Hard News: Chocolate elitism
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Threads or parents?
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Threads. I thought you lot took over David's but here we are on RB's
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Still, I'll add it no matter.:)
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Well, anyway, Sofie has two interesting parents. And an interesting partner. And a very interesting dog. And now I come to think of it, a very interesting way of driving ;)
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And now I come to think of it, a very interesting way of driving ;)
What took you soo long?Thought I got away with that ;)
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I would never cast aspersions, me darling. Not after such a convivial evening and certainly not after tonight, when I ate my cheese on crackers and Bribiesca chutney. Num, num!
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RIP Walter Cronkite.
Imagine today a television newsreader saying this?
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RIP Walter Cronkite.
Imagine today a television newsreader saying this?
"And that's the way it is"
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I realise that after 6 pages of comments they hardly relate anymore to the original blog item. But for what it's worth, being from a country where everybody considers eating proper chocolate a birthright, the EU had a discussion 9 years ago about pretend chocolate such as what Cadbury sprews out. Continental countries wanted to define the term "chocolate" much stricter than what the sugar and grease peddlers at Cadbury wanted and call English chocolate (surely a contradiction in terms anyway) vegelate.
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. . . the EU had a discussion 9 years ago about pretend chocolate such as what Cadbury sprews out.
I remember that, largely because of the angry Belgian who suggested that the Brits would be better off making suppositories from their dubious compound chocolate.
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Thanks for the lecture.
Yeah, sorry. Not sure what brought that on – maybe a combination of reading too much Ralston in the Listener, plus the mental picture of all those PAS readers sitting around with their single malts and Fair Trade chocolates... Sometimes it’s like Tze Ming never happened*… ;-)
Are you really sure of what you're saying?
More like "rarely".
(* Definitely not equating TMM with humourless econazis here). -
Sometimes it’s like Tze Ming never happened
Hey, doing my best to keep the spirit alive. Or is that what prompted your comment? I do miss her myself.
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Threadjack (unless somone can make it about chocolate or elitism): I don't remember where Finlay McDonald was being doubted here recently, but his SST column today is a forthright reflection on Key's recent speech about bravely rescuing our economy by doing nothing.
Nine months into this government's first term we might be forgiven for expecting a little more. But it is all we'll ever get from politicians who are capable of identifying the problems but prevented by ideology and intellectual timidity from offering honest analysis of the causes and therefore real solutions.
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Conservative and liberal commentators alike acknowledge that New Zealand cannot hope to return to its pre-recessionary ways, buying and selling houses to fill up with consumer junk bought with the borrowed savings of more successful national economies.
The trouble is, without meaningful reform of the fundamental economic conditions that have created and sustained this fantasy, New Zealanders can only ever be expected to behave in predictable ways.
Our capital markets are feeble, our finance companies black holes, so we invest in personal property. Our tradeable sector suffers due to manufacturers and exporters being routinely hobbled by an over-traded and over-valued currency. Our foreign-owned banks have used the hot money gushing through their coffers due to that volatile exchange rate to flood the economy with credit, fuelling the preoccupation with property and flat screen TVs. We train lawyers and accountants instead of scientists and engineers. We can't save because we're already borrowing just to maintain a static standard of living.
...The silence is deafening. At the same time we seem to be looking in all the usual old places for signs of "recovery" – house prices and sales volumes, a pulse in the sharemarket, an uptick in consumer spending.
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Palm oil and save the whales.
Folks look around you. We live in a country kept afloat by our own environmental devastation.
We, who produce meat, dairy and wine, are so sanctimonious about a product that happens to be one of the most productive plantation crops on the planet.
We have cleared 70% of our lands and terminated untold avian species, and we are pointing the finger at someone else?
Protest sure, but reset your mark. Tell people to lay off the dairy, push away the steak, turn down the butterflied leg of lamb, and drink only water.
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Logan, I believe the complaint about palm oil is not its productivity but the placement of those plantations.
I agree about the far from benign impact of our own farming industries. Idiot/Savant has recently graphed their carbon impacts.
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Logan, I believe we can actually tackle more than one issue at a time. I agree that those who eat industrially-farmed steaks and lamb roasts every day who point fingers at palm oil producers are suffering from a huge outbreak of hypocrisy. Not to mention "eco-colonisalism", to coin a term for those sanctimonious twunts who think their own practices are fine, but those natives in furrin lands can't be trusted to manage their own affairs.
