archive for July, 2008

Signs of the Dietgeist: SOLE, status symbols, and satire

by Bonnie P. @ Tuesday, July 15th, 2008.

You know something’s reached a tipping point when it gets its own hipster greeting card.

Closing the loop: Turning city food and garden waste into fertilizer

by Marc R. aka Mental Masala @ Monday, July 14th, 2008.

Visiting the Vacaville, CA landfill: not just any landfill — it’s the place where food waste from some of the finest restaurants and home kitchens in San Francisco and Berkeley are composted into organic matter that then fertilizes some of Northern California’s best small farms and vineyards.

Animal behavior: Crackdowns on meatpacking workers give new meaning to ‘inhumane’

by Elanor @ Monday, July 14th, 2008.

An editorial in the New York Times shines a spotlight on injustice in the food system, thanks to a report by an interpreter working at the scene of the nation’s largest immigration raid ever. The raid took place in May at the Agriprocessors, Inc. meatpacking plant in Postville, IA.

Something good for a change: USDA increases info access on meat recalls

by Elanor @ Friday, July 11th, 2008.

The USDA announces it will publicize the names of retail establishments that could be selling contaminated meat. Score one for access to information.

Crimes against “natural”: FDA helps healthwash HFCS

by Bonnie P. @ Wednesday, July 9th, 2008.

Conveniently timed with the Corn Refiners Association’s multimillion-dollar campaign to sweeten consumers’ appetite for high fructose corn syrup, the FDA has reversed its position on whether HFCS an be labeled “natural,” reports Food Navigator yesterday.

Victory Garden update: Finally, everyone’s eating something

by Jennifer M. aka Baklava Queen @ Wednesday, July 9th, 2008.

Lately we’ve seen a bumper crop of articles extolling the virtues of gardening. Sure, it’s a great way to reduce your food costs at a time when those prices are experiencing rapid growth spurts. But it’s more than that: gardens can be environmentally friendly and even (in our dreams, perhaps) politically savvy. It’s enough to make a gardener feel just a teeny-tiny, eensy-weensy bit smug.

Calamity cowboys: On Iowa, obesity, and earthquakes

by Elanor @ Tuesday, July 8th, 2008.

In every catastrophe, there are winners and losers. In post-flood Iowa, Monsanto steals the show and farmers get a rainy, and debt-ridden, parade.

Industry’s high fructose corn syrup campaign leaves a sour taste

by Guest @ Monday, July 7th, 2008.

Earlier last week the Corn Refiners Association launched a multimillion-dollar media campaign to defend high fructose corn syrup as a “quality” sweetener, in the face of mounting public perception that this cheap, ubiquitous compound has played a not-so-sweet role in making Americans chunky and sick.

Alice Waters says Obama is paying attention to food & ag issues

by Bonnie P. @ Monday, July 7th, 2008.

Presidential hopeful Barack Obama has read “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” and America’s obesity epidemic is very much on his mind, says Alice Waters, the original SOLE sister and founder of Chez Panisse, in this video from the Aspen Ideas Festival. (Thanks, Cookie Jill!)
“We have to talk about food as a right and not a privilege,” says […]

Wal-Mart sees the locavore light

by Marc R. aka Mental Masala @ Sunday, July 6th, 2008.

The Associated Press reports that Wal-Mart plans to spend $400 million on locally grown produce this year.

Weed’em and reap

by Jennifer M. aka Baklava Queen @ Friday, July 4th, 2008.

According to an article in Sunday’s New York Times, the increased levels of carbon dioxide that characterize global climate change have given weeds — better defined as those plants “out of place” — a supernatural advantage. So what’s a gardener to do when faced with a bed of weeds? The answer is simple: eat them.

Bill Moyers Journal looks at worker safety in the poultry industry

by Marc R. aka Mental Masala @ Thursday, July 3rd, 2008.

Back in February, the Charlotte Observer published a shocking six-part series on the human suffering involved in producing cheap chicken. “The Cruelest Cuts” package looked at typical working conditions at a poultry plant, the makeup of the workforce, the sorry state of government oversight, and how the companies stay below regulatory radar. (Bonnie’s post […]

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