Vive la revolution!: José Bové, the sheep farmer who rose to stardom in 1999 for dismantling a half-built McDonald’s in the fight against “crap food,” is running for president of France. He might be doing so from from behind bars, if he goes to prison for having sabotaged GM crops. Guardian (UK) (Thanks, Dr. V.!)
Now with extra Vitamin C and B-12!: A good companion piece to Pollan’s NYT Magazine essay on the rise of nutritionism, this article examines “super foods,” or foods that have been fortified with extra helpings of supplements and vitamins. Basically, you can ignore them if you eat foods with few or no ingredient lists. Says one doctor/nutritionist: “The addition of omega-3s, calcium, etc. has nothing to do with the food being deficient. It’s all about adding a little pizzazz to the food to appeal to customers, rather like tacking a spoiler on a compact car and calling it the ’sports’ version. In virtually every case, the supplementation is unnecessary and plays on the customer’s lack of understanding.” Canada.com
Not our milk: Straus Family Creamery wants milk from cloned cows to be labeled, and urges people to support the legislation introduced by Carol Migden. (EarthTimes) Kate at Accidental Hedonist tells how you can do that, and which senators in particular to pester. (Thanks for the nice plug, Kate!)
Annie’s fights back: Meg over at MegNut defends Annie’s all-natural mac-n-cheese as being a lot better than the Kraft equivalent, despite what Anastacia Marx de Salcedo may have snarked in her Salon piece. The CEO of Annie’s has posted a thoughtful letter in MegNut’s comments section (also on Salon, apparently), and quite a few well-known food bloggers are weighing in. MegNut
Go cluck, yourself: Want better eggs? Raise your own chickens. Just make sure your neighbors aren’t jerks. Mother Earth News
Exeter academy of food: A new fresh indoor food market is opening in Exeter called Foodeaze, which also offers a café, an educational center, and a food academy. Treehugger
Go, butternuts!: The Great Squash Cook-Off, a community-based “Iron Chef” inspired contest taking place on Super Bowl Sunday in Brooklyn, celebrates seasonal, local, and vegan cooking. Brooklyn Graphic
Robber with a great palate: Thieves broke into a Silicon Valley home and stole 450 bottles of wine, including a rare $11,000 1959 magnum from the Château Pétrus in Bordeaux, France — but left all the other valuables. (Dairy Queen says: Jack, can you account for your whereabouts Dec. 28-Jan. 4? New York Times
The 411 on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: Major news today from a bulletproof report confirming global warming. The charts and graphs make “An Inconvenient Truth” look like a cartoon, so go read what people who really know this stuff are saying, over at Grist or Treehugger.
Food, Farming, & Food Politics events calendar
Humor:
February 3rd, 2007 at 12:32 am
DQ: Do you actually think I could fit another 450 bottles into my cellar? On the other hand, it has been more than 8 years since I’ve tasted Pétrus, the most concentrated red wine I’ve ever had. I can’t even score a bottle of an “off” year vintage at a price I’m willing to pay.