NEWSBYKATHERINE GUSTAFSON

There's a lot of discussion these days about food security amid predictions of rampant population growth and anxious memories of 2008 riots in the developing world caused by spiking food prices. Much discussion about food security comes in the form of boosterism for high-yielding GMO seeds, but before we launch ourselves into a most-likely-misguided quest for a silver bullet to solve this problem, it's worth looking at history's lessons.

In Empires of Food, a book Kristen Ridley introduced to this blog's readers, authors Evan D. G. Fraser and Andrew Rimas discuss how the establishment of strategic grain reserves has been the key to food security since Joseph advised Pharaoh on the meaning of his dream. "The first rule of a successful food empire is to keep the larder stocked," the authors write. "Without a secure food supply, even the stoutest ring of fortifications won't protect a society from being overrun by Huns."

While Huns aren't exactly the most vexing concern for U.S. eaters at the moment, the lesson holds true today. And unfortunately, we have neglected this age-old rule and laid ourselves bare to disaster. "Reserves are bottoming out," write Fraser and Rimas. "Even without a climate trigger, the ledger shows some unpleasant mathematics."

Indeed, as National Family Farm Coalition and Grassroots International stated in an open letter to Congress in 2008, "We are just one drought away from possibly seeing $10/bushel corn or $20/bushel wheat with absolutely no plan in place to deal with such a calamity."

According to experts, demand for meat and dairy will double by the year 2050. Considering that livestock already contribute an alarming large percentage of carbon to the atmosphere (the most frequently cited estimate is 18 percent of all carbon emissions, but some have it as high as 51 percent), raising twice as many animals for food is sure to devastate our environment. Right?

While we can't get away from the fact that more meat equals more pollution, a new study points out that changes in breeds and feed could substantially cut back on exactly how much damage this industry will do as it grows, reports SciDev.Net. Published earlier this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, the study estimates that simple improvements in production methods in the developing world would cut as much as 12 percent of livestock's total carbon emissions in 2030.

While it would of course be good to encourage people to eat less meat, it's hard to believe that's going to stem the tide of meat-eating across the rapidly developing and urbanizing world. So we're left with trying to figure out ways to lessen the impact. There are some effective and easy ways to reduce the "carbon hoofprint," at least in the context of the developing world where farmers still raise their animals largely on pastures.

Nowhere are the problems with the U.S. food system better illustrated than by the food pyramid, which recently became the subject of an absurd controversy stirred up by some shockingly irresponsible members of society.

In an attempt to stem the rising tide of obesity and diet-related diseases, the USDA is currently updating the pyramid, which is supposed to offer illustrated guidance to Americans about what constitutes a healthy diet. The Washington Post reports that the vested interests of "Big Food" are so concerned that the new pyramid's guidance will disadvantage them that they object to the government suggesting anyone should cut back on any type of food whatsoever. If some of the biggest players — the meat and dairy industries — had their way, the pyramid would show that it's okay for all of us — obese, heart diseased, and diabetic alike — to gobble up dinners of filet mignon washed down with glasses of pure cream.

Can't these people for one second allow the government to be responsible to its citizens without trying to screw everyone over for their own benefit? Do they actually want their relatives and neighbors to drop dead?

Organic farming's critics will have you believe that the practice is no more advanced a process than hooking one's miserable mule up to a puny scratch plow and keeping pests away with luck and prayers. On the other side of the fence are those whose enchantment with all things organic leaves you suspecting they believe this kind of farming to be a kind of animated Disney movie, where plants erupt from the soil singing with joy at the touch of the farmer's green thumb.

The way organic farming is done today is as far from both of these realities as they are from each other. Just because organic used to be the only kind of farming there was doesn't mean it froze in time when the branch of agriculture we now call "conventional" went its separate way. (Would it not, by the way, be more appropriate to call this petroleum-reliant method of farming "petrolic" instead of "conventional"?)

As organic farmer and candidate for Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Francis Thicke reminds us, organic methods of agriculture can be modern and efficient. "While we can learn and apply many things from earlier traditional farming methods, advances in technology and increased understanding of biology and ecology have taken organic farming far beyond the farming methods of 100 years ago," he writes.

As I wrote the other day, more than half of the Earth's people live in places where demand for water outstrips supply, and the lion's share of the world's freshwater is absorbed by agriculture. Unless we find ways to get much more efficient in the ways we use water, we are in big trouble. Even then, there are vast populations living in places where there simply isn't enough water to go around, no matter how well it's used.

One of these places is Egypt, where I currently live, a country whose population depends entirely on the waters of the Nile River. A confrontation between Egypt and its upstream neighbors — Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, and Rwanda — over rights to this valuable water supply, provides a hint of the trouble to come on a thirsty globe.

Egypt and neighboring Sudan have long laid claim to a majority of the Nile's water, an arrangement established in a 1929 treaty under British colonial rule. According to the New York Times, upstream countries are now crying foul, demanding greater rights to the Nile water, a situation that Egyptian experts say could, if unresolved, potentially lead to war.

It's Family Day today, a day to sit down to eat with your family as part of a campaign mounted by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University (CASA) to publicize the fact that regularly eating family dinner helps keep teens off drugs. The campaign aims to remind parents "that what your kids really want at the dinner table is YOU!"

We've all been told eating dinner together as a family is a good thing, but I'd wager that most people don't realize the laundry list of positive benefits associated with the practice, especially for the healthy development of children and teens. Not only do kids who frequently eat family dinner display better nutrition, behavior, and academic performance, but teens who regularly sit down with their families are more apt to stay away from high-risk behaviors, like taking drugs and alcohol.

