Are you “passionate about truly living and eating healthy”? Are you in a two-parent family with at least a couple of attractive, preferably mouthy children? Do you blog endlessly about your vegan meals, the witty things your kids say, and how your spouse needs to trim his nose hair — in short, are you a […]

Seattle P-I: Seattle-based Jones Soda — maker of root beer, cream soda and quirky drinks with flavors such as turkey and gravy — is switching from high-fructose corn syrup to pure cane sugar. Sweet! And in related news, the New York Times has an article about how several entrepreneurs are developing high-end tonic waters using […]

Visitors to the Emerald City who read the Seattle P-I’s Getaways section must think that Seattle hates itself more than an angst-ridden teenager. Once or twice a month, the section reminds Seattle residents that everything is better in Portland. The Rose City does feature a superior brewpub scene, a thriving coffee culture, and […]

I don’t shop at Starbucks. I find them disgusting. Not only do they litter our streets with their stores that pop up like a never-ending case of herpes, but their coffee sucks as well. I admit I do have a personal beef with them, having seen first-hand how they can drive a […]

Grist: Tom Philpott and a friend try to cook a SOLE food dinner for $30 to prove that good food doesn’t have to be elitist — and mostly fail. Instead, he outlines what sort of societal policies and changes would make doing so a lot easier.
ABC News: A look at the challenges faced by Berkeley […]

The following is a guest post from HydroPops, Omniwhore’s dad. He is an expert in hydroponic gardening, and we at the Ethicurean are lucky that he is willing to share his knowledge with us. He made some excellent videos several years ago teaching people how to make their own systems — which he […]

What’s in a label? A lot, if the label is “organic” and you’re selling farm-raised fish. The New York Times has an extremely provocative story in the business section today titled “Free or Farmed, When Is a Fish Really Organic?” The article has garnered 70 comments and counting so far, a remarkable number of them […]

The Boston Globe: After marketing killed the Chilean Sea Bass, it seemed no other fish was waiting to replace it as a ubiquitous, mild-flavored, un-overcookable presence on menus around the world. Until now. Meet the Next Big Fish: the barramundi — “which means ‘fish with big scales’ in an aboriginal dialect, or Lates calcarifer, if […]

I planned to name this post “Char Times,” but I realized that attentive readers might think that I’d recycled an old post about chard and introduced a typo. A new title was needed, and I returned for inspiration to my friend Charles to provide me with a title about char.
I’ll stop punning now.
For […]

Seattle P-I: Detoxification and elimination diets seem to be all the rage, but they are not necessarily beneficial.
San Francisco Chronicle: A review of “French Women for All Seasons: A Year of Secrets, Recipes & Pleasure” — the follow-up to the best-selling “French Women Don’t Get Fat” — confirms what has really been starting to sink […]

On the odd chance that you haven’t heard, I’ll mention that Washington is experiencing record rainfall this November. Seattle has broken the November rainfall record of 13+ inches, and is on track to break the all time monthly record of 15.33 inches. We’re also receiving snow, though that is melting fairly quickly. […]

Seattle P-I: A new Washington label, “salmon safe,” can be used by farms that are adhering to practices to keep the state’s streams hospitable to the fish. Launched and verified by the Stewardship Partners, the label means farms watch their water use, erosion control, animal management, pesticide and fertilizer use, management of sensitive areas and […]

“I feel like a junkie in a strange town with no drug connection,” confessed Omniho to me a few days ago. I knew exactly what she meant.
My cousin-in-law and I, along with our respective spouses, have been spending the Thanksgiving holiday in the SOLE food desert of Phoenix, alternating large-group meals at chain restaurants […]

New York Times*: Our Daily Bread, a new documentary opening today, takes viewers inside the industrial food chain with no narration or text. Writes the reviewer: “[It] can be extremely difficult to watch, but the film’s formal elegance, moral underpinning and intellectually stimulating point of view also make it essential. You are what you eat; […]

Last month on October 9, the Commonwealth Club and Litquake hosted an excellent panel on “The Politics of Food: What We Eat and Why It Matters” that is now available as an audio-only MP3 (on the Web vis RealPlayer) or podcast (on iTunes). The panelists were:

Ignacio Chapela, UC Berkeley professor who uncovered GMO contamination in […]