Kids Going To School Hungry in NZ

It boggles my mind that in New Zealand we can't manage to ensure that every child gets breakfast, especially given that we as individuals donate so much to support starving children overseas. Are we just ignorant about the problems or do we choose to pretend that all is for the best in this country.

Today's Herald has this:

"A children's lobby group says New Zealanders should stop blaming the parents of hungry children and allow their tax money to be used to feed children in the poorest schools."More at NZ Herald

It also has two other related reports More Schools Feeding Children with more information on the failure in childs lives and this report on how Dominos has stepped up after rival Hell Pizza backed out of a sponsorship deal for kidscan as they had doubts about exactly how much of their money actually got to kids.

There's another article on a charity that feeds children:

"Takanini mother of five Bronca Fox started feeding hungry children from a local caravan park who came to her door a decade ago. Today, her charity feeds 250 children at five local schools."

Neither corporate sponsorship nor charity, of course are the answer here. We need to set up reliable systems that will ensure the children are fed and that, unfortunately given today's reality, means it has to be a properly funded professional exercise. $14 million divided by 2 million tax payers is $7 each a small price to pay to help the most needing of our citizens.

I'm not interested at the moment in getting into the reasons why parents can't feed their children. This isn't the time to look for blame, this is the time to act.

Oyster death hysteria

"Oysters being wiped out around the world" The Herald headlined on Monday "Wild oysters are now 'functionally extinct' in many places where they were once plentiful. More than 85 per cent of their reefs have been lost through overfishing, a study says." More...

Of course things aren't always what they seem. Note the "In many places", then read to the bottom and discover on the very last line that the article is a re-print of an Independent (English Newspaper) article.

Tuesday they followed up with "Bluff oysters defy trend towards extinction, says industry" a genuine local article with NZ details. This time they make it clear that they are talking New Zealand. Would have been good if they made that clear in the original article.

There's nothing wrong with reporting that overseas species are threatened, but please make it clear at the top of the article that this is what you are talking about.

Politicians and "celebrities" shamed for science gaffes

"Did you know that when you eat meat, it stays in your gut for 40 years, putrefies and leads to a disease that kills you? 'That is a fact,' according to the model and charity campaigner Heather Mills, one of several celebrities whose statements in the media last year have been scrutinised and where necessary challenged by the British-based charity Sense About Science in its latest 'celebrity watch' review." (From New Scientist.)

The article concludes 'Any readers disturbed by Mills's meaty assertions can take comfort from Melita Gordon, a gastroenterologist at the University of Liverpool, UK, quoted by Sense about Science: "Meat proteins, like all other proteins, are digested by enzymes and absorbed in the small bowel before they ever reach the colon. Any remaining indigestible matter is mechanically transited through the whole bowel in a matter of days and expelled"'

Of course the real shame is that the "media" reports this disinformation essentially unchallenged in the first place. How hard can it be to check the facts and confront the spouters of nonsense rather than slavishly copying their words? Oh, yes, that's right, this would require the media actually employing people to do some independant research rather than just rewriting press releases.

Meat feeds more climate change than food miles

With all the fuss over fuel miles affecting New Zealand's meat exports to Europe I was intrigued when I found this interesting report in New Scientist magazine's environment section.

"That locally-produced, free-range, organic hamburger might not be as green as you think.

"An analysis of the environmental toll of food production concludes that transportation is a mere drop in the carbon bucket. Foods such as beef and dairy make a far deeper impression on a consumer's carbon footprint.

"If you have a certain type of diet that’s indicative of the American average, you're not going to do that much for climate while eating locally,"

Of course as we're exporting meat, this doesn't directly help New Zealand's case, but when you couple this with the way we grow beef and lamb: free-range in paddocks eating grass and not grain, our cattle are a lot closer to carbon neutral than the factory farmed beasts in the northern hemisphere.

Let's hope someone can get the message out to the world and remember "Red meat isn't bad for you, green fuzzy meat is bad for you".