see on the package that the chocolate provides only 16% of the recommended 'daily % fat' per serve. Pretty good, huh? You don't have to feel 'guilty' about eating your chocolate. That is, unless you read the small print in the nutrition panel where it states that one serve equals a measly 4 squares. And seriously, who limits themselves to 4 squares of chocolate if they have a whole bar? Pretty much no-one, that's who. The food manufacturers are entirely aware of this.

It's a trick of psychology whereby the manufacturer uses a tiny figure for serving size that they know makes the product appear healthier than it really is to the average consumer (who is generally too lazy to check out the nutrition panel). The average consumer will then eat more of this product based on the belief that it's really not too bad for them.

I'm willing to bet that the 'serving size' stated on the chips used in Food Investigators was somewhere around 50g, certainly no higher. When you put that up against a 150g serving of baked beans (note the serving size is three times larger) of course the baked beans are going to look bad. Not as bad as you might expect, however: the 50g serving of chips will probably contribute around 300mg of salt to the diet, while the 150g of baked beans will contain around 400mg. Looking at the amount of salt per 100g, the baked beans contain around 267mg of salt, while the chips contain a whopping 600mg. Not so much shock value in the baked beans now, is there?

Now, I'm not inclined to believe that the people behind Food Investigators are ignorant of this kind of gimmick by food manufacturers. So I can only put their decision to play the same trick on ordinary consumers as indulging in sensationalist crap where none was necessary. It's mean, and it's deliberately misleading.

In addition, with very few exceptions it makes no sense at all to look at a single nutrient in isolation from the nutrients contained in the rest of the food and using that as basis to condemn the food to exclusion from the diet. Rather than singling out, for example, baked beans as being 'bad' based on the fact that they contain higher amounts of salt 'per serve', we need to look at what a single serve of baked beans will contribute to a person's diet compared with what a single serve of chips will contribute. And let's get to the point: chips contribute shit-all when it comes to nutrition.

That 50g serve of chips is likely to be consumed as a snack, not a meal, meaning that the salt you consume in the chips comes on top of the salt contained in every other meal that day. The baked beans, on the other hand, are more likely to constitute a meal in themselves, maybe served with a bit of (preferably wholegrain) toast. For someone with salt-sensitive hypertension, they might want to choose salt-reduced baked beans, or make/bake their own lower-salt beans and bread, or choose something else entirely. But for the average person, 2 pieces of wholegrain toast with a 150g serve of baked beans is not an unacceptably salty meal- indeed, it contains less than one gram of salt (the recommended daily intake for adults is no more than 4g). In addition, the meal contains very little fat- certainly something chips cannot boast of, is high in protein, dietary fibre and complex carbohydrates, all of which are lacking in chips.

While Food Investigators inevitably reached a sound conclusion in this segment, namely that people should rely less on processed foods, they did a disservice to anyone interested in improving their health via good nutrition. Looking realistically at the place for baked beans vs chips in the diet, it makes no sense to single out and sensationalise the fact that baked beans contain more salt 'per serve' than chips.

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The only other thing I found particularly bothersome was one aspect of the 'superfoods' segment. Given that one of the presenters is a food technologist, I can only presume that he, just as I did, learned about the process of picking, cooling, packaging and transport of different fruits and vegetables as part of his degree. Although it was 'Emergency Room (!?) Doctor' Renee Lim who presented the segment and made the blunder I'm about to mention, I feel that whatsisface-the-food-technologist probably has a duty to correct these kind of idiocies.

While it should be pretty obvious to all that $50/kg dried Tibetan gojiberries are a massive rort of the public's hunger for 'superfoods', Dr Lim decided to single out blueberries for their high price per punnet ($6.95).

That's dead stupid for a couple of reasons. Not only are blueberries a highly seasonal product, they are unable to be ripened after being picked like, say, tomatoes are. As a result, upon picking the fruit are ripe and fragile and soft and so naturally have an extremely short shelf life. They must be subjected to immediate cooling (as close to instant as technologically feasible), which requires expensive equipment, then packaged and shipped around the country as quickly as possible before they start to deteriorate. God knows they, like so many other fruits and vegetables, are probably sprayed with some horrible chemicals to slow the inevitable deterioration, too, but their shelf-life is still extraordinarily short compared with a lot of other fruits. In addition, the short shelf life probably means that the seller- let's say a supermarket- has to throw out a lot of product, which costs them money and raises the price for consumers.

