Tracy

This looks fantastic! Already registered and looking forward to learning #medlibs

maman has switched out the kale for arugula in the papa's breakfast bowl and it is nowhere near what it was. I am so disappointed.

Ruin Their Crops on the Ground Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in HistoryWinner of the James Beard Media Award in Food Issues and AdvocacyThe first and definitive history of the...

One of my recent reads that looks at the politics of food: "Ruin Their Crops on the Ground" by Andrea Freeman
us.macmillan.com/books/978125...

See also: fivebooks.com/best-books/h...

Food Insecurity: Recommended Reading December 2022​​During December 2022, the Libraries is featuring these books about food insecurity in a special display in the Hill Library's Learning Commons.Including both physical books and eboo

Recommended reading list on food insecurity from NC State University Libraries: www.lib.ncsu.edu/recommended-...

Food & Society - Food & Society Food & Society at the Aspen Institute brings together public health leaders, policymakers, researchers, farmers, chefs, food makers, and entrepreneurs to find practical solutions to food system challe...

A few more things...
If you are interested in food (in)security, food justice, and "food as medicine", check out the Aspen Institute's Food & Society program:
aspenfood.org

If you need help, you can find a local food bank here: www.feedingamerica.org
If you want to help, look into local food banks or cooperatives that can assist. Feeding America is one place to start. 92.5% of support goes to food procurement
source: www.feedingamerica.org/sites/defaul...

Working directly for Uncle Sam doesn't insulate you from food insecurity. US military personnel have food insecurity, and that can impact readiness. "[S]tudies of individual military installations have demonstrated food insecurity rates between 15% and 33%"
source: www.ers.usda.gov/publications...

Food security is a range from no problems or limitations accessing food to altering eating habits because of quality or quantity, and everything in between. In 2023, 96% of US households surveyed reported they could not afford to eat balanced meals.
source: www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-...

Food security/insecurity is a problem that touches everyone, whether you know it or not. Anyone could be at risk of not having enough food or inadequate nutrition.

"13.5 percent (18.0 million) of U.S. households were food insecure at some time during 2023"
source: www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-...

I haven't been able to stop thinking about this, so here's a quick thread, with some curated #medlibs sources

And if you are hungry or don't have (enough) food, that's your own fault - bootstraps and all that - so why should the govt care anyway? 🙃

#medlibs

This feels like a personal attack 🤣
(I love this so hard)

Screenshot of text that reads: "The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced the termination of future Household Food Security Reports. These redundant, costly, politicized, and extraneous studies do nothing more than fear monger. For 30 years, this study—initially created by the Clinton administration as a means to support the increase of SNAP eligibility and benefit allotments—failed to present anything more than subjective, liberal fodder. Trends in the prevalence of food insecurity have remained virtually unchanged, regardless of an over 87% increase in SNAP spending between 2019 - 2023. USDA will continue to prioritize statutory requirements and where necessary, use the bevy of more timely and accurate data sets available to it."

This press release is wild. Food (in)security is an ongoing issue in the US, whether the govt thinks it is or not. Go grab the past ones while you can: www.ers.usda.gov/publications...

www.usda.gov/about-usda/n...

Well. That's not a good sign.

I need that on a tshirt, tote, and sticker - stat. 😍

So yeah, that's... something. So glad the Secretaries of Education and Health and Human Services schooled me in a WaPo opinion piece about... whatever.

I'm holding back so much snark and disdain at this point I might injure myself 🤣🙃

I think I might go eat some chocolate.

Let's see, there's also a call out to the book "Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren't Growing Up" by Abigail Shrier that links to Amazon. Wonder if anyone gets a kickback from that?

There's a few more links but not to actual literature or evidence, so I'll stop here.

screenshot of text that reads: "Chocolate often evokes happy feelings and reduces tension. The antidepressant effect of chocolate is due to its psychoactive chemical content, such as anandamides, which target opioid receptors in the central nervous system [45]. In a study conducted by Moreno-Dominguez et al. [46], excessive chocolate consumption was associated with more anxiety than moderate/low consumption."

I don't have the energy to see what that narrative review cites or fact check it. This little bit on chocolate (under Carbohydrates) did jump out at me though.

IDK, you think that implies chocolate consumption leads to violence? More like the opposite in my experience. 😂🥰🍫

screenshot of text that reads "Methods: The study is a narrative review. “Scopus”, ‘Web of Science’, ‘PubMed’ and ‘Google Scholar’ databases were used for literature search. The words “nutrition”, “crime”, “violence”, “psychology”, “psychology”, “behavior” and their combinations were used as keywords in the literature search and articles published between 2000 and 2024 were examined. After excluding articles whose full text could not be accessed and articles that were found to be missing important methodological details, 45 studies were included in the review."

Narrative, so nothing approaching gold standard evidence synthesis like SR, meta-analysis, etc. with this listed as methods. All I can do about the "search" methods is sigh deeply and wish I had a dollar for every sus search I see described in the literature.

Nutrition is Associated with Violent and Criminal Behaviors Psychological illnesses, mood disorders, anger and violent behaviors, which are increasing at an alarming rate today, not only negatively affect human health but also pose a threat to social life and ...

Then the second link - the "violent behaviors" part - from that loaded, grammatically incorrect sentence is to this *narrative review* from June of this year: pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

The PDF notes "new" evidence since FDA looked at the issue in 2011 - again this is dated 2016. So covering 5 years and almost 10 years out of date now, with 8 "new" citations, the most recent being 2014. Also, "antisocial and violent behaviors" show up nowhere in the doc - only "adverse behavior".

But don't worry, I found it with some googling. It was published in 2016 and lists the *cough* evidence that supposedly suggest a link between food "bereft of nutrients and loaded with harmful ingredients" that increase antisocial and violent behaviors. OK sure.
PDF: www.cspi.org/sites/defaul...

That first link goes to this: www.cspi.org/resource/sci..., which has a link to the resource as PDF. Which, LOL doesn't load - instead you get "we can't open this file something went wrong"

Something went wrong indeed.

The next 2 links (marked with /) are from this doozy of a sentence: "Food that is bereft of nutrients and loaded with harmful ingredients, /which studies have shown/ affect the brain and nervous system to increase antisocial and /violent behaviors/."

(Is that even grammatically correct?!)

Gov. Pritzker signs bill requiring mental health screenings in all Illinois school districts The bill, SB1560, requires all school districts to provide screening in grades 3 through 12 at least once a year.

First link is to a CBS New item: www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news...

Opinion | Linda McMahon and RFK Jr.: Children need natural sources of mental health Overzealous use of therapy can cause the crises it claims to cure.

🧵I couldn't quite make myself look at the new MAHA report, so I settled for today's opinion piece in the Washington Post: wapo.st/4mf4Ma7

As a #medlibs and #SystematicReview / #EvidenceSynthesis person, I of course had a look at the links/citations they include. Let's go over them, shall we?

How... HOW do people keep a straight face during these proceedings?!

I get that with age comes experience, expertise, and supposedly wisdom, but we really, really need better age (and gender and race) diversity in our political representatives.