Organic food and the plural moralities of food provisioning

The aim of this paper is twofold. The first aim is to unfold the moral complexity of organic food consumption as part of household food provisioning. By acknowledging this complexity, and the difficulty of determining what is ‘good’ and ‘right’ in food provisioning, the idea is to allow for a better understanding of how organic food may, or may not, fit in with the various concerns of food provisioning. The second aim is to analyse how food provisioners handle this complexity so that food provisioning can proceed as an ordinary everyday activity.The paper analyses empirical material from a study of household food provisioning in Denmark. Theoretically, it draws on French pragmatic sociology as represented by the work of Boltanski and Thévenot on moral conventions and regimes of engagement. The analysis illustrates that food provisioning involves several competing sets of moral conventions and that the status of organic food in relation to these is often uncertain and contested. However, it also identifies among provisioners different strategies for handling this moral complexity in ordinary everyday life. The paper calls for some modesty in trying to change consumer behaviour in favour of organic products. Providing consumers with more information about organic food may not make it easier to determine what is ‘good’ and ‘right’ when buying food. It may only add to the complexity of food provisioning and thus to the need for compromise and pragmatism.     

Getting Real About Food Prices

The 2008 spike in world grain prices is widely recognised to have had serious impacts on food security and poverty, but these high grain prices are commonly described as low in historical terms – an inconsistency resulting from the use of advanced‐ and global‐economy price indices in calculating real prices. This ignores the high share of food in poor people's expenditures and the indirect effects of income growth on expenditure patterns of rich consumers. Poor consumers have not experienced the same falls in real food prices and are more vulnerable to price shocks. Different price indices must be developed to take account of differences between consumer groups.     

试析长征时期的粮食供应问题

长征时期由于红军远离根据地,沿途许多地区又非常贫困落后等原因,粮食供应极其困难。为了解决长征途中的粮食供应问题,红军制定了打土豪、在战争中缴获粮食、向沿途群众购买、留条(留牌)借粮以及动员群众主动捐献等一些积极有效的措施,从而保证了部队战略转移的顺利进行。     

Bad News Has Wings: Dread Risk Mediates Social Amplification in Risk Communication

Social diffusion of information amplifies risk through processes of birth, death, and distortion of message content. Dread risk—involving uncontrollable, fatal, involuntary, and catastrophic outcomes (e.g., terrorist attacks and nuclear accidents)—may be particularly susceptible to amplification because of the psychological biases inherent in dread risk avoidance. To test this, initially balanced information about high or low dread topics was given to a set of individuals who then communicated this information through diffusion chains, each person passing a message to the next. A subset of these chains were also reexposed to the original information. We measured prior knowledge, perceived risk before and after transmission, and, at each link, number of positive and negative statements. Results showed that the more a message was transmitted the more negative statements it contained. This was highest for the high dread topic. Increased perceived risk and production of negative messages was closely related to the amount of negative information that was received, with domain knowledge mitigating this effect. Reexposure to the initial information was ineffectual in reducing bias, demonstrating the enhanced danger of socially transmitted information.     

氧弹燃烧-离子选择电极法测定食品中的氟

介绍了一种测定大米、黄豆、面粉等食品中氟含量的快速方法。首先利用氧弹燃烧技术对样品进行预处理,将氟转化为氟化氢,用碱液吸收燃烧产物,吸收液加入TISAB消除Al3+、Fe3+等离子干扰,调节溶液pH值在5～8后进行定容,然后用氟离子选择性电极用标准加入法测定溶液的电势,从而测得有机物中氟的含量,线性范围在1～10-6　mol·L-1时,回收率96.4%～102.5%。     

Modeling Growth and Reduction of Microorganisms in Foods as Functions of Temperature and Time

