Video and Podcast: MCC & Intellectual Entrepreneurship (IE) Collaboration
I sat down with Dr. Richard Cherwitz & Dr. Thomas Darwin, founders of the University of Texas Intellectual Entrepreneurship Initiative, to discuss our collaboration on It Could Be U: Intensive Mentoring & College Readiness Program. I made a short promo video based on that conversation and decided to post the full interview as a podcast for those that want a deeper understanding of our partnership and philosophy. Enjoy!
RISE Video: Branding Your Creativity Through Social Media
Here are some excerpts from the Branding Your Creativity Through Social Media talk I did with Korey Coleman during RISE. Creator of the entertainment web site Spill.com, Korey traces his evolution from public access television to YouTube and eventually being acquired by Hollywood.com. Throughout this time, Korey has utilized free and low cost web and social media tools such as iTunes, Ustream, Skype and the social networking platform Ning to attract more than 1 million visitors a week!
Part 1 – Leveraging Social Media To Build A Culture Part 2 – Using Free and Cheap Webcasting Tools Part 3 – Creating Custom Campaigns Part 4 – Pitfalls of Doing It Cheap
Part 5 – Q & A
Video: Pt 1 – Branding Your Creativity Through Social Media w Korey Coleman of Spill.com
Media Communications Council Founder Carl Settles Jr. leads a discussion with the creator of Spill.com Korey Coleman. Korey traces his evolution from public access to YouTube and eventually being acquired by Hollywood.com. Throughout the process, free and cheap media tools such as Ning, Ustream and Skype have played prominent roles in his success.
Podcast: Youth, Education & Social Entrepreneurship
Here’s a podcast along with slides and video used in my presentation earlier this week on Youth, Education & Social Entrepreneurship. I was joined by Hoover Alexander, proprietor of Hoover’s Cooking. Hoover was the client for students in last summer’s outreach program Media Xperiments service learning project. A group of twelve students worked for 64 hours with University of Texas Ph.D canddate in advertising candidate Amber Chenevert and consulted with top creatives and executives from GSD&M Idea City and Sanders Wingo as we developed a media strategy, web site and on-line cooking show for Hoover’s Cooking.
Student made video or “mash up” on Cultural Capital.
Nine Rappers, One Wu-Tang Clan : NPR
Nine Rappers, One Wu-Tang Clan
by Joel Rose
Taking inspiration from martial arts movies, the members of Wu-Tang Clan named themselves after a fictional sect of Chinese swordsmen.
Taking inspiration from martial arts movies, the members of Wu-Tang Clan named themselves after a fictional sect of Chinese swordsmen.
There had been large groups in hip-hop before, but none that featured nine different rappers, as the Wu-Tang Clan did when it made its debut in 1993. Creating a cohesive group out of nine individuals requires discipline and imagination.
There’s a moment on the Wu-Tang Clan’s classic first album when the members are talking to an interviewer. They compare themselves to the after-school cartoon Voltron, in which five robot lions combine to form one invincible warrior. Like Voltron, the voices of the Wu-Tang Clan seem to fit together seamlessly.
“There were so many diverse voices coming at you at once, very aggressively,” writer and producer Sacha Jenkins says. “But at the same time, it was one voice.”
In the early 1990s, Jenkins was the editor of a hip-hop fanzine called Ego Trip when a friend played him a tape of a tape of the first Wu-Tang single.
“It didn’t feel like a lot of guys,” Jenkins says. “That sort of sensibility and that energy just spoke to the chemistry that these guys had. And I believe the hunger they had to sort of change their environment and change their situation.”
Most of the Wu-Tang Clan’s members grew up on Staten Island. Taking inspiration from martial arts movies, they named themselves after a fictional sect of Chinese swordsmen, and they adopted an ethic of loyalty to one another that was born out of necessity and experience. Mitchell Diggs is the CEO of Wu-Tang Corp. He’s also the brother of Robert Diggs, better known as RZA, the clan’s producer.
“Me and RZA, we came from a large family — 11 siblings,” Diggs says. “We was pretty much familiar and used to how to balance out that many people at one time.”
Source: YouTube
Both Diggs and his brother had been signed as rappers to major labels before assembling the Wu-Tang Clan, and both had put out solo records that flopped. For the Wu-Tang to succeed, Diggs and RZA had to persuade the other rappers to put the group first, at least for a while. Mitchell Diggs says it wasn’t easy.
“The biggest thing was, ‘How do you feed nine people off of one deal?’ ” Diggs says. “We laughed about it. But it was something we thought about. We knew that we had to create solo careers.”
Protect Your Neck
The Wu-Tang Clan signed with one record company. But the group’s contract made sure each member had the freedom to make his own solo records. That was good for morale and for business. When the Wu-Tang Clan’s first album, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), sold 1 million copies, all of its MCs were able to cash in, including Lamont Hawkins, who performs as U-God. Hawkins says the Wu-Tang Clan did something together that none of its members could have done alone.
“We come from nothing. And we make something out of nothing,” U-God says. “We was trying to create our own industry, our own brand, our own situation, know what I’m saying? So it’s like an industry was being built inside an industry.”
