Section » Food revolt
Hey Californians — like your raw milk? Drink fast.
About one year ago, my mom, son, and I attended the rally in which Mark McAfee announced the end of the Organic Pastures recall for E. coli 0157:H7. So many interesting people were there. I met families from the Bay Area and Southern California. I shared mountain-blackberry water kefir out of the trunk of my car with the Los Angeles delivery guys for
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Good cob, bad cob: “King Corn” isn’t against the grain
We feed ourselves very cheaply now. You see those tremendous fields of corn out there, corn as far as the eye can see? That's the age of plenty. —Earl Butz, former secretary of agriculture, in "King Corn" A terrific new documentary called "King Corn" is opening this Friday
Tongue in chic: On being a modern offal eater, plus recipe for poached beef tongue
Supposing you were asked to make something you've never made before for a potluck. What springs to mind? And what does it say about you? The range of dishes on offer at my friend Rachel's latest edition of Grub provided interesting insight
Announcing the netroots ad campaign for Real Food
I'm on the plane, supposedly on vacation as of four hours ago, and yet I can't stop thinking about this Hellman's Mayonnaise campaign for "real" food. It really gets my goat that one company spends as much on advertising
Digest – Features & blogsnacks: The rise and fall of bottled water, eco-kosher & beekeeping booms
FEATURES Water torture: Fast Company, of all publications, jumps on the anti-bottled-water bandwagon with an excellent look into how "a whole industry grows up around supplying us with something we don't need."
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Digest: The scoop on China’s corner-cutting, Mexico goes GM, chocolate label reasoning
NEWS Be afraid. Be very afraid: The New York Times goes to Zhangqiu, a fast-growing industrial city southeast of Beijing, and gets some hair-raising real dirt on China's practices regarding the chemical that probably killed hundreds, if not thousands, of U.S. pets. For years, producers of animal feed
Digest: Pollan issues Farm Bill manifesto, U.S. lags in organic, birds sick, food aid scrutinized
Food Bill of Rights and Wrongs: Michael Pollan attempts to reframe the Farm Bill — that "resolutely unglamorous and head-hurtingly complicated piece of legislation" — as a chance to reform the food system so that it actually benefits the interests of eaters. In his usual clear-eyed, deceptively simple
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Digest: Tainted pet food fed to hogs, seed sanctuary, clueless consumers, clueless Deen
"Boosting" pet food: The FDA says that the melamine used in recalled pet food may have been intentionally included by Chinese manufacturers to boost the apparent protein content. And in other disturbing developments, only two pet-food manufacturers who used the contaminated rice protein have recalled
Wanted: Young American farmers for documentary
"Vote with your fork" is a wonderfully simple mantra: we should opt for sustainable, organic, local, and ethical food whenever possible. But we're