What's more, blueberries have always been expensive, thanks to the reasons mentioned above. The fad for blueberries as a 'superfood', however, only began around 5-7 years ago, and yet the price doesn't appear to have increased significantly more than any other fruit or vegetable. You will note that other berries are equally, if not more expensive than blueberries for the very same reason.

So, yeah. Food Investigators: STFU about blueberries. I'm sure retailers do their fair share of ripping off customers when they can get away with it, but this isn't one of those times.

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Apart from these gripes, the show is streets ahead of anything you'll see on the commercial channels. A great concept, if not perfectly executed. I think the average person could get a lot out of it, as long as they don't have to sort through too much dross of the kind mentioned above.

Instead of buying babies, Salma breastfeeds

I would just like to say how awesome it is for Salma Hayek to have single-handedly booted western attitudes towards breastfeeding forward by a century or so by cross-nursing a little baby in Sierra Leone. It's really unfortunate that in this day and age, even in Australia, people are willing to express negative attitudes towards breastfeeding and actively discourage mothers from doing so. I was really, really pleased to see overwhelmingly positive comments even on sites like the Courier Mail that are usually a conservative clusterfuck of a hatefest. Hopefully the example of Salma Hayek will go a long way to ensuring a permanent change in the way society views this perfectly natural practice that is still the only way to ensure that babies are optimally nourished- and that includes cross-nursing, wet-nursing or the provision of donor breast milk when the mother is unable to breastfeed.

Charlatans! Hmph!

What defines someone as a 'nutrition researcher'?

I asked myself this question after encountering this piece on the SMH website.

Initially, I went to the herdshare.com site because I thought the concept of having a 'share' in a cow and receiving a share of the raw milk that the cow produced was a fascinating one. I was curious to see whether Brisbane customers would be able to partake of the scheme.

Then I thought- a 'nutrition researcher' in Byron Bay? There's no university in Byron Bay where nutrition research would take place, right? When I think of Byron Bay, I think... hippies (and rich Sydney people driving up real estate prices). When I think of raw milk, I think... hippies... hang on... so who is this Joanne Hay, who 'journalist' Samantha Wright of the Sydney Morning Herald calls a 'nutrition researcher'?

Joanne Hay is:

Editor of Nourished Magazine, Chief Nourisher and Mother of three is very grateful to live in Byron Bay and be able to share all she has learned about Nourishment. She has trained as an Acupuncturist (unfinished), Kinesiologist (finished) and parent (never finished). She serves the Weston A Price Foundation as a chapter leader.

Soooo that may make Joanne Hay an Editor, a Kinesiologist (a what?), possibly even an Acupuncturist. Someone with an interest in nutrition, sure. But a nutrition researcher? No, not really. I suppose I'm technically a nutrition researcher, and all the people I work with are nutrition researchers. But by SMH journalist Samantha Wright's definition of 'nutrition researcher', every single person who read Nourished magazine would be a nutrition researcher.

I'm not bagging Joanne Hay, her beliefs (I don't know enough to make comment) or her raw milk shares scheme (which sounds kind of cool- I'm a bit iffy on the food safety aspects of it, but I'd have to look into whether there was any recent research literature on the subject and whether the authors of said literature had any particular barrel to push), but geez it annoys me to see people with questionable credentials promoted as credible authorities on matters pertaining to diet and health. Bleh.

