(1) In rural areas of Mongolia, local health department staff are skilled at tracking nearby nomadic families despite their frequent movements. This skill is exemplified by this map, quickly drafted from memory by a local health officer at the rural Buyant subdistrict of Khovd province in western Mongolia, to help my colleagues and I recruit study participants for a dietary survey. The following landmarks can be found in the map and juxtaposed satellite imagery of the same study site: A, "Baatarkhairkhan" mountain; B: local administration center, C: "Deer antler" rock formation, D: tourist camp.
(2) This jar I saw by the entrance of the parisitology lab at the International Centre for Diarrheal Disease, Bangladesh. The label speaks for itself.
(3) Interactive graphs of the projected prevalence of dietary vitamin A inadequacy and excess, and the prevalence of dietary vitamin D inadequacy and median vitamin D intake in urban Mongolian men and women in summer and winter under different scenarios of large-scale fortification, including different combinations of fortified food vehicles (flour, edible oil, and/or milk), different concentrations of fortificants in each vehicle, and different overage guidelines to compensate for fortificant losses due to processing, storage, and/or cooking. See
this paper for details.
(4) An analysis that my colleagues and I unsuccessfully submitted to The Lancet in 2016 to identify patterns and trends in global food supplies by applying principal component analysis to FAO food supply data for 184 countries from 1961 to 2011. We identified four food supply patterns ("European", "Mediterranean", "Maritime", and "Pastoralist"; factor loadings
shown here), scaled from 0 to 100, that account for 42% of variation in global food supplies.
In this animation,
over 50 years, most nations’ adherence to the European pattern increased slightly while the Mediterranean pattern exploded within and beyond the region, reflecting globalized food markets and advances in agriculture that led to dramatically increased availability of fruits and vegetables around the world. Globalization and increased availability of fish and seafood also allowed the Maritime pattern to somewhat penetrate the world’s inland regions while the the Pastoralist pattern has receded to those countries with nomadic cultural heritages as this style of life has become increasingly less prevalent. Detailed information on data sources, cleaning, and processing; statistical analysis, pattern selection, and sensitivity analyses; and results, supplementary material, discussion, and references are available upon request by anyone who would be able and interested to help me salvage this and turn it into a publishable paper (but it won't be easy because results of a
similar analysis were published in Nature Food in 2020).
(5) The Harvard
Healthy Eating Plate has been translated into
many languages, but not Thai. I have obtained all of the instructions and required text for translation. If you have nothing better to do, would you like to help translate it? I'm afraid the only incentive at the moment would be a small acknowledgement at the bottom of the page...so I probably just answered my own question.
(6) In 2011 I decided to begin a career in international health. I made this decision after seeing images and reading stories published in three pieces of work by three photojournalists from 2005 to 2011: a documentary called
Graves of the TV District by Damien Dawson and two books called
Hungry Planet &
What I Eat by Peter Menzel & Faith D'Aluisio. Thanks Damien, Peter, and Faith for your work and inspiration.
(7) Some quotes:
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"You will be required to do wrong no matter where you go. It is the basic condition of life, to be required to violate your own identity. At some time, every creature which lives must do so. It is the ultimate shadow, the defeat of creation; this is the curse at work, the curse that feeds on all life. Everywhere in the universe."
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"Methinks we have hugely mistaken this matter of Life and Death. Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true substance. Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are too much like oysters observing the sun through the water, and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air. Methinks my body is but the lees of my better being. In fact take my body who will, take it I say, it is not me."
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‘It is a touching thing to hear the mind reverting to the ordinary occupations and pursuits of health, when the body lies before you weak and helpless; but when those occupations are of a character the most strongly opposed to anything we associate with grave and solemn ideas, the impression produced is infinitely more powerful. The theatre and the public-house were the chief themes of the wretched man’s wanderings. It was evening, he fancied; he had a part to play that night; it was late, and he must leave home instantly. Why did they hold him, and prevent his going?—he should lose the money—he must go. No! they would not let him. He hid his face in his burning hands, and feebly bemoaned his own weakness, and the cruelty of his persecutors. A short pause, and he shouted out a few doggerel rhymes—the last he had ever learned. He rose in bed, drew up his withered limbs, and rolled about in uncouth positions; he was acting—he was at the theatre. A minute’s silence, and he murmured the burden of some roaring song. He had reached the old house at last—how hot the room was. He had been ill, very ill, but he was well now, and happy. Fill up his glass. Who was that, that dashed it from his lips? It was the same persecutor that had followed him before. He fell back upon his pillow and moaned aloud. A short period of oblivion, and he was wandering through a tedious maze of low-arched rooms—so low, sometimes, that he must creep upon his hands and knees to make his way along; it was close and dark, and every way he turned, some obstacle impeded his progress. There were insects, too, hideous crawling things, with eyes that stared upon him, and filled the very air around, glistening horribly amidst the thick darkness of the place. The walls and ceiling were alive with reptiles—the vault expanded to an enormous size—frightful figures flitted to and fro—and the faces of men he knew, rendered hideous by gibing and mouthing, peered out from among them; they were searing him with heated irons, and binding his head with cords till the blood started; and he struggled madly for life."
