BABY FORMULA

BABY FORMULA

The Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FFDCA) defines infant formula: “Baby Formula” as a food that purports to be or is represented for special dietary use exclusively as infant formula by reason of its simulation of human milk or its suitability as a complete food or partial substitute for human milk.

It may seem strange, but in the United States the various brands of Baby Formula on the market are produced almost exclusively by the same company: Abbott Nutrition

Leaving aside issues of monopoly, this caused a huge problem when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Coordinated Outbreak Response and Evaluation (CORE) network, along with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and state and local partners investigated consumer complaints and/or reports received by the FDA from September 2021 to February 2022 regarding illnesses among infants who allegedly consumed infant formula products from Abbott Nutrition’s Sturgis, MI, facility, advising consumers not to consume milk powder from certain batches.

Abbott initiated a voluntary, proactive recall of powdered formulas, including Similac, Alimentum and EleCare, manufactured in Sturgis, Michigan, one of the company’s manufacturing facilities.

Consumer complaints were related to Cronobacter sakazakii or Salmonella Newport found in infants who had consumed powdered infant formula produced at this facility.

This resulted in a drastic difficulty in sourcing powdered milk precisely because of the fact that virtually most of the production is from the same facility.

This is a huge problem, since infants whose mothers are not fortunate enough to have breast milk cannot feed on anything else.

Real special flights have been set up to solve this emergency: Open Fly Formula

A protocol has been initiated to transport infant formula via an airlift procured by the DOD i.e., the Department of Defense.

The company that produces this infant formula reports that in order to move the infant formula from Zurich, Switzerland, to Plainfield, Indiana, in the United States, it takes about 21 days with a commercial plane to ship and clear customs so that it can enter distribution.

Instead, the cargo was transferred from Switzerland to Ramstein to be loaded onto two C-17s on Bravo alert in Germany and through USTRANSCOM i.e., U.S. Transportation Command, the transport was done under the auspices of this sort of motto:
Regardless of whether the needs are in Ukraine, India or even here at home, from deploying combat-credible forces, to providing vaccines, food, water and supplies during a pandemic or natural disaster, USTRANSCOM will provide.

Can you tell me exactly what “combat-credible” means?

Undoubtedly the milk emergency had to be solved, what puzzles me is the mixing of “aid” and “military.”

Meanwhile, a kind of chain of solidarity was created among parents to find advice through Facebook groups in which, however, scammers and profiteers took over.

How did we do it before milk powder existed? I wonder, too.
Were nannies the only alternative?

SHRINKFLATION

SHRINKFLATION

Shrinkflation is the situation where the price of a product remains the same but its size shrinks.

Unfortunately many products have been affected by shrinkage

Basically, a clever way to covertly raise prices by downsizing the content.

Many examples are listed in this video by The Wall Street Journal

 

I had already talked about the disappointment of finding a few cookies in deceptive packages that suggest larger quantities, but here we are facing a procedure for which a complaint has been filed to one hundred and four powers of attorney to ascertain that it is not part of the crime of fraud

All this fits into a context that raises serious concern: the ISTAT publishes the provisional inflation data in April 2022 equal to 6.2% on a annua, and FAO complaint how world food commodity prices have made a significant leap in March to reach the highest levels ever.

The report Effects and expectations on inflation edited by IPSOS for FederDistribuzione of March 2022 does not reveal anything that we cannot imagine on our own: the main concerns of Italians are employment and the economy, as illustrated by this chart.

With my anxiety I certainly spoil the excess, but you are optimistic, right?

How do you go about purchasing?
Do you notice the weight of the product?
Have you had the opportunity to directly observe any cases of shrinkflation?

REPAIR CAFÉ

REPAIR CAFÉ

Repair Café is a fantastic idea that was born in Amsterdam in 2009 by Martine Postma.

But what is a Repair Café?

It is not just a hangout.

It is not just volunteering.

Repair Cafè has a very important social function.

Repair Café is a free meeting place where you can repair objects of all kinds together.

Repair Café is an organization that provides tools and materials to help carry out repairs on clothes, furniture, appliances, bicycles, dishes, appliances, toys, and much more thanks to the availability of experienced volunteers, with repair skills in all types of fields.

The success in the Netherlands has spread over space and time, forming a worldwide movement with the express purpose of preserving the ability to repair in society and promoting the recovery of objects that can continue to function.

There are organizations in Belgium, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, the United States, India, Japan and many other countries around the world

In this video Martine, Ginko and Therese explain also giving numbers

Isn’t it wonderful that coffee machines are among the most sheltered objects?

There is also a Repair Café in Pavia founded in 2015 by Irishman Mike Kavanagh and Australian Michael Richards.

The team, which also takes care of teaching the knowledge needed to repair, has since grown and organizes repair events in collaboration with various local associations.

In this regard, I would like to point out the appointment on Saturday 26 February: Activators Breakfast

Are you for reuse
Can you fix broken objects?
Is there a particular object to which you have given or would you like to give new life?

What if I tell you 金継ぎor kintsugi?

FUNGHI ESPRESSO – MUSHROOM EXPRESS

FUNGHI ESPRESSO – MUSHROOM EXPRESS

Your comments show that many of us use coffee grounds to fertilize plants, and this is undoubtedly a good thing.

