Those who are nit picky may notice that this isn't Wednesday. Well alright, I was busy that day.

They may also notice this isn't a lecture from TED. No it isn't. I picked something different this week. So there!

You may recall my doctor recommend I loose a pound or twenty? That has led me to do some reading about food. And in the course of that I uncovered this video which I found interesting.

Nitpickers may notice it has nothing to do with loosing weight. Well, picky, picky, picky. This is my blog, I found it interesting, so here it is.

What you're about to see is a short conversation with author, Ann Vileisis about Kitchen Literacy, what we know about our food, and how we came to know it. For Ann, her book Kitchen Literacy came about because she was struck by how much she didn't know about the common foods she encountered in the supermarket. In the research for her book, she was surprised to learn how much people expected to know about their food in pre-industrial times. For example, meats, they would find out the sex and age of the animal, the farm it came from, and even the animal's background. Certainly a far cry from our expectations today!



On a more serious, but still food related note, you have probably seen the figures by now: the price of rice has risen by three-quarters in the past year, that of wheat by 130%. There are food crises in 37 countries. One hundred million people, according to the World Bank, could be pushed into deeper poverty by the high prices. But I bet you have missed the most telling statistic. At 2.1 billion tons, last year’s global grain harvest broke all records. It beat the previous year’s by almost 5%. The crisis, in other words, has begun before world food supplies are hit by climate change. If hunger can strike now, what will happen if harvests decline?

According to Scripps News: Canada's near free-ride on food inflation is coming to an end and consumers better brace for some steep increases in their grocery bills. Food prices have been largely flat for months, mainly because of the surging Canadian dollar, which has reduced the cost of importing products from the United States such as fruits and vegetables.

But with the Canadian dollar stabilizing near parity with the U.S. greenback and oil hitting record levels, "Canada's good luck on food prices is likely to run out in 2009," said Avery Shenfeld, a senior economist at Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce. Shenfeld estimates food inflation will jump from zero to 3.5 percent next year, outpacing the overall inflation rate for the first time in years.

Another CIBC report forecast that oil prices will almost double by 2012. "If you take (rising food costs) and energy inflation, we're going to go from a country that had no inflation problem at all to a country where the Bank of Canada might be raising interest rates next year to calm inflation," he said.

Prices for bread, pasta and flour have already climbed more than 8 percent in some stores. "There have already been noticeable price increases at the shelf level," said Dave Wilkes, vice-president of the Canadian Council of Grocery Distributors, which represents major grocery-store chains.

All of which is enough to make a nervous blogger loose his appetite.