But for those of us who are trying, there is more than one area we can be conscious of. And even if we aren't trying particularly hard, there are areas of greater importance. I personally think wiping out an entire species of great ape has a little more priority in the short term than the over-fertilisation of NZ farmlands (but, still, both of these things can be tackled simultaneously, IMO, given however many billions of people there are in the world).
I also don't agree with those who try to characterise all meat consumption as intrinsically bad. I don't eat red meat myself, but I tend to wonder what you'd expect to grow on cold Scottish or Welsh highlands other than sheep. Sometimes a crop animal is a much more efficient converter of sunlight to energy for our purposes than the native vegetation. But I also agree that most of us could stand to eat a helluva lot less meat - but saying "All meat is EBIL" is patently false, and doesn't do the argument of "consume less" any favours.
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Logan, I believe we can actually tackle more than one issue at a time. I agree that those who eat industrially-farmed steaks and lamb roasts every day who point fingers at palm oil producers are suffering from a huge outbreak of hypocrisy.
As meat production goes, ours is less bad than most places. What the dairy boom is being allowed to do to our environment is a different matter. So it's the latte-drinkers who are really stinkin' the place up ..
Not to mention "eco-colonisalism", to coin a term for those sanctimonious twunts who think their own practices are fine, but those natives in furrin lands can't be trusted to manage their own affairs.
But you're talking about massive and active deforestation right now, as opposed to ours, which was done 150 years ago. And let's not patronise the foreigners -- the Malaysian Palm Oil Association, which oversees about half the world's production, runs a big, click global PR operation. Long-time readers may recall the visit to these forums of Palm Oil Guy ...
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...just returned from protesting about Cadbury's use of palm oil at the annual Jaffa Race. (Not using the palm oil at the Jaffa race - you know what I mean).
I was away last week so a bit late to join the thread, but I wonder if those protesting about Cadbury's use of palm oil are planning on banning soap from their households? Check most brands of commercially produced soap and near the top of the list of ingredients (ingredients are listed in order of quantity used) you will see Sodium Palmate and/or Sodium Palm Kernelate. Some soaps will also list Potassium Palmate which is the potassium-salt equivalent. Sodium Palmate is essentially palm oil which has been reacted with sodium hydroxide and this will make up about 70%+ of the average bar of palm-based soap (with coconut oil (listed as sodium cocoate) about another 20% or so) .
If you want to avoid it, the main alternative is beef fat (which will be listed as Sodium Tallowate). Ironically, palm based soap makers will often proudly state "contains no animal products" on their bars while ignoring the damage that palm oil production is causing (whereas beef fat is largely a waste product).
The quantities of palm oil used by Cadbury's would be a fraction of that used by the soap industry and I seriously doubt that commercial soap makers are going out of their way to obtain sustainably grown palm oil. -
If you want to avoid it, the main alternative is beef fat (which will be listed as Sodium Tallowate). Ironically, palm based soap makers will often proudly state "contains no animal products" on their bars while ignoring the damage that palm oil production is causing (whereas beef fat is largely a waste product).
That, sir, is a very interesting point.
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Long-time readers may recall the visit to these forums of Palm Oil Guy ...
Oh, happy happy days.
If you want to avoid it, the main alternative is beef fat (which will be listed as Sodium Tallowate). Ironically, palm based soap makers will often proudly state "contains no animal products" on their bars while ignoring the damage that palm oil production is causing (whereas beef fat is largely a waste product).
Interesting. Do you happen to know which suppliers of soap use beef fat?
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Oh sheez. Soap? Washing my nether regions is now fraught with guilt? Is there not one single thing I can buy at the local supermarket which doesn't exploit someone vulnerable or deforest something or exterminate an endangered species?
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Long-time readers may recall the visit to these forums of Palm Oil Guy ...
During the recent earthquake, my thoughts were with one of his friends, a South Islander who lived in the bustling metropolis that is Homer Tunnel.
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A question perhaps best answered by potty-mouthed readers: does the beef-based soap taste any better than the palm-based? (Well it is a thread predicated on hedonism)
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beef-based soap
Gosh, that sounds *amazingly* wrong. :) It reminds me of 'nuts and gum: together at last!'
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Does beef-based soap represent the Tallow Peril?
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