But there are those who, before fertilizing the plants, use the coffee grounds collected from the local cafes to cultivate.

Well yes: it is a landless cultivation, only with coffee grounds, and it produces mushrooms!

These mushrooms are then sold in local fairs or in local restaurants: in Tuscany.

What better name than Espresso Mushrooms

Among other things, ironically, this business was born in a former shoe factory

The project was presented to UNIFI Impresa Campus in 2013 here you can find the spin off  of the Florentine University Incubator and the newsletter which decides its success.

Funghi Espresso then participated in Expo 2015  receiving consensus and acknowledgments.

Mushrooms Espresso is inspired by Gunter Pauli‘s Blue economy  becoming part of the concept of Smart city, but even more of Urban farming.

Antonio Di Giovanni, one of the creators of the Startup Mushrooms Espresso, is also the founder of Circular Farm whose production cycle illustrates in detail the composting process and hydroponic cultivation.

Have you already tried the hydroponic method, that is, out of the ground?

KEEP CALM AND GO VOLUNTEERING

KEEP CALM AND GO VOLUNTEERING

Keep Calm and Go Volunteering! 

In this case keep calm is not for the coffee but for an interesting as well as admirable volunteer project.

The general objective is to sensitize young people to the adoption of sustainable and responsible lifestyles, in contrast to the increasingly widespread “culture of waste” and disposable use.

The active promoters are four young people from different backgrounds: Edisona Xhani from Albania, Sophie Anvroin from France, Hamudi Salama Batah from Spain and Mehdi Meddeb from Tunisia who are involved in sharing information and promoting initiatives by working in the fabric of the community to combat food waste.

Keep calm and go volunteering therefore consists of a European Solidarity Corps that is funded by the National Youth Agency and promoted by the Europe Area of the Belluno Committee of Understanding. 

In fact, on Sunday a flash mob took place in Belluno to involve more people with the aim of raising awareness the population.

And speaking of the fight against food waste, I suggest you follow Paola who through her book ll gusto di non sprecare, her blog Primo non sprecare for years has been diligently and deeply involved in the fight against waste.

It was nice to discover that many of us use coffee grounds, so I trust in just as many precious suggestions for food as well.

What do you think?

WEIMAR’S REPUBLIC

WEIMAR’S REPUBLIC

Massimo explained me the Weimar republic and wandering around the web looking for details about it, I came across this sentence:
no one really knows the history of the Weimar Republic, if not lovers of the history of art and design

Obviously I wondered in what sense, and why according to this concept the Weimar Republic is less precisely known with reference to the economy, which is generally the focus, as for example in this Rai Scuola video

Of that period I had already mentioned the Baroness but Dadaism remains perhaps more separated from the socio-political context, so the fulcrum of the creative movement manifests itself with the rise of the Bauhaus

So I searched for a first answer to Moma:
Bauhaus
The school of art and design founded in Germany by Walter Gropius in 1919, and shut down by the Nazis in 1933. The faculty brought together artists, architects, and designers, and developed an experimental pedagogy that focused on materials and functions rather than traditional art school methodologies. In its successive incarnations in Weimar, Dessau, and Berlin, it became the site of influential conversations about the role of modern art and design in society.

The names that resonate are Paul Klee or Vasily Kandinsky, but obviously I cannot but mention Marianne Brandt and her metal coffe set

There remains the question of the true essence of the Weimar Republic: does all this really prevail over the disastrous hyperinflation?

Maybe you are one of the aforementioned lovers of art history and design and you know how to explain me.

Passato e Presente describes the Weimar Republic like a parable, divided into three phases: and it is precisely the intermediate phase that sees the artistic flowering.

Weimar is a political, institutional, social and artistic laboratory, crossed by the tensions of modernity.

Let’s imagine observing all this while sitting at the Romanische Café  where the artists met and being able to analyze the Neue Sachlichkeit: that is the New objectivity but also the expressionism of cinema and the approach to realism through their eyes.

Crossed by the tensions of modernity.

During a conference in Florence on the occasion of the centenary, published by the Ministry of the Interior  The Weimar Constitution is defined as the first Charter that tries to respond to strong social tensions, and as a document of extraordinary modernity because it re-proposes the theme of the relationship between democratic legitimacy and the legality of limits to freedoms.

So, I assume: only artists have had the opportunity to fully express and experience freedom?

Yet the Weimar Constitution provided for example: universal suffrage, wages increased in real terms, pension and sickness benefit schemes, compulsory unemployment insurance, government subsidies for the construction of parks, schools and sports facilities, and a massive program of construction of public housing.

But from “suitcases full of dreams” we literally passed to suitcases full of banknotes to be able to buy basic necessities and metaphorically speaking not even AVUS: Automobil Verkehrs und Übungsstrecke that is the first highway in Europe has been able to “run” the freedom of a republic renamed “glass” for its fragility.

But glass is also transparency.
How the truth?

I quote Wislawa Szymborska:
He made himself a glass violin because he wanted to see the music.

What would you like to see?

I would like to read your reflections if you want to share them, meanwhile I dedicate to you You’re the cream in my coffee by Marlene Dietrich.

Archives

Pin It on Pinterest