Water mercenaries to pay for bad behaviour

The news that the Queensland State government is looking to implement fines upon establishments that charge people exhorbitant amounts of money for a drink of tap water reminded me of our experience at Fortitude Valley nightclub The Family when we were back in college. After forking over a $10 entry fee and having a couple of drinks, I was rather appalled to find that the water running through the taps in the bathroom was hot, in an attempt to make it unpalatable for anyone who tried to fill up a water bottle and drink for free. Because I really wanted a drink of water, I asked for some at the bar and was sold a tiny, 300mL bottle of Evian water for the princely sum of $6 (in 2002!!!). Which also happened to be the price we'd paid for each of the alcoholic drinks we'd ordered- and they contained more liquid. So it was actually cheaper to buy alcohol than water in that establishment. I found that horribly offensive, not to mention a practice potentially very detrimental to peoples' health.

I'm not sure I agree with the liquor licensing act allowing venues to charge 'a reasonable price' for tap water, because the definition of 'reasonable' appears to be left entirely up to the venue. And putting hot water through the taps is not only a huge waste of energy and therefore detrimental to the environment, it's a way of forcing people to pay for something that should be free. I think there should be fines followed by prolonged periods of closure mandated for establishments who abuse their customers in this way.

Food for thought on allergies...

From my readings today:

There has been an apparent increase in sensitization to nonfood allergens in westernized countries in recent decades,1 and unless mothers are ingesting more cats, molds, and tree pollens during pregnancy and lactation, it is hard to blame their diet for this increase.

Babies don't need a *%#!$@&! supplement

"I'm fine!"

Just a small piece of misinformation from a stupid New York Times journalist who clearly didn't bother to do the most basic research for the article 'An Oldie Vies for Nutrient of the Decade':

Sun avoiders and dark-skinned people absorb less UV radiation. People in the northern two-thirds of the country make little or no vitamin D in winter, and older people make less vitamin D in their skin and are less able to convert it into the hormone that the body uses. In addition, babies fed just breast milk consume little vitamin D unless given a supplement.

On the first sentence I'm being pedantic- it's not worth writing a post about on its own, but it is worth pointing out that 'sun avoiders' may absorb UV radiation just fine, they just don't receive it if they stay out of the sun.

The last sentence, about exclusively breastfed babies not consuming much vitamin D unless given a supplement, is patently false. Babies of mothers who aren't deficient in vitamin D will consume plenty of the vitamin and aren't at risk for deficiency during the first two months of life. After that, to maintain sufficient levels they require only 2 hours per week of sunshine. Geez. The only time a breastfeeding baby won't receive enough vitamin D is if the mother's level of exposure to the sun is minimal and her diet contains insufficient vitamin D to compensate for this, plus the baby is never exposed to sun. There are enough malevolent forces out there undermining breastfeeding as the best and healthiest method of feeding a baby without having the forces of the ignorant join them and adding to the burden.

A suggestion to Jane E. Brody: get your facts right before publishing an article in one of the world's biggest papers.

Rudd may tackle Australia's alcohol abuse epidemic

Back before the election I had a good bitch about the failure by the then Howard government and Kevin Rudd's then opposition to make any move toward countering the extremely high rates of alcohol abuse in Australia.

Seems like Kevin Rudd kept that particular policy well under wraps until now- probably because he knew it would bring down the full force of the Hotels Association and the alcoholic beverages industry down upon him and they would throw their weight behind Howard. Not to mention that they have media flunkies towing their line too.

Family First senator Steve Fielding, homophobic, censorious creep though he is, has an extremely good record in this area, and has been pushing for health warnings to appear on alcoholic beverage labels for some time.

Finally, it looks like we might have a PM who can see the sense in tackling what is not only a massive health issue but also a huge crime issue:

The estimated cost of the alcohol toll had doubled in the past eight years to $15 billion. Demands on police services had also soared with alcohol-generated problems now thought to account for as much as 80 per cent of police work, Mr Smeaton said.

Rudd says he wants to work with the state governments to find strategies to counter the high rates of binge drinking. My guess is that the states, being as bloated and corrupt as the Howard government was from an excessive amount of time spent in power, will fight Rudd every step of the way, backed by the hotels association and the liquor industry. But at least his intentions seem good.