Source: YouTube
The Wu-Tang Clan made millions of dollars selling clothing and video games, but success wasn’t always sweet. Founding member Ol’ Dirty Bastard died of a drug overdose. The other rappers built careers as solo artists or branched out into acting and film scoring. When the Wu-Tang Clan came back together to record, arguments were inevitable. But Mitchell Diggs says the group found a way to resolve them.
“When there’s tension, and dudes are beefing, and dudes are whining, we have sit-downs,” Diggs says. “We go through 50 songs and say, ‘What you don’t like?’ And then we tweak ‘em. And if you still don’t like it, you not on that [expletive] song no more. Excuse my French, but get out the way. We like the way the song is, leave it alone.”
Making It Work
Occasionally the Wu-Tang’s internal disagreements have gone public, as they did during the making of 2007′s 8 Diagrams. Rapper Raekwon complained about RZA’s atmospheric production style to an online journalist.
“RZA is trying to create too much of an orchestra, piano,” Raekwon said. “This is not the vibe I want. But it’s his vibe. It’s his vibe. It’s like, he’s like, he’s like a hip-hop hippie right now, you know what I mean?”
Raekwon is using other producers on a solo album that’s due out later this year. RZA is not appearing on the Wu-Tang Clan’s current tour because he’s in Asia directing a martial arts movie. But his brother, Mitchell Diggs, says the Wu-Tang members generally do get along. To make their partnership work, he says, they all share a single dressing room on the road.
“If you can’t get in the room, you’re gonna come on that stage unfocused,” Diggs says. “You’re not gonna have the chemistry. Keep the friends and family out. And give them the dressing room so they can meditate, stare at each other. Even if they gotta argue for 10 minutes — get it off they chest. And when you hit that stage, you are one body.”
A partnership more like the Chinese swordsmen who inspired them than most people expected.
Content Advisory: Language Not Suitable For All Ages
Source: YouTube
More Music Interviews
The Record
Wu-Tang Clan: A Few Extra Chambers
Bonus audio: How the members of the Wu-Tang Clan have resolved their differences over two decades.
Music Interviews
Nine Rappers, One Wu-Tang Clan
Creating a cohesive group out of nine individuals requires discipline and imagination.
Music Interviews
OK Go’s Kulash Rewrites Rock-Star Rules
Singer and guitarist Damian Kulash describes how OK Go is forging a nontraditional path in music.
Comments
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NPR reserves the right to read on the air and/or publish on its Web site or in any medium now known or unknown the e-mails and letters that we receive. We may edit them for clarity or brevity and identify authors by name and location. For additional information, please consult our Terms of Use.
William Paschall (MisterSinister) wrote:
Since my last post got removed by a moderator, let me try again. Just because some people don’t like a certain style of music doesn’t make them the arbiters of musicality. Threatening to pull funding simply because you don’t like a topic on NPR is both childish and petulant. The “Rap isn’t music” argument is meaningless and is not an opinion held by music scholars as far as I know. I don’t personally consider Jeff Koons a real artist, but my personal opinion doesn’t equal fact (as much as I’d like it to).
January 5, 2011 1:35:12 AM CST
ALIYA AMARSHI (ISA_MML) wrote:
I think Dietrich is absolutely right. The hatred towards hip hop and frankly any genre of music dominated by a segment of the population that has been denied true legitimate citizenship in this great free country of yours (and ours as well) is always linked to the threat that they pose to the white populace. Older hip hop was intrinsically tied to black nationalist movements which has been, in recent years, obscured by commercialized gangsta rap. Good for NPR for recognizing a rap group that transcends this narrow commercialized form and good for Dietrich for being so sweet.
January 5, 2011 12:18:07 AM CST
Fred Pearce (Lunceford) wrote:
I am tired of the recent focus on Rap. I do not consider it music, now, or ever. It is spoken word, it requires no musicality. It has robbed a generation of its musical heritage. Think were Jazz, Blues and Soul would be today if the small portion of rappers whom had the potential to become musicians had become them, and the listeners to rap had listened to real american music. Maybe they would be socially conciose today and connected to their history rather than to bling.
January 4, 2011 10:16:00 PM CST
William Paschall (MisterSinister) wrote:
An NPR moderator has removed this comment because it does not adhere to the discussion guidelines
January 4, 2011 9:51:20 PM CST
Cathy Wittel (CathyWittel) wrote:
Whether or not you like this type of music or the NPR story, it is socially and politically relevant…that’s NPR reports are about.
January 4, 2011 9:35:36 PM CST
Leah Dixon (ArtOfLife) wrote:
I think Wu-Tang is awesome, and I’m a music lover who listens to rock, jazz, folk, bluegrass, ambient, chants, Americana. Small-minded people who think the only arts that should be covered are the arts they personally like, or who threaten to pull their support from NPR because a news org’s culture section covers something an artist didn’t want to hear are just sad to me.
January 4, 2011 9:24:13 PM CST
Dietrich W (outdeh) wrote:
Classic comments from all the old, bitter readers. So every time NPR does a story on a topic you don’t find interesting it automatically means they don’t deserve public funding? Give me a break.
