What the world is reading

The New Yorker
Bad Press

Nicholas Lemann calls journalists the most puzzling creatures in the world ,for they adore The Front Page and Scoop, which present them as lazy,unprincipled,and hopelessly in thrall to bogus information. He then proceeds to ask,Are journalists lovable rogues or human-rights crusaders? Or people who have granted themselves the right to switch between these two identities on a whim? He examines this in the context of the scandal that has enveloped the News of the World and brings forth two issues that journalists have to grapple with: first,whether the phone-hacking scandal represents a notably egregious type of press misbehaviour,rather than the usual naughtiness; and second,whether getting the big story by violating boundaries of decent behaviour actually has a redemptive public-interest aspect. In the first case,the answer is an unqualified yes. For all their gruff cynicism,as a force for good in society,Front Page journalists should be exposing bribery,not engaging in it,and helping to exonerate the falsely accused,not sullying the innocent. Lemann concludes that a press pass is not a moral unlimited-ride card. It should be a good thing if the scandal caused journalists to introspect.

The Atlantic
Obesity in China

If US healthcare professionals endorse a balanced diet-plus-regular exercise as the formula for fitness,this may not hold true in China,says Hans Villarca,quoting a recent study by the University of Southern California. In that country,such healthy habits have seen a sharp spike in the number of overweight and obese children. This has baffled the researchers,one of whom said that there is no data to show that eating fruits and vegetables is related to higher weight. The researchers observed the food intake habits of 9,023 middle and high-school students in China. Even as the usual suspects such as sedentary activities led to obesity as in the US,what baffled them was that more vigorous exercise,less candy and fast food intake,less frequent snacking,more fruit consumption,and higher parental educational attainment also led to children being overweight. What is the reason for this paradox? They speculate that diets rich in vegetables may also be rich in oil as the two most common methods of preparing vegetables is deep-frying and stir-frying. Also,overweight children may be underreporting their intake of unhealthy food and may misperceive the quality of the exercise they do.

The Daily Telegraph
Is chicken tikka out?

In Britains love affair with curry is heating up,William Langley says that jalfrezi replacing chicken tikka masala as the countrys favourite curry is a welcome development. The reason? Chicken jalfrezi offers fresh green chillies and an authentic smack of spice as compared to chicken tikka masala,a sweet,creamy concoction reputed to have been invented in a Glasgow restaurant to speed the chefs recovery from a stomach ulcer. Why this change? A plausible explanation seems to be that in Britain,which has nearly 10,000 Indian restaurants,some of them the best in the world,the majority manage to look much the same and to serve exactly the same fare,a bastardised abomination. Which is why jalfrezi offers a ray of hope. Its origins are in Bengal,where jahl means spicy hot,while frezi is derived from an Urdu word for a person with good taste. Also it isnt hard to make,contains visible traces of onions,peppers and sliced serrano chillies and will even stand up to a dry white wine. But then,there is one worrying thing about jalfrezi: according to legend,it was invented by an Englishman.