Cosmpolitan recipe

I'm one of those people that go mad for food cravings. The other week when I was craving Earl Grey tea I swear I kept smelling it everywhere I went. Then, after I'd got my Earl Grey fix, I was convinced I was having an olfactory hallucination when we were at the bus stop and I could distinctly smell my latest craving, my favourite liqueur in all the world, Cointreau. This time I wasn't going crazy- it was just some guy eating slices of orange with the skin on (hence the Cointreau-like smell) from a little tub of fruit salad.

Today, Gam triggered a cranberry juice craving by mentioning how he liked SPC cranberry sauce better than the Ocean Spray brand we bought for Christmas. I disagreed, saying I preferred the Ocean Spray brand because it was a bit less sweet, and then mentioned how I find all cranberry sauce too sweet in comparison with the delicious tartness of cranberry juice. Of course, at the mere mention of cranberry juice my mouth started watering...

I just so happened I had half a jug of cosmopolitan in the freezer from our BBQ the other day, so I decided to have a glass or two of cosmopolitan 'granita' to sate my cranberry craving. It's better than that- it contains Cointreau too... mmm.

Anyway, I thought I'd share the love. I remember I posted earlier this year about how alcohol can increase the bioavailability of antioxidants in fruit- here's a recipe for the 'healthy' cosmopolitan just in time to help everyone see in the new year!

Note- I think my recipe is actually less potent than the real thing, but I'm giving it in quantities to make up a 2L jug to my idea of what tastes good, which is what I do for parties, rather than making up to a recipe one glass at a time. In winter, when limes are damn expensive, I buy lemons, but I recommend you never buy lemons in Summer because they're all imported from California rather than being grown in Australia. Besides, it's better with lime :)

250mL Cointreau
250mL Vodka (buy a good one- cheap ones give you hangovers)
Juice of 3-4 limes
1.5L Cranberry juice

Mix it all up and stick it in the freezer. Even if it freezes you can smoosh it into a granita and it is soooo good.

I'm in!!

Had my interview yesterday. I wrote about how nervous I was because the lady who arranged the interview told me to bring in a resume- Gam made me up an academic resumé and omitted all my 'real jobs', which were irrelevant anyway... the professor barely looked at the resumé, just asked me about my project and why I wanted to do it, tested me a little on background knowledge on basic stuff like the NHMRC guidelines for feeding of infants (related to my project) and said he was keen to supervise! He already has an interest in the area of maternal and child health, which is fantastic, and he seemed genuinely interested in my project!

He did say it was hard work and that I needed to ensure I could be supported financially, as it is next to impossible to obtain first class honours if I have to hold down a job as well. I have my first meeting in mid January... exciting stuff! I expect it will be a really full-on year, but I get to do something that I'm genuinely interested in rather than having to plod through subjects that are irrelevant to me like I usually do. Plus what I'm doing will be useful to people working in public health, if I do a good job of it. I can't wait.

Thanks to Gam and Niall for all their advice :)

UPDATE: I just realised I should also be especially thankful to someone who doesn't read this blog- Victor's nutritionist friend Liz, who took the time to sit down with me and think of projects that will help fill a knowledge gap on target populations for public health nutrition and hopefully look good on my resumé someday. If I make it through the honours year I'll have a lot to thank her for, because my biggest worry was finding something I could stay interested in for a whole year- and thanks to one of her suggestions I think I've got it. We'll see.