We’ve all heard the “hip hop isn’t music” line before. Do you remember when you were kids and your parents were saying the same thing about rock n roll? It amazes me how quickly people forget their youth. And while you’d never admit it, even to yourselves, all you people who automatically dismiss hip-hop are in reality threatened by young, proud, loud, rich, successful, and angry black people. But why even say any of this, talking to a brick wall is always pointless.
January 4, 2011 9:14:17 PM CST
L R (human) wrote:
I heart Wu Tang clan. Yes, and I also love Merle Haggard and the Concertgebow (sp?).
January 4, 2011 9:06:56 PM CST
Matthew Stanley (MC_STAN) wrote:
I don’t like every bit of music played or talked about on NPR, but at least I have an open mind and respect other peoples’ tastes.
“shivarising”, “TruAmerican”, and “krizaziz” best protect ya necks, cuz Wu Tang Clan ain’t nothin’ to f*** with. CHOPPIN’ HEADS BWOI
January 4, 2011 8:53:00 PM CST
Art Leland (PopNobob) wrote:
Every notice how the most successful musical partnerships (like Wu-Tang) usually have at least one member who is straight, sober, focused and another who is edgy or even stark raving crazy? That kind of conflict leads to brilliant if unstable chemistry. This duo gives and example of how it can play out onstage:
January 4, 2011 8:46:04 PM CST
Report Details Black Male Achievement Gap : NPR
Disturbing story from NPR. We need a great deal more conversation about this topic.
November 9, 2010Black male students are nearly twice as likely to drop out of high school as their white counterparts. A new study says that statistic and others call for a different approach to help black men and boys succeed.
As head of the Council of the Great City Schools, Mike Casserly has seen lots of depressing numbers about achievement for minority students. But he says performance for black males is shockingly low.
Read The Report
“African-American male students who were neither disabled nor poor were doing no better than white students who were disabled and/or poor,” Casserly says.
The new report by the group analyzed test scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress to get at other depressing truths about achievement for African-American men and boys. They are twice as likely as whites to be held back in elementary school, and three times as likely to be suspended from school. That trend follows black men right into adulthood: They are half as likely as white male students to graduate college in four years.
The council hopes these numbers will lead to a White House conference focusing on achievement for black males. But many other studies have drawn attention to this problem with few results.
The Schott Foundation has produced four reports on this issue over the past decade, including a recent report released in August. Michael Holzman, a consultant for Schott, says the problem is simple: Most black male students go to lousy schools.
“If we look at schools that are predominately black, and we look at the achievement of white kids who are in those schools, we find that the white kids don’t do well either,” Holzman says.
The Schott study points to New Jersey districts that have been successful in reducing the achievement gap, thanks to extra attention and extra funding brought about by a lawsuit.
Some black leaders, however, feel that the problem goes beyond funding. Michael Wotorson of the Campaign for High School Equity says black students enter kindergarten less prepared, and that means black home life plays some role.
“Until we address our own culpability, we’re going to be making very, very slow progress,” Wotorson says.
The Council of the Great City Schools says the numbers are so bad for black male students that Congress needs to establish a special program.
Want To Open A Slaughterhouse? Go To Meat School : NPR
Remember Sam the Butcher from The Brady Bunch?
Today, the days of the neighborhood butcher like Sam are mostly gone, replaced by vast meat-processing plants putting out shrink-wrapped cuts for supermarkets.
But foodies and locavores are fueling a demand for local and artisanal meat products. The problem is there aren’t enough slaughterhouses or qualified meat cutters.
A Month In The Meat Lab: $3,000
It was lamb day recently at the State University of New York’s meat lab in Cobleskill, a little town near Albany. Guys in white smocks and hard hats haul carcasses out of the cooler. They slaughtered the animals the day before.
Enlarge David Sommerstein/NPRMcKeever Stanley was looking for a job when he enrolled in the State University of New York’s Meat Lab course. He says he loves to dress the venison he hunts each fall.
Instructor Clint Lane runs through the cut list.
“All the riblets, we’re gonna pull the flank off of them, cut ‘em in half for riblets,” he says. “Shanks — we’ll do half of ‘em as whole and half of ‘em as cross-cuts.”
The students slice the carcasses on the band saw. They forked over $3,000 for a month of killing, cutting, and grinding up beef, pork and lamb. They get a meat-processing and food-safety certificate and the basic know-how to work in the industry.
Fred Beckman, who’s worked in Manhattan’s fanciest restaurants, wants to sell his own foie gras, terrines and sausages.
“There’s nothing that’s more satisfying than biting into something that has a great deal of good fat,” he says.
McKeever Stanley, who’s out of a job, loves to dress the venison he hunts every fall.
“My wife one day said, ‘Why don’t you go to school and do it and get paid for it?’”
And Tom Acampora, a construction worker, wants to build a slaughterhouse next to his home.
“Walk out in the morning with a cup of coffee, start doing some cleanup and get going at my own leisure,” he says.
Shortage Of Small Slaughterhouses
The local food movement is driving more farmers to raise animals for meat. But between farm and table is a bottleneck — a shortage of small slaughterhouses serving small farms, especially in the Northeast.