Teens who eat family dinner fewer than three times a week are twice as likely to smoke cigarettes or marijuana and more than one-and-a-half times as likely to drink alcohol as teens who eat with their families five to seven times per week, according to researchers at CASA (PDF).

The habit of eating together helps families stay cohesive and supportive. It also improves kids' outlook on the future and attitude toward school. Not to mention, involving kids in the food preparation process helps them learn proper nutrition and healthy eating habits.

This is such a positive parenting practice because, as CASA puts it, “parental engagement" is "fostered during frequent family dinners."

Almost half of today's global population lives in places where demand for water is greater than its supply. That's nearly three billion people who either can't get enough water, can't get clean water, or must pay a hefty sum to access the water they need. Since, according to the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization, 70 percent of fresh water goes toward agriculture, this issue should absolutely be part of the larger conversation about how to best grow our food.

A water-scarcity map put together by SciDev.net differentiates between physical and economic water scarcity, which indicates that being without enough clean water doesn't necessarily correlate with living in a desert. Additionally, as climate change messes with weather patterns and intensifies incidence of droughts and flooding, access to water may be disrupted in unexpected ways around the globe.

With so much complexity and uncertainty around water availability and access, it might seem like the question of how to share it most equitably should be left to environmental scientists, policymakers, or urban planners. But since agriculture is so central to the picture, those involved in growing food need to be central to the solution. The question for them is this: How can agriculture make the best use of the water that's available?

Blame it on a bug: A new study has found that a virus called AD-36 is linked to obesity. While the correlation in no way proves that this virus causes obesity, the idea that some of our extra poundage might — and I stress the word might — be the product of more than just gluttony and laziness comes, to me anyway, as a kind of revelation (though there have been rumblings about this idea for a long time).

Americans and the media have become so obsessed with the idea that folks are overly fat because they're disgusting, McDonald's-obsessed slobs. It's hard to wrap one's head around the prospect that this whole unfortunate epidemic might not be our fault after all.

Again, I stress the word might, not only because the correlation does not prove causation, but also because even if a virus is mixed up in this mess somehow, it's highly unlikely that our eating habits are going to be off the hook. We may, after all is said and done, just end up being the same disgusting slobs, only with a virus in our guts making everything worse.

Scotland is getting serious about its weight-control efforts. Just like America, the country faces an obesity epidemic, with almost one-third of its kids overweight and 15 percent classified as obese. In a move that would have many here in the U.S. howling "nanny state," the Scottish Government recently unveiled plans to have the weight of postnatal women and their babies screened by the National Health Service, reports the Scotsman.

New mothers will be checked around six months after having their babies, and the infants will be weighed at 12 months and two years old. If women and babies are found to be tipping the scales too much, the mothers will be advised on lifestyle adjustments and referred to specialists to make sure things get back on (and stay on) track.

Admittedly, when you've got a nationalized health service, there is more room for the government to get involved with the health of the population. But is obliging women and kids to weigh in a productive way to solve the country's obesity problem? And if it is, should other countries like the U.S. consider a similar scheme?

The plan for the government to monitor mother and infant weight might sound like Big Brother, but I imagine that for every woman who would bristle at the intrusion, there will be another who is happy for the free help with making sure she and her baby are healthy. In the U.S., however, political concerns about overstepping government would be only one of the problems with advancing such a plan; another major limiting condition is the system of private insurance that has never been eager to properly finance preventative care.

Just the same, something must be done. Obesity during pregnancy puts the mother at a greater risk for developing diabetes, and early weight gain in a baby is linked to a child being overweight or obese by age ten. With recent news that obesity has become an "epidemic" in pregnant women in the United Kingdom, it's not surprising that the government is targeting the postpartum population.

The plan isn't a stand-alone intervention; the initiative is part of a ten-year Maternal and Infant Nutrition Strategy aimed at improving the diets of mothers and children, the specifics of which the Scottish Government will unveil this week. The strategy is a reaction to news that life expectancy in Scotland is still lower than similar European countries, in part because of obesity.

Considering the fact that life expectancy in the U.S. (80.8 for females, 75.7 for males - PDF) is only a tad higher than that in Scotland (80.1 for females, 75.4 for males), it's clear that we should be thinking seriously on this side of the pond about what action we're willing to take to address our own obesity problems.

Photo: Ella's Dad via Flickr

Most of us accept without question that an appropriate approach to addressing our obesity epidemic will involve both changes in eating and changes in physical activity levels. Popular wisdom says that our growing waistlines can be traced back not only to bad eating habits, but to endless hours in front of the TV, the growing popularity of the PlayStation, and neighborhoods with no sidewalks and too many cars. To fix our weight problem, we need more exercise — right?

Wrong, says Professor John Speakman of the Energetics Research Group at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. The U.K.'s Telegraph reports that new research by his group shows that increasing exercise will not have a major impact on our obesity crisis. According to Speakman and his team, our physical activity levels have generally stayed constant for the past couple decades, the same period during which our weight has become a problem. What has changed is the amount of calories we eat, which has jumped up by about one-third.

So it stands to reason that we need to just stop eating so darn much, or at least stop consuming so many calories. Of course, the need to curb our gluttony is a popular theme in regards to our weight problems. When Michelle Obama spoke recently on obesity before the Congressional Black Caucus, she chose to call out people's eating habits, not their sloth, reports the Los Angeles Times. "We all need to start making some changes to how our families eat," she told the legislators. "Now, everyone loves a good Sunday dinner. Me included. And there’s nothing wrong with that. The problem is when we eat Sunday dinner Monday through Saturday."

But isn't exercise also an important part of the picture?