'Diary' entry- catching up

Not much in the way of posting for the last week or so, partly due to my computer being busted (now fixed, thanks to some of my Dad's spare parts and Gam's technological expertise!), partly due to the fact I spent all day Thursday and Friday volunteering at a public health nutrition conference and partly due to the fact I have been absolutely buggered the rest of the time- mid-afternoon naps and all. Must be getting low in iron.
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Gam and I have also been looking after the managerial duties at our unit complex while our unit managers went to Emerald for a few days. There's not a lot of work involved for us- just fielding any emergencies and taking care of their one remaining cat (my buddy Wayne had to be put down due to a host of old age-related conditions... Feifei and I were very sad... Thomasina also seems rather lonely, and 'cries' a lot now). This time we had a nice young couple knock on our door around 10pm on Friday night to tell us they thought they'd been burgled. They thought right- some scumbag had slit their flyscreen and opened their screen door- but they were half-convinced they were imagining things, because the thief had taken $10 from the guy's wallet and a toy helicopter, leaving a GPS and two laptops sitting on the table near the door! When we were broken into a year ago the thief also didn't take anything other than my wallet- but we figured that was because the laptop and computers were all in the study and the thief would have had to walk past our open bedroom door to reach them. In this case the stuff was right on the table- and laptops are huge targets for thieves. Really odd. The managers are now thinking of recommending the landlords install little perspex screens around the lock to prevent thieves slitting the flyscreen, because even if the doors are locked with a key, the thief isn't going to know that until they've vandalised the flyscreen, meaning it needs to be repaired and/or replaced regardless of whether they gain entry.
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Volunteering at the public health nutrition conference on Thursday and Friday was a great opportunity afforded to me by my (wonderful, wonderful) favourite lecturer, Lisa, who gave me first dibs on the chance to volunteer (along with 2 other people who obviously didn't take up the offer). My friend Erica, who's graduating with me this semester, also volunteered, so it was nice to have someone there who I knew- it's sort of daunting to be around so many people I don't know and who are all my superiors in both a professional and academic sense!

Usually the conference would have cost $150 (the student price!) so it was really good to be able to sit in for free and listen to a whole bunch of people at the forefront of public health nutrition research. I was also hoping to pick up some ideas as to what area I might be interested in doing an honours project in next year. I don't know if it helped so much with that- more that it helped confirm that I find it all so interesting I can't narrow it down to one area to concentrate on for a whole year- but I will be talking with Lisa this week and hopefully I can sort something out from there.

Another highlight of the conference was meeting a nutritionist who happens to be a friend of our friend Victor. He gave me her email address a couple of months ago but I never got around to emailing her- I just happened to recognise her name from her name-badge and took a chance that it wasn't a totally different person with the same name. It turned out that she not only did the same applied science- nutrition and food science degree at UQ that Erica and I have just completed, but she spoke very highly of the guidance she'd received from Lisa and another lecturer who I thought was really good (who has since retired and returned to the US) and said how much she loves being a public health nutritionist. It's that same sort of passionate interest in the field that Lisa has that I found so inspiring, and it's always great to hear someone say they love their job, regardless of what it is. Many people aren't so lucky, but I hope I am. Public health nutrition is such a broad and interesting field.

One thing I noted was the general air of optimism among the conference delegates that was due to the very recent election victory of Kevin Rudd. I think there is a real hope that some of the more pressing issues in public health nutrition will receive the notice they are due under the new government... there's no telling how much notice they will receive, of course, but it's almost certain to be more than under John Howard. Even at this conference, a couple of the people presenting papers relied on data from the 1995 national nutrition survey; one glaring area of neglect under Howard was his failure to provide funding for a new national nutrition survey. Forcing researchers to rely on data that is well over a decade old when eating habits have changed so much over the course of the last 12 years paints a picture full of inaccuracies- and this research is what supposedly informs the government policies that relate to public health nutrition! Ah well, the time for fist-waving is hopefully over. The conference finished with a brainstorming of ideas as to how they would go about flagging Kevin Rudd's attention.
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We've got a few more wedding-related things sorted out- Gam and I went to taste some cakes and settle on a design on Sunday. We rode to Milton (we're going as local as we can with everything) and tasted cake in a tiny room across the road from the Suncorp Stadium. The cakes were tasty- we settled on two tiers with two flavours, caramel and marble- but frankly I like my cakes better. Unfortunately I have no decorating skills whatsoever, so we're forking over to have someone with a decade's worth of experience under her belt do the hard work for us. At a price, of course. This lady makes her own cake toppers, so despite my whinging about wedding clichés it looks like we're forking over a bit of extra money so we can have a Sarah-and-Gam cake-topper complete with Queensland Roar jerseys. In real life we have only one Roar jersey, and I keep forgetting to wear it (the shop at the stadium sold us a kid's extra-large thinking it was an adult X-large, so really it's too big for me and too small for Gam, but I've appropriated it because I don't like their new strip as much as the old one).

