Bourdain on Politics, Food’s Role in Social Justice and More Stories You Need to Read This Week

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Eater talked to
Anthony Bourdain for a wide-ranging discussion of travel and politics:

I don’t have an agenda, but I do have a point of view, and it might change from minute to minute. I like going to places thinking one thing, and being proven wrong. A journalist has to have an agenda — who-what-why-where — and I don’t want to ask those questions. That’s a prison to me. I’m not here to ask you specific questions, I’m here to ask general questions. What’s your life like? Tell me a story.

Thrillist looks at the closure of Carnegie Deli and the possible extinction of the Jewish deli in New York:
“Only last February, city officials were celebrating the Carnegie Deli’s triumphant reopening after a 10-month-long hiatus. At the time, NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio tweeted a photo of the deli’s piled-high pastrami sandwich accompanied by a single word: ‘America.’ No such patriotism when news broke of the deli’s final curtain call. The mayor’s office formally declined to comment for this article.”

The Post on the legacy of Da Silvano, following news of its closure:
“Marchetto dropped the curtain on his long-running pasta-and-preening scene without warning. The bright yellow awning at 260 Sixth Ave. had proclaimed a sunny, celebrity-strewn scene inside since the Gerald Ford administration. Its loss leaves the city a less interesting place even for those who never set foot there.”

Forbes reports on what news should be disturbing everyone:
“What happens when a single enormous company owns 30% of the world’s seed business? The idea of a small handful of very powerful people controlling a large portion of the world’s food supply has long raised concerns. But in September of this year, what was once a dystopian thought experiment tipped into the realm of reality when the Germany pharmaceutical company Bayer clinched a $66 million deal to buy the U.S. agricultural giant Monsanto.”

PRI on how food has been an integral part of social justice movements:
“From Standing Rock to Occupy Wall Street, food has long had a prominent role in justice movements. In the 1950s and ’60s, black women played a significant role in the advancement of colored people. Home cooks and backdoor restaurants fueled the activists marching for change.”

It’s hard to know what’s real when it comes to studies of how sugar affects health. Ars Technica explores:
“This isn’t the first time the food industry has tried to mess with research for its own gains—it’s actually surprisingly common. In the 1960s, sugar industry executives secretly slipped hefty checks to unscrupulous Harvard researchers so that they’d downplay the role of sugar in heart disease. The move contributed to decades of dietary guidelines that emphasized cutting fats and cholesterols from your diet, but not sugars. This misinformation fed the popularity of low-fat (but potentially high sugar) diets and foods.”