Longer hours and belt-tightening (of the financial sense, mostly, but who knows?) have hit the French business lunch. As an outside observer, though, I must admit it's fun hearing one odd culture ("prawn sandwiches"!?) documenting the waning oddities of another.

cultural worlds, europe, food and drink, france, uk, work

Nate

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It is seen as the mark of civilised eating, distinguishing well-fed French workers from the English who wolf prawn sandwiches at their desks. But France’s tradition of the three-course restaurant lunch is in danger of being killed off by the economic crisis.

Around 3,000 traditional French restaurants, cafes and bars went bust in the first three months of 2008 and unions predict a further rush of closures as people worry about making ends meet. The number of French restaurants going bankrupt rose by 25 percent from last year, and cafes forced to close were up by 56 percent.

Le Figaro’s renowned restaurant critic François Simon said yesterday that French consumers’ frugality had changed national eating habits and forced restaurant owners to the brink. Diners were now skipping the traditional aperitif, avoiding starters, drinking tap water, passing on wine and coffee and—at most—sharing a pudding.

A lovely anecdote (culture-making begins at home!) from a great feature about Berkeley Bowl, a produce-rich Northern California supermarket that sounds a bit like all three sections of the Divine Comedy rolled into one.

california, community, cultural worlds, food and drink

Nate

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Michael Pollan, author of the best-selling book “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” is a [Berkeley] Bowl regular who calls the store one of his top three places to buy food in the world. Still, he knows there’s easier shopping.

One time, Pollan was picking out a box of cereal for his daughter when a fellow shopper interrupted him. “He said, ‘I’m watching Michael Pollan shop for groceries,’ ” Pollan recalled. “There was this note of disappointment that I was buying Fruity Pebbles. Berkeley is full of hall monitors. It’s a small town, and people are looking into each other’s baskets.”

An encouraging use of the world's fastest-spreading technology, from India's Bihar state, which has a reputation for backwardness even during non-flood times.

cell phones, communication, development, horizons of the possible, poverty, rescue

Nate

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One India reports on how mobile phones are used after the devastating floods in Bihar, India. While relief and aid have been very slow to get to Bihar, mobiles are proving to be a life saver.  According to One India, “[Mobiles] are playing the most crucial role in largescale evacuation and rescue of marooned people from far flung areas. The availability of mobile phones to all sections of people across the flooded regions and their 24 hour connectivity during the crisis period, greatly helped the rescue teams to locate the cut off villages and localities besides saving many lives even from remote areas.”

Through cell phones the marnooed people were also able to remain connected with the district officials to guide them about their need and the urgency of rescuing them.

Public health researchers worked with TV scriptwriters to see if viewers do, in fact, learn anything lasting about healthcare from watching Grey's Anatomy. A good portion of them do—good news for public health crusaders and advertisers alike.

advertising, changing the world, medicine, memory, public health

Nate

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The proportion of viewers who were aware that, with the proper treatment, there is more than a 90% chance of an HIV-positive woman having a healthy baby increased by 46 percentage points after the episode aired (from 15% to 61%). This includes 17% of respondents in the post-show survey who volunteered the specific response that the woman has a 98% chance of having a healthy baby—the statistic that was repeated several times on the show.

Six weeks after the episode aired, the proportion who gave the correct response had dropped to 45%, but was still substantially higher (by 30 percentage points) than it had been prior to the show. This time around, however, only 3% volunteered the specific fact that the woman would have a 98% chance of having a healthy baby.

What's interesting here—aside from the story itself, which sounds hopeful indeed—is the way the moringa tree is being passed between different (though surprisingly overlapping) cultural worlds: Africa and Asia and America, rich and poor, traditional and modern, folk and scientific. My ears prick up at the words that accompany (often in necessary quotation-marks) these handoffs: "discovered," "miracle," "awaits validation."

africa, agriculture, asia, cultural worlds, development, food and drink, horizons of the possible, migration

Nate

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As a child growing up in India, I greeted the appearance of one particular vegetable on my plate with exaggerated distaste: tender seedpods from the moringa tree, locally known as “drumsticks.” Imagine my surprise when I heard a health worker from sub-Saharan Africa describe this backyard tree as a possible solution to malnutrition in tropical countries – he called it a “miracle tree,” no less.

Ounce for ounce, says Lamine Diakite, a Red Cross official from French Guinea in West Africa, moringa leaves contain more beta carotene than carrots, more calcium than milk, more iron than spinach, more Vitamin C than oranges, and more potassium than bananas. Its protein content is comparable to that of milk and eggs, and its leaves are still available for harvest at the end of the dry season, when other food may be scarce. Malnourished children gained weight when put on a timely dietary supplement made from the leaves, Mr. Diakite says. He passed around pouches of the green, hennalike powder at a recent international summit in Boston.

Until a decade ago, moringa was not widely known in Africa. Its leaves (boiled like spinach) were an occasional vegetable. Immigrant Indians prized the long, slender seedpods (stewed or cooked like green beans) as a delicacy. “But its nutritional value, newly ‘discovered,’ has been known for a long time,” says Lowell Fuglie, an international development administrator who has been instrumental in popularizing the moringa in Africa for the past 10 years. Laboratory analysis has corroborated traditional knowledge about the plant. It now awaits further validation by western science.

A glorious celebration of the toaster in its various vintage forms. The photo galleries in particular are worth getting lost in, come breakfast-time.

bread, food and drink, horizons of the possible, kitchens

Nate

:

For inventors and engineers of toasters it seemed to be a big challenge to create as many as possible different technical solutions to ... well ... heat and rotate a simple square slice of bread.

• Perchers The bread stands alone
• Pinchers The bread is pinched at its place
• Turners The bread is turned horizontally
• Swingers The bread is turned vertically
• Sliders The bread slides in the toaster
• Drive Thrus The bread drives thru the toaster
• Tippers The bread tips out the toaster
• Floppers (Turn Overs) The bread flops out and flips over
• Droppers The bread falls through a trap door
• Pop-Ups The bread automatically jumps out of the top
• Drop/Turn-Ups The bread has been raised manually
• Flat Beds The toast lies on a grille