As for our reception, it's lucky I phoned up today to ask when we should go about choosing a menu, as when I called up the lady informed me that there was no booking for the 19th of January! Eeeep! Luckily they had space for me to make another one that day, and I got Mum to phone them as she'd already paid the deposit... it turned out that the person who Mum had booked with had booked it in for the 15th! I don't know how they could have misheard the 19th as the 15th, but just as well they hadn't already booked someone else for the 19th or I would have had to go all Bridezilla on their arse.

The lady also said that the menu will change in the new year and we should aim to finalise our own menu with them in early January. I don't mind what they do with their mains menu, but by god I hope they keep their desserts... I'm in love with those desserts we tried when we went to Watt for a 'trial run' with Rach back in September.



I had another measurement/fitting for my dress a couple of weeks ago, and tomorrow we're going in to hand over our nice kente cloth to the dressmaker so she can get started on the real thing. I wound up deciding on having it made in 2 parts- a skirt and top. I'm not sure why I decided on 2 parts- probably for practical reasons when it comes to getting in and out of the damn thing. I decided to have a hoop in the skirt for the sole reason that when I tried on one with a hoop vs one without, the hoop one was much cooler- air-conditioning for the legs! I figure that will be a bonus on a hot January day. I cope well with hot weather, but that's because I usually dress appropriate to the temperature, and a long skirt on a hot day isn't what I'd consider ideal dress for the conditions.



We also have to think about what Gam's going to wear. A suit seems horribly oppressive on a hot day, especially considering Gam melts into a puddle of sweat once the temperature hits about 26 degrees, so I'm hoping he'll go with short sleeves. I suggested that maybe we should ask Daddy to buy him a nice shirt in Ghana because I think Daddy has a pretty good record when it comes to buying Gam clothes (some of his nicest clothes were purchased for him by his dad), but Gam reckons there's a whole wardrobe full of clothes back in Botswana that are Daddy-purchases that no-one will wear. I have yet to be convinced. I've already given my own parents instructions that no-one is to feel obliged to wear a suit... I think people can feel they're expected to go a bit overboard in dressing for a wedding, whereas our biggest concern is that everyone is comfortable.

Another thing we've been doing since exams is making wedding invitations! Sure we're running kind of late with them, but we're only inviting around 30 people, most of whom pretty much know when and where everything is happening... Gam and I went to an art and craft store to pick up a couple of things for putting together the invites that my cousin Rach sent up, but we went a bit crazy in the paper section and bought a whole heap of paper... so the invites have had a substantial makeover. They're rather more brash with their colouring, but still made using Rach's beautiful artwork. Haven't taken any photos of them yet, so I'll try and remember to do that tomorrow.

We've also found out that two more of our good friends can't attend our wedding. Like our friend Nic, who'll be back in England by then, Niall and Sophie are pretty much going to be on the other side of the planet (Europe) when it's all happening. I'd be lying if I said we weren't disappointed that we can't have all our favourite people attend, but on the other hand, I think we'd probably miss our own wedding for a trip to Europe... Probably? Make that no contest!
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At my friend Nicole's birthday dinner on Sunday night.

Getting drunk is fun, therefore it is fine.

Letting the 'ordinary bloke' set health recommendations.

The Australian has put itself firmly on the side of the alcoholic beverage industry with an article headlined "New drinking rules 'unrealistic'".

Stating

In what is shaping as a new type of rum rebellion, specialists in alcohol treatment claim the draft limits - which recommend no more than two standard drinks a day for men and women, and none at all for adolescents under 18 and pregnant women - fail the credibility test.

The Australian claims 'at least some' alcohol experts think the new guidelines are basically a load of rubbish. In fact, they seem to have found only one, Professor Paul Haber, head of addiction medicine at Sydney University, who has apparently claimed that

the guidelines failed to balance harm from drunken accidents with the long-term enjoyment and other social benefits that many people derived from long-term moderate drinking.

Yes, so the right of people not to be killed by a drunk driver or become the victim of a drunken assault is somehow negated by the right of Australians to have fun by getting drunk. Riiight.

