Friday Faves No. 127

our favorite finds from the front lines of food

A brief history of how the rich and poor eat in an excellent photo essay (image above). Be sure to use the center tab that drags left and right for the full picture. (Independent) 

Hardship on Mexico's farms, a bounty for U.S. tables: A new four-part series exploring how thousands of laborers at Mexico's mega-farms endure harsh conditions and exploitation while supplying produce for American consumers. "They want us to take such great care of the tomatoes, but they don't take care of us." (LATimes)

Taking the message to the people, ‘Black Brunch’ organizers put protest on the menu at restaurants in Oakland, California. (KQED)

I like pig butts and I cannot lie: 16 of the best food T-shirts you need to own  (Food & Wine)

Futuristic Fungi: Austria-based Livin Studio has created a process to cultivate edible fungi that digests plastic as it grows in photos and a video. (Dezeen)

Women's work on US farms remains under counted. "Women have always worked in agriculture, historically. I think a key issue is whether or not it's counted," says Julie Zimmerman, a rural sociologist at the University of Kentucky who studies how women's roles on the farm have changed over time. "If you see working on your farm as being part of your role as the spouse or the wife, as helping out, then you might not even recognize it as being 'working on the farm,' even if you're doing it all the time." (NPR)

Gilbert & Sullivan lives! A Champagne kerfuffle has arisen in Britain's Parliament. "During budget negotiations meant to impose some belt-tightening measures, the House of Lords refused to merge their catering services with their lowly counterparts in the House of Commons because 'the Lords feared that the quality of Champagne would not be as good if they chose a joint service.'" The Lords bought 17,000 bottles of Champagne since 2010 at a cost of $417,000. (via Wine Spectator)

Friday Faves — notes from the new gastroconomy, No. 15

 a weekly round-up of our favorite finds from the front lines of food

• "Survival in the epicurean jungle was a matter of brawn and culinary skill, in which mastery of the Switchblade Spork was king. Gangs of sous-chefs and line cooks ruled the streets and no food was safe from the steely glint of their sporks."

• In tsunami-hit Japan, microfinancing is helping food business get up and running even when banks don't want to lend. "So I wondered if maybe what we do really is important. Many people are waiting for the very original products that we select and sell. They are small goods, but they fill voids in our hearts.”

• UN asserts that famine is predictable: "drought and famine are not extreme events but “merely the sharp end of a global food system that is built on inequality, imbalances and – ultimately – fragility.”'

• Want kids to eat more veggies? Research written up in The Journal of the American Medicine Association (JAMA) says that putting pictures on cafeteria trays helps. Score one for the power of suggestion.

• States, like Massachusetts, are increasingly looking to create brands of provenence to market fisheries. “If we took a look at fish being landed in Massachusetts and put a mark on them ... it allows a story and to tie in what’s happening in New Bedford or Gloucester. It means something to [diners]."

• A new photo and text project assembles a Lexicon of Sustainability, from Backyard Pollinator to Kitchen Incubator.

• Pesticides are bad to eat, but they're even worse to live around. Grist looks at the environmental and social costs of conventional agriculture, from chemicals that dust fruit like snow to contaminated drinking water.

• Ancient ice, hopefully not headed for a cocktail near you. In Chile, police are holding a man found trying to smuggle five tons of a Patagonian glacier for upscale bar drinks.