With millions in the tropics rely on the banana as a staple food, the spread of the Panama disease is a serious issue. If it hits a region, like Uganda, that depends on bananas, a humanitarian catastrophe could ensue.

If you want to fight global warming with your diet, it is better to change what you eat than where it comes from, according to a recently published article in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Science and Technology.

Several years ago, Brazil filed a complaint with the World Trade Organization (WTO) claiming that United States cotton subsidies violated international trade agreements. In 2004, the WTO ruled in Brazil’s favor. More recently, the U.S. lost its appeal, and so now Brazil can propose retaliatory trade sanctions on products from the U.S.

With city bans on non-recyclable and non-compostable materials (e.g., polystyrene) and restaurants attempting to be greener, there is quite a discussion about the best packaging for takeout orders.

The European Union is changing the rules for chemicals, requiring that industry demonstrate that a chemical is safe before using it in consumer products. This approach, sometimes called “the precautionary principle,” is in stark contrast to the approach in the United States, where a chemical is considered “innocent until proven carcinogenic.”

Safeway is running ads declaring that their tomatoes are “robust,” a word that makes me think of strength and resilience, two qualities that should have nothing to do with burstingly juicy red orbs.

San Francisco’s Mayor Gavin Newson sat down with chef, food activist, and Slow Food International vice president Alice Waterso to help publicize Slow Food Nation, a giant celebration of food, farming, and culture that is coming to San Francisco on Labor Day weekend in late August.

Catching up on podcasts this weekend I listened to a few that might interest Ethicurean readers: Fredrick Kaufman talking about America’s eating history, Good Food from KCRW talking about sustainable seafood and backyard chickens, and Paul Roberts talking about his new book “The End of Food” on On Point Radio.

Hansen’s Natural Soda is switching from high fructose corn syrup to sugar. That news, along with record high corn prices, has me wondering if consumption rates of HFCS are changing, and if so, how fast.

The May 20 episode of Quest, the science program on San Francisco’s public television station, had two segments that might be of interest to Ethicurean readers.

The Asian Art Museum of San Francisco is currently hosting a witty installation by Beijing-based artist Zhan Wang. It’s a sculpture of San Francisco made entirely of kitchenware — tongs, graters, pots, serving dishes, tea kettles, and so on. Naturally, each piece is made in China.
The photo above shows the Financial District as viewed […]

Taras Grescoe says he wrote “Bottomfeeder” (Bloomsbury USA, May 2008) for a somewhat selfish reason: he wanted to taste the world’s great seafood dishes — like bouillabaisse in Marseilles, fish and chips in England, bluefin tuna sashimi in Tokyo — before they disappeared or were dramatically changed by our plundering of the oceans. Whatever his motivation, Grescoe has given us a fascinating book that I hope will inform many about the dire state of the oceans, expose the dreadful environmental consequences of badly managed aquaculture, and prompt us to make better seafood choices.

I’ve always been tickled by the pairing of decadence and duty at the Swanton Berry Farm stand at the Berkeley farmers market: sweet, fragrant, addictive strawberries sharing the table with fibrous, disrespected, and most-likely-not-addictive broccoli, cauliflower, and brussels sprouts. It turns out that this collection makes a lot of agricultural sense, as strawberries are […]

Of all of the alliances between egg and dairy, custard is one of the most interesting to me. Silky in texture, elegant in flavor, acceptable to tastes ranging from unadventurous children to the most discerning adult, it’s a perfect way to enjoy the eggs and milk you worked so hard to source from SOLE producers. […]

The radio program Living on Earth has been running excerpts from "Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape," a book by renowned nature writer Barry Lopez ("Crossing Open Ground," "Arctic Dreams," "Of Wolves and Men") that defines landscape terms such as pack ice, blind creek, and cascade. On a recent program, they featured a […]