Wednesday evening roundup

Pressuring the Fed may not be unethical, but it could be counterproductive.

Mark Bittman brings us the latest on tuna. He makes a very interesting point, almost matter-of-factly and at the end, about videos of cruelty at sea have more impact than those revealing cruelty on land. Why doesn't factory farm footage horrify people into action?

I'm going to hold my nose and endorse a dairy product: fight bigotry, buy Shweddy Balls. Now I'm going to make up for it by endorsing PETA "pornography".

It won't surprise you that this BS experiment just pisses me off. I'm not questioning the challenges of subsisting on food stamps, particularly if one has a family to feed, but I think it's kind of hilarious that the writer/blogger has to put herself through an experiment to determine whether it's possible to subsist on $30 a week. Now, I, myself, don't quite come in at that, and it would be hard to determine based on my grocery bills, because a given trip to the store might include, say, garbage bags, and usually includes multiple weeks' worth of food (I usually swing by Whole Foods every other week and get at least two packages, i.e., over two weeks' worth, of linguine.) I won't break down for you what I eat by day, because I know you don't care (which hasn't always stopped me, but let's just say I figure I've done it, albeit under provocation, enough). However, to show how easy it is to get groceries on $30, I'll delineate a basic sample menu with prices per ingredient per week:

breakfast: oatmeal ($1) with cinnamon and flax seed ($.50);
snack: sunflower seeds ($.75) and sweet potato ($2)
lunch: beans (.75) and brown/black/red rice ($2)
snack: fruit ($3-$5)
dinner: pasta ($1) with tofu ($3)

I believe that comes to $16. That leaves $14 for all kinds of vegetables and other stuff. I'm just sayin'.