Food safety objectives (FSOs) are established in order to minimize the risk of foodborne illnesses to consumers, but these have not yet been incorporated into regulatory policy. An FSO states the maximum frequency and/or concentration of a microbiological hazard in a food at the time of consumption that provides an acceptable level of protection to the public and leads to a performance criterion for industry. However, in order to be implemented as a regulation, this criterion has to be achievable by the affected industry. In order to determine an FSO, the steps to produce and store that food need to be known, especially where they have an impact on contamination, growth, and destruction. This article uses existing models for growth of Listeria monocytogenes in conjunction with calculations of FSOs to approximate the outcome of more than one introduction of the foodborne organism throughout the food-processing path from the farm to the consumer. Most models for the growth and reduction of foodborne illnesses are logarithmic in nature, which fits the nature of the growth of microorganisms, spanning many orders of magnitude. However, these logarithmic models are normally limited to a single introduction step and a single reduction step. The model presented as part of this research addresses more than one introduction of food contamination, each of which can be separated by a substantial amount of time. The advantage of treating the problem this way is the accommodation of multiple introductions of foodborne pathogens over a range of time durations and conditions.     

Using unlabelled data to update classification rules with applications in food authenticity studies

Summary.  An authentic food is one that is what it purports to be. Food processors and consumers need to be assured that, when they pay for a specific product or ingredient, they are receiving exactly what they pay for. Classification methods are an important tool in food authenticity studies where they are used to assign food samples of unknown type to known types. A classification method is developed where the classification rule is estimated by using both the labelled and the unlabelled data, in contrast with many classical methods which use only the labelled data for estimation. This methodology models the data as arising from a Gaussian mixture model with parsimonious covariance structure, as is done in model-based clustering. A missing data formulation of the mixture model is used and the models are fitted by using the EM and classification EM algorithms. The methods are applied to the analysis of spectra of food-stuffs recorded over the visible and near infra-red wavelength range in food authenticity studies. A comparison of the performance of model-based discriminant analysis and the method of classification proposed is given. The classification method proposed is shown to yield very good misclassification rates. The correct classification rate was observed to be as much as 15% higher than the correct classification rate for model-based discriminant analysis.     

New Prediction Interval and Band in the Nonlinear Regression Model: Application to Predictive Modeling in Foods

This article is concerned with the proposal of a new prediction interval and band for the nonlinear regression model. The construction principle of this interval and band is based on an exact (the meaning of the term “exact” will be given later) confidence region for parameters of the nonlinear regression model. This region, fully described in Vila and Gauchi (2007 Vila , J.-P. , Gauchi , J.-P. ( 2007 ). Optimal designs based on exact confidence regions for parameter estimation of a nonlinear regression model . Journal of Statistical Planning and Inference 137 ( 9 ): 2935 – 2953 .[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), provides a rigorous justification for the new prediction interval and band that we propose. This new band is then compared to the classical bands (which are asymptotic and thus approximate for small n), and also to the band based on the bootstrap resampling method. The comparison of these bands is undertaken with simulated and real data from predictive modeling in food science.     

Putting place on the menu: The negotiation of locality in UK food tourism,from production to consumption

This paper uses a case study of tourism in the Lake District and Exmoor to explore the relationship between ‘local food’ and sustainable rural tourism in the UK. Drawing on qualitative interviews with tourists, food producers and café, pub and restaurant owners, I use an approach based upon the commodity chain to trace the shifts in the discursive and material understandings of the ‘local’ that take place throughout the tourist food chain. These shifts are shown to occur in response to the need to negotiate the tensions between the ideals and the practicalities of food production and consumption which occur as a result of the relationships that exist throughout the food chain. Such conclusions are shown to be important for our understanding of the links between ‘local food’ and sustainable rural tourism because they indicate that we must attend to the values, as well as the practicalities, that drive the contemporary food sector at all stages of the food chain, from production to consumption.     

分裂的主体无尽的欲望——《裸体吃中餐》的拉康式解读

运用拉康理论研究《裸体吃中餐》中鲁比主体确立过程,认为人独有的认同欲望使鲁比的主体确立,但由于欲望是对他者的欲望,所以这种欲望使得鲁比主体确立的过程也是其主体分裂离异的过程———这是人成为人必须付出的代价。