You’ve gotta know which end to start cutting and then just start cutting, whether it’s on a saw or with a knife. The skill of knowing where that part came off — and how to get it from a carcass — has left.
- Meat Lab Director Eric Shelley
“What we need is for that smaller operator who may have 100 acres or 150 acres — he would like to have the opportunity to take and raise a few cattle or a few hogs and be able to slaughter them and sell them locally. To do that, you have to have an infrastructure,” says Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack.
There are a couple reasons for the shortage. Hundreds of slaughterhouses went out of business in the 1990s after new, technical regulations took effect. Betsy Hodge, of Cornell Cooperative Extension, says they make what’s known as an abattoir costly to build and daunting to run.
“They’re put in there for safety reasons. But they are sort of overwhelming for these smaller slaughterhouse operators to handle,” she says.
Also, the craft of butchery is becoming scarce. It used to be that aspiring knifemen apprenticed with a butcher, or in the meat department of the neighborhood grocer.
Help Meat Stay Local
But meat cutting has industrialized. Plants in the Midwest slaughter and cut up tens of thousands of animals each day.
At the meat lab, director Eric Shelley teaches his students about every step, from food safety and humane animal handling to how to cook different cuts.
Enlarge David Sommerstein/NPRMeat Lab director Eric Shelley wants to revive the fading craft of meat-cutting.
David Sommerstein/NPRMeat Lab director Eric Shelley wants to revive the fading craft of meat-cutting.
He drills a student on the lamb’s basic parts, or primals.
Shelley used to work at Walmart, where, like most supermarkets today, meat arrives pre-cut into the primals.
“Basically, it comes out of a box,” he says. “You’ve gotta know which end to start cutting and then just start cutting, whether it’s on a saw or with a knife. The skill of knowing where that part came off — and how to get it from a carcass — has left.”
Jason Cramer wraps and labels shank cuts, the final product. He wants to start a slaughterhouse on the farm where he works near Buffalo, N.Y. They run a herd of 300 Hereford cattle. But they have to truck them to Pennsylvania for butchery.
“It’s just a shame to see it go out of state and to go into these big factories and get mixed in with all this other meat when, in my eyes, it should be sold locally because we put so much time and effort into the animals,” he says.
The federal government is taking small steps to help meat stay local. The USDA is offering grants for mobile slaughterhouses, an abattoir on wheels that goes from farm to farm.
Meat lab director Eric Shelley says more than half of his graduates work in the industry today — they’re starting to fill in the gap left by the disappearance of Sam the Butcher.
Food For Thought: Meat-Based Diet Made Us Smarter : NPR
So, that’s some more food for thought.
Food For Thought: Meat-Based Diet Made Us Smarter
Om Nom Nom: As we began to shy away from eating primarily fruit, leaves and nuts and began eating meat, our brains grew. We developed the capacity to use tools, so our need for large, sharp teeth and big grinders waned. From left, a cast of teeth from a chimpanzee, Australopithecus afarensis and a modern human.
Our earliest ancestors ate their food raw — fruit, leaves, maybe some nuts. When they ventured down onto land, they added things like underground tubers, roots and berries.
It wasn’t a very high-calorie diet, so to get the energy you needed, you had to eat a lot and have a big gut to digest it all. But having a big gut has its drawbacks.
“You can’t have a large brain and big guts at the same time,” explains Leslie Aiello, an anthropologist and director of the Wenner-Gren Foundation in New York City, which funds research on evolution. Digestion, she says, was the energy-hog of our primate ancestor’s body. The brain was the poor stepsister who got the leftovers.
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The Human Edge
Mrs. Charles Darwin’s Advice For Walking Upright
The lovely Emma Darwin has graciously volunteered to show the differences between humans and chimps.
Until, that is, we discovered meat.
“What we think is that this dietary change around 2.3 million years ago was one of the major significant factors in the evolution of our own species,” Aiello says.
That period is when cut marks on animal bones appeared — not a predator’s tooth marks, but incisions that could have been made only by a sharp tool. That’s one sign of our carnivorous conversion. But Aiello’s favorite clue is somewhat ickier — it’s a tapeworm. “The closest relative of human tapeworms are tapeworms that affect African hyenas and wild dogs,” she says.
So sometime in our evolutionary history, she explains, “we actually shared saliva with wild dogs and hyenas.” That would have happened if, say, we were scavenging on the same carcass that hyenas were.
But dining with dogs was worth it. Meat is packed with lots of calories and fat. Our brain — which uses about 20 times as much energy as the equivalent amount of muscle — piped up and said, “Please, sir, I want some more.”
Carving Up The Diet
As we got more, our guts shrank because we didn’t need a giant vegetable processor any more. Our bodies could spend more energy on other things like building a bigger brain. Sorry, vegetarians, but eating meat apparently made our ancestors smarter — smart enough to make better tools, which in turn led to other changes, says Aiello.
“If you look in your dog’s mouth and cat’s mouth, and open up your own mouth, our teeth are quite different,” she says. “What allows us to do what a cat or dog can do are tools.”
Tools meant we didn’t need big sharp teeth like other predators. Tools even made vegetable matter easier to deal with. As anthropologist Shara Bailey at New York University says, they were like “external” teeth.
“Your teeth are really for processing food, of course, but if you do all the food processing out here,” she says, gesturing with her hands, “if you are grinding things, then there is less pressure for your teeth to pick up the slack.”
Our teeth, jaws and mouth changed as well as our gut.
Meat is packed with lots of calories and fat.
A Tough Bite To Swallow
But adding raw meat to our diet doesn’t tell the whole food story, according to anthropologist Richard Wrangham. Wrangham invited me to his apartment at Harvard University to explain what he believes is the real secret to being human. All I had to do was bring the groceries, which meant a steak — which I thought could fill in for wildebeest or antelope — and a turnip, a mango, some peanuts and potatoes.
As we slice up the turnip and put the potatoes in a pot, Wrangham explains that even after we started eating meat, raw food just didn’t pack the energy to build the big-brained, small-toothed modern human. He cites research that showed that people on a raw food diet, including meat and oil, lost a lot of weight. Many said they felt better, but also experienced chronic energy deficiency. And half the women in the experiment stopped menstruating.
It’s not as if raw food isn’t nutritious; it’s just harder for the body to get at the nutrition.
Wrangham urges me to try some raw turnip. Not too bad, but hardly enough to get the juices flowing. “They’ve got a tremendous amount of caloric energy in them,” he says. “The problem is that it’s in the form of starch, which unless you cook it, does not give you very much.”
Then there’s all the chewing that raw food requires. Chimps, for example, sometimes chew for six hours a day. That actually consumes a lot of energy.
“Plato said if we were regular animals, you know, we wouldn’t have time to write poetry,” Wrangham jokes. “You know, he was right.”
Interactive: Building A Human Body
Much of the body we have today took shape millions of years before the first primate emerged.
Tartare No More
One solution might have been to pound food, especially meat — like the steak I brought. “If our ancestors had used stones to mash the meat like this,” Wrangham says as he demonstrates with a wooden mallet, “then it would have reduced the difficulty they would have had in digesting it.”
But pounding isn’t as good as cooking that steak, says Wrangham. And cooking is what he thinks really changed our modern body. Someone discovered fire — no one knows exactly when — and then someone got around to putting steak and veggies on the barbeque. And people said, “Hey, let’s do that again.”
Besides better taste, cooked food had other benefits — cooking killed some pathogens on food.
But cooking also altered the meat itself. It breaks up the long protein chains, and that makes them easier for stomach enzymes to digest. “The second thing is very clear,” Wrangham adds, “and that is the muscle, which is made of protein, is wrapped up like a sausage in a skin, and the skin is collagen, connective tissue. And that collagen is very hard to digest. But if you heat it, it turns to jelly.”
As for starchy foods like turnips, cooking gelatinizes the tough starch granules and makes them easier to digest too. Even just softening food — which cooking does — makes it more digestible. In the end, you get more energy out of the food.
Yes, cooking can damage some good things in raw food, like vitamins. But Wrangham argues that what’s gained by cooking far outweighs the losses.
As I cut into my steak (Wrangham is a vegetarian; he settles for the mango and potatoes), Wrangham explains that cooking also led to some of the finer elements of human behavior: it encourages people to share labor; it brings families and communities together at the end of the day and encourages conversation and story-telling — all very human activities.
“Ultimately, of course, what makes us intellectually human is our brain,” he says. “And I think that comes from having the highest quality of food in the animal kingdom, and that’s because we cook.”
So, as the Neanderthals liked to say around the campfire: bon appetit.
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The human hand evolved with great dexterity and fine motor control. That allowed us to make tools.
Comments
Please note that all comments must adhere to the NPR.org discussion rules and terms of use. See also the Community FAQ.
You must be logged in to leave a comment. Login / Register
NPR reserves the right to read on the air and/or publish on its Web site or in any medium now known or unknown the e-mails and letters that we receive. We may edit them for clarity or brevity and identify authors by name and location. For additional information, please consult our Terms of Use.
larry fer (littlefer) wrote:
The central premise of the article may or may not be true. If you eat meat, fine. If you do not eat meat, fine. I have raised, killed and butchered my own cattle and goats. If you raise your animals on grass and hay and don’t fatten them with grains, you can not get fat from the meat. It’s too lean. The explorers of the Lewis & Clark Expedition ate 7 to 9 pounds of meat a day. They were not fat. I mention this because so many people said meat makes you fat.
Mon Aug 02 2010 19:22:50 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time)
Rebecca Hansbrough (spidergirl24) wrote:
Protein replenishes the nutrients in the brain while carbohydrates give us energy but as for making us more intelligent or capable of sound judgement-that remains to be seen or proven.
Mon Aug 02 2010 19:17:03 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time)
andrew nelson (andy_in_virginia) wrote:
Which means Vegans and Vegetarians are heading down an evolutionary dead end…
Mon Aug 02 2010 19:06:39 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time)
Lou D (LouFd) wrote:
Seafood is animal protein but not necessarily “red meat” per se. It is easily obtained, very high in the protein and trace elements necessary for the growth of the human brain which contributed to its evolutionary development and complexity. May I recommend the August 2010 article in Scientific American titled “When the Sea Saved Humanity”. My understanding is that we are commenting on a serious scientific article generously presented by this station and it deserves serious adult commentary.
Mon Aug 02 2010 19:02:23 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time)
John Doe (Ihatethemedia) wrote:
Was this story courtesy of the beef industry? Eating some lean meat like fish is good, but eating fatty red meat every week is not good and it is one of the leading causes of high blood pressure, heart attacks, cancer, and obesity.
Avoid fast food restaurants at all costs.
Mon Aug 02 2010 18:56:47 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time)
Tony D (maltaman) wrote:
@Lou D: Nevermind.
Mon Aug 02 2010 18:39:13 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time)
Tony D (maltaman) wrote:
@Toby Saunders: Please take your righteous indignation and angry rants to a more appropriate forum. This one is dedicated to discussing *human evolution* and the role meat eating and cooking food played in our evolutionary history; not morals.
@Lou D: Seafood (as you’ve listed it) is meat. What’s your point about human evolution?
Mon Aug 02 2010 18:35:38 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time)
Attila Csakberenyi (Papem) wrote:
However American Corporations work hard to make us stupid again! (Genetical trash!)
I also hate, that they don’t need to label any any genetical experiment we are buying at the store, but this nutritions are bad and you must feed growth hormones is just complete nonsense.
GET RID OF LOBBY and the US will be a better place!
Mon Aug 02 2010 18:11:34 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time)
Lou D (LouFd) wrote:
For all our Victorian adolescent caveman fantasies let us not forget that humans spent eons by the seaside collecting high protein seafood in the form of easily obtained mollusks, fish, sea birds and marine mammals. Women as well as, if not more than, men were and still are responsible for most food collecting in traditional societies.
Mon Aug 02 2010 18:08:12 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time)
Dana Seilhan (dana1974) wrote:
And Toby? The fact remains we’re not herbivores. If your morality is more important than your health then fine, go ahead and risk it, but let’s see how smug you feel in twenty years when you’re suffering from pernicious anemia, vitamin A deficiency and degradation of spinal bone. All of which I’ve heard complaints about from people who’ve relied too heavily on plant foods. Life feeds on life. This includes the life in the animal kingdom. We are animals, and nothing special–if we don’t obey the laws of nature as they apply to us, we WILL hurt ourselves. I have yet to hear of a baby dying of malnutrition because they only ate animal foods. I have, however, heard of vegan babies dying that way.
Mon Aug 02 2010 17:59:23 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time)
You Can’t Access Fresh Fruit and Vegetables In The Hood
I want to thank my good friend Hoover Alexander for sending me this story on NPR. Lack of access to healthy food plays a large role the obesity of youth and indeed all of us. Plain english version: You Can’t Access Fresh Fruit and Vegetables In The Hood. Processed food and drinks which are loaded fructose corn syrup and salt to make them more palatable, are major culprits of obesity. However, these things are marketed and sold to us ceaselessly on virtually every corner.
We’ve got to start thinking differently about fundamental things like food and education… I’m just sayin’.
Alex Williamson, 8, is one of 17 million children who live in U.S. households where getting enough food is a challenge. Sometimes it’s hard for the poor to eat healthy because it costs more.
Pam Fessler/NPRAlex Williamson, 8, is one of 17 million children who live in U.S. households where getting enough food is a challenge. Sometimes it’s hard for the poor to eat healthy because it costs more.
Alex Williamson, 8, doesn’t look very hungry — in fact, he’s a little chubby. But Alex, who lives in Carlisle, Pa., is one of 17 million children who live in U.S. households where getting enough food is a challenge.
The Obama administration has pledged to end childhood hunger in America by 2015. A key element of that challenge is to make sure the food hungry children eat is nutritious. They’re lofty goals that will be difficult to achieve.
Alex’s mom, Connie Williamson, says she tries to give her son healthy food but doesn’t always succeed.
“When he gets up on his own, he’ll go find what he wants,” she says. “He’ll get a hot dog bun, or get a piece of bread. He’ll get an ice pop or something.”
And that’s exactly what he did early one morning, before his family headed out to the local food pantry. Alex ate a blue ice pop for breakfast.
A Struggle To Eat The ‘Right’ Food
Hunger in America is complicated. It’s not just getting enough food, but getting the right food — and making the right choices.
Connie Williamson says it’s not easy on a tight budget. She spends hours driving around each month looking for deals. She has to stretch $600 in food stamps for herself, her husband, Alex and two teenage girls.
You can get leaner cuts of meat, but then they’re more expensive. You can get fresh fruit every couple of days and blow half of your budget on fresh fruits and vegetables in a week’s time, easy.
- Connie Williamson
“You can get leaner cuts of meat, but then they’re more expensive,” she says. “You can get fresh fruit every couple of days and blow half of your budget on fresh fruits and vegetables in a week’s time, easy.”
The Williamsons live well below the poverty line. And in the family’s struggle to obtain enough food, nutrition sometimes takes a back seat to necessity. There’s often a tug of war between the best intentions and some not-so-good eating.
For example, the Williamsons have a garden behind their apartment in downtown Carlisle. They grow lots of healthy food — zucchini, peppers and Brussels sprouts. But when Alex was thirsty after a walk, his mother gave him a plastic water bottle filled with orange soda.
Elaine Livas, who runs Project SHARE, the local food pantry, says she sees it all time.
“A gallon of milk is $3-something. A bottle of orange soda is 89 cents,” she says. “Do the math.”
Livas says low-income families might know milk is better for their kids, but when it comes to filling a hungry stomach, a cheaper high-calorie option can look pretty good.
Read Part 1 Of This Report
Project SHARE, like many food pantries and soup kitchens, is increasingly offering cooking and nutrition classes to help their clients get the most out of what they eat. And Alex Williamson is taking some of those classes.
“Because really, that’s what we need, a transformation in how people view their relationship with food,” Livas says.
A Third Of U.S. Children Are Overweight
The White House agrees. First lady Michelle Obama recently welcomed hundreds of chefs on the White House lawn. She was encouraging them to volunteer at schools to help cafeteria workers, students and their parents learn how to prepare more nutritious meals.
She noted that almost a third of U.S. children are overweight.
“Good nutrition at school is more important than ever,” she told the chefs. “A major key to giving our children a healthy future will be to pass a strong child nutrition bill.”
Children Living In Households Facing Food Shortages
1n 1998, 14 million children lived in households where getting enough food was a challenge. While that number has risen and fallen, it took a dramatic jump in 2008 to 17 million children, according to the USDA’s most recent data. Below, NPR calculated the percent change per year of children in households facing this challenge.
Source: United States Department of Agriculture
Credit: Adrienne Wollman/NPR
That’s a big part of the administration’s plan to end childhood hunger. President Obama has asked Congress for a billion dollars more a year to do things like make school lunches healthier and to expand access to subsidized meals for low-income children. Advocates say it will help kids learn better, and reduce health care costs.
There’s a lot of support on Capitol Hill, but lawmakers are also increasingly nervous about new spending. Committees in both chambers have passed scaled-back versions, and it’s unclear whether a bill can be enacted before year’s end.
In an exchange at a House hearing this month with Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, Rep. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) raised other concerns.
“I have no doubt there are kids that go to school hungry,” he said. “But I have to admit, every time I hear that we have an obesity problem and everybody’s going hungry, how do you reconcile the two?”
Vilsack said they’re not all that different. He said there’s a similarity between low-income families trying to stretch scarce food dollars with high-calorie processed foods, “and youngsters who are just flat out not getting fed because their parents don’t have the resources to feed them.”
Cassidy said he wasn’t sure he followed that reasoning. And he might still be confused if he took a trip to the Williamsons’ kitchen in Carlisle, where contradictions swirl about like stew. The refrigerator and pantry are often filled with food — but the family sometimes has to go to the local soup kitchen to make ends meet.
Hard To Make Good Decisions When You’re Hungry
When asked, Alex says he worries about food all the time, and that he’s always hungry. But later, he admits he has enough to eat. It’s just not always what he wants. He says he especially doesn’t like it when his mother makes Brussels sprouts for dinner.
His 14-year-old sister, Beanna, tries to explain.
“He more or less just worries about if there’s going to be enough food that he likes or if we have something that he likes,” she says. “He’s really picky about what he wants.”
As Beanna talks, Alex goes to the refrigerator for some chocolate. He gets upset when his sister tells him he can only have one piece.
It’s not that uncommon for an 8-year-old to prefer chocolate over Brussels sprouts. But Livas, of the local food pantry, says a good diet is especially important for the poor, as a first step toward addressing their other problems, with things like work, health care and education. She says it’s hard to make good decisions when you’re hungry.
Livas says there’s something else to consider. As the nation becomes more health conscious, she’s noticing less healthy food coming to her pantry. She’s getting more sugar-coated cereals, for example, than the high-fiber ones she used to receive.
“We can’t really complain that the poor are heavier, when what we’re donating is our kind of castaways,” she says.
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More Low-Wage America
Low-Wage America
Eating Nutritiously A Struggle When Money Is Scarce
In the Williamsons’ struggle to obtain enough food, nutrition can take a back seat to necessity.
Low-Wage America
A Daily Fight To Find Food: One Family’s Story
The Williamsons, who make $18,000 a year, say adults skip meals but kids get fed when food runs low.
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Joel Slowik (slowikjw) wrote:
I didn’t like this article. I think ultimately we just need to find a better way to educate folks about nutrition and how to make what may seem like a ‘bland’ meal come out delicious and nutritious. It would be better for news organizations to push that effort rather than writing stories about folks who cannot see that good food is cheap and plentiful.
I had too many thoughts about the article so I wrote them all down and posted them on my blog. If you’re interested you can read it here:
http://joelslowik.blogspot.com/2010/07/food-is-not-really-that-expensive-if.html
Tuesday, July 20, 2010 2:33:36 PM
Lisa Nichols (LisaNichols) wrote:
(cont.)
Okay, so maybe this family profiled doesn’t meet your idea of the “virtuous poor”. Yes, there are things they could be doing better. There are things ALL of us could be doing better. It’s easy to say “Well, I wouldn’t do that” or “I was poor once and I didn’t do that.”
For a truly eye-opening look at what poverty means, I highly recommend John Scalzi’s essay, “Being Poor”: http://whatever.scalzi.com/2005/09/03/being-poor/
Tuesday, July 20, 2010 2:30:17 PM
Lisa Nichols (LisaNichols) wrote:
Okay, for all of you saying “poor people should just cook from scratch/grow gardens/etc.”, let’s look at the assumptions you’re making about ‘poor people’:
1. They have land on which to plant.
2. They know HOW to garden.
3. They have a kitchen stocked with adequate pots and pans for cooking.
4. They have a working stove/oven.
5. They have a working refrigerator.
6. They know how to cook, or have access to a way to learn.
7. They have access to a supermarket rather than a convenience store.
8. They have access to high quality fresh produce.
9. They have time–they’re not working two jobs, 16 hours a day.
10. They live in enough physical safety and stability to allow mental energy for cooking/shopping.
11. They have no illnesses, mental or physical, that inhibit cooking/shopping activities.
I could go on. These are all assumptions you can make if you’re middle class or higher. Someone who’s truly poor–and I mean raised in a cycle of poverty, not grad-student poor–cannot be assumed to have any of these things. (cont.)
Tuesday, July 20, 2010 2:29:32 PM
Vince Cartledge (Vince52) wrote:
How much is a 50lb bag of rice? How much for dried beans? Potatoes? Half the world eats rice 3 meals a day everyday. I was at the store yesterday and a head of cabbage was 28 cents and an ear of corn was 17 cents. You can eat healthy cheap.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010 2:27:25 PM
Peter Eastwood (PEastwood) wrote:
I am educated and have money and would not mind being fit and trim but this whole thing is a nightmare. The real problem is that eating healthy and exercising for most of us, poor or not, is a huge challenge. I find it confusing to calculate that given my exercise and activity – just how many calories do I need that will cause me to shed the pounds I don’t need? Should we eat the high meat and fat diet or is it better to go vegetarian? Healthy recipes call for ingredients that take a lot of work to shop for and do not seem practical for everyday use. I like to run and will grudgingly lift weights but cross fit and insanity work outs are not something I am willing to do. Fruits and vegetables can be hit or miss for taste and some serving sizes leave me hungry. And who has the time to do all this stuff? I think we need figure out all this first before we can figure out how to make it cheap.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010 2:26:56 PM
Mo Trapper (trapperbr549) wrote:
tom winn (dubba) wrote:
Hey! I think we should take MR MOE and his horse- ummmm mighty tasty box lunch?
-
I don’t understand your post so I am not sure if you are directing that comment at me. If so, what does it mean?
Also, if it is directed at me, that is a mule.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010 2:24:56 PM
Nathan Greatly (TakeItBack) wrote:
We have another problem in this country. We use BAD food to reward children (and adults for that matter!). It is not only with the poor.
“If you’re good, I’ll take you to McDonalds”, “If you don’t scream in the store, I’ll buy you candy”.
Numerous posts have been about these poor choices (pop, chocolate, etc) being a “treat” for the child because of his circumstances. A real treat would be a trip to the children’s museum on free day, or a day at the lake…
We wonder why people make poor food choices as adults, we are conditioned so that bad food is what makes us “feel good” psychologically.I am not pointing fingers…I am one of those people.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010 2:20:29 PM
tom winn (dubba) wrote:
Hey! I think we should take MR MOE and his horse- ummmm mighty tasty box lunch?
Tuesday, July 20, 2010 2:19:05 PM
The Legos (thelegos) wrote:
Some farmer’s markets take food stamps.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010 2:12:39 PM
Ryan O (RyanP) wrote:
“Yesterday, my daughter read me “The Little Red Hen”,”
Wow, what a great comment. It sort of clashes with your other one regarding social services for unwanted children though.
Comment on: New ‘Morning After’ Pill Works Five Days Later, Too
at 6/11/2010 4:19 PM EDT
Are abortion opponents also gearing up to pay the medical, housing, education and nutritional costs of these unwanted children?
Somehow…I think not.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010 2:10:28 PM
‘Mad Men’ Haven’t Changed Much Since The 1960s : NPR
Listen to the story
The hit television show Mad Men depicts the 1960s advertising world of Madison Avenue in a way that is pretty close to reality: very white and very male.
Half a century later, three-martini lunches and chain smoking in the office are long gone. But when it comes to diversity in the agency, not much has changed.
Right Place, Right Time, Right Color
At 43, John Osborn is at the top of his game.
In 1991, when he was a rookie at the big ad agency BBDO, he worked on a memorable television ad for Pepsi, featuring Ray Charles. From there, he rose quickly through the ranks, and now runs BBDO New York.
Read More
Is it time for the Rooney Rule for ad agencies and other media companies?