Not only that, we are talking guidelines set by the NHMRC under constant interference and lobbying by the alcoholic beverages industry that are, in theory, recommendations for limiting alcohol consumption based on the harm it causes to peoples' health. They are recommendations, not laws. Why should recommendations regarding the negative impact of excessive alcohol consumption on health and wellbeing (not to mention the widespread social problems it causes) take into account peoples' enjoyment? In that case why don't we legalise every drug that is 'enjoyable'?

I'd be interested to see who's funding Professor Haber's research.

The Australian also quotes Alex Wodak, chairman of the alcohol working party for the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, who said "very few Australian males ... would think a maximum of two drinks is reasonable".

No shit- we have a culture of binge drinking, where it's seen as macho to consume alcohol to excess and behave like an idiot. Any ordinary Aussie male advocating sensible drinking would probably be ribbed mercilessly about it by his mates. That doesn't negate the science, which is why the NHMRC set the guidelines, and not a panel of randomly picked yobbos from the local pub.

The piece in The Australian? That's not journalism, that's lobbying, and a load of bullshit it is too. Adam Cresswell should be ashamed of himself.

Australian parliaments are backward on breastfeeding

I can't believe, what with the Kirstie Marshall episode a couple of years ago, that Australia doesn't have uniform laws to protect the rights of breastfeeding mothers, and that breastfeeding is still not allowed in any of the state or federal parliaments except for NSW, which has just changed its laws to allow that right.

We have a really backward bunch of people (no surprise it's mostly middle-aged and elderly men) running this country...

Family First alcohol warnings a good idea

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day...

Family First senator Steven Fielding might be rabidly religious, have funny ideas about breeding and massively bigoted against gay people and muslims, but he's right on the money with his support for forcing warnings to be printed on alcohol bottles about the dangers of excessive consumption and alerting pregnant women to the fact that alcohol is harmful to the foetus.

"New alcohol safety guidelines from the National Health and Medical Research Council should be printed on all packaged alcohol," Senator Fielding said in a statement.

"Both the government and the opposition need to get serious about Australia's binge drinking problem. Alcohol is a major problem - it kills three times more Australians than all illicit drugs combined."

Senator Fielding said the easiest way to get this important new information to drinkers was to provide it on all alcohol packaging.

Neither the Howard government nor Rudd's opposition are interested in the massive problems associated with overconsumption of alcohol in Australia because they're clearly in the pocket of the companies that manufacture it. Both parties are happy to throw money at minor but sensationalised problems such as the so-called 'Ice Epidemic', but when it comes to the problems with violence, anti-social behaviour and health caused by alcohol... well, you could practically hear a pin drop.

It's pretty disgraceful.

Unhealthy media coverage of alcohol

I find the coverage of alcohol-related health issues in the media to be frankly pretty disgraceful. Any research showing potentially lower risk of some diseases associated with drinking is reported extremely widely, while research showing associations between alcohol consumption and higher rates of certain diseases is barely reported at all. Today's example comes via the reporting of the National Health and Medical Research Council's safe drinking guidelines on news.com.au:

The Council acknowledged research showing that alcohol has been linked to reduced risks of cardiovascular disease, as well as having other health benefits, but said people should not use that link as a reason to take up drinking.

1. What 'other health benefits'? I'm not even sure that this is true.

2. Alcohol has also been linked to increased risk of breast cancer and colorectal cancer, Australia's two most common cancers. Strange, then, that the journalist saw fit to mention only the health benefits, both real and imagined ...

Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Sam Neill.

"Eat your rye bread, kids, it's evolution food!"

Turns out that starch is the real 'fuel of human evolution', not red meat. Of course we can now expect that whore Sam Neill to be spruiking for the potato farming industry and renouncing his crappy ads for red meat (which I eat occasionally, but the ads are objectionably stupid). Right, Sam?

EvilWombatQueen already beat me to it and posted on this- she has the YouTube of the Sam Neill advert.

Facebook disapproves of breastfeeding

You can meet a President while breastfeeding,
but you can't post your photo on Facebook...

I just read in the SMH that Facebook has been removing pictures that feature breastfeeding from women's profiles, and has even banned some women who resisted its actions. You don't need to be a breastfeeding mother to know how idiotic Facebook's decision, presumably aimed at catering to a tiny minority of perverted prudes who think that breastfeeding is some kind of sex act, is.

I wrote them an email and joined up to the group 'Hey Facebook, breastfeeding is not obscene!', and invited all 72 people in our friends list to join (some of them may no doubt be bemused, but Gam and I are both in fields where we've learned a lot about the importance of breast milk to a baby's health). I urge anyone who is a member of Facebook to join this group, and if you can be bothered, write them an email too.

Dear Facebook,

What on earth is wrong with you people, banning women from facebook who
post pictures of themselves breastfeeding? Breastfeeding is legal, it's
natural -it's not 'obscene'. Your decision is also massively sexist-
Facebook doesn't seem to have a problem where pictures of shirtless guys
at the beach are posted, yet it has a problem with women showing a bit
of areola while in the act of feeding their babies. If anything pictures
of people bottle-feeding their baby with formula are more obscene
because they're promoting a method of feeding babies that is detrimental
to their health. I haven't heard about Facebook getting its knickers in
a knot over that- I wonder why?

Facebook is catering to a tiny minority of morons who don't realise that
if they think there is something sexy or obscene about a woman
breastfeeding they have problems and should be seeking psychological
help. Grow a brain, guys.

Yours sincerely,

Sarah

Details of the exchanges between Facebook and some of the 'lactivists' (great word, isn't it?) are available on the blog 'One small step for breastfeeding...'

'Diary' entry- Hooray, I'm useful!

Having a job- almost as good as having a pet pygmy goat.

Having not heard back from the people I sent a job application off to last week, by the beginning of this week I'd pretty much given up hope that I would get it. Instead, I was scoping out volunteer-type jobs in the local area. This morning brought a nice surprise in the form of a phonecall asking me to come in for training on Tuesday, meaning I'll soon be gainfully employed doing something I do every time I go shopping- gleaning information from nutrition labels on food packets! The only difference is that instead of trying to memorise it, I'll have to write it all down. It sounds like the perfect job for me this semester- I'm only doing 3 subjects and I have 2 uni-free days, meaning that I can squeeze in most of my 10-15 hours per week into those two days. And it's in Toowong, far enough away for me to get a bit of exercise by walking there, but not so far as to be a deterrent. Couldn't ask for any more than that, really.

I'm pretty happy right now- even working my arse off at uni (which I admittedly didn't put 100% into last semester, a result of hating most of my subjects) I feel a bit worthless relying on Centrelink all the time. It'll be nice to be earning something, however little. Going through the Centrelink income-reporting process is a pain in the arse, but it will be worth it!

Speaking of uni, I got my results a week or so ago: two 6's -for food preservation and my favourite nutrition subject, the latter being something I was hoping for a 7 in but ultimately only got just over 80%, and two 5's for microbiology and food safety and quality management (the dodgy group assignment subject). Not as bad as it could have been, but not as good as I could have hoped; certainly not comparable to my last two semesters. Next semester should be much more interesting- I'm doing food microbiology (compulsory), nutrition health & disease (compulsory) and probably taking a public health subject called 'changing health behaviours' (elective).



Time for a whinge now- the hot water at our unit complex has been on the blink for a good month or two now, meaning that at some times of the day we have hot water, while at others (usually when one of us is about to take a shower) we have none. At these times, the best we can get is a barely tepid shower. It's awful! Of course Murphy's law dictates that this problem not only happens in the dead of winter, but it happens in the dead of a winter in which Brisbane is experiencing the coldest temperatures on record!

As if this wasn't enough, since my last Linux update, Firefox is regularly crashing, and my Thunderbird email programme is regularly crashing too- almost every time I send an email. Not only that, the email doesn't send or copy to the 'sent' or 'drafts' or 'outbox' folder, meaning I lose all the email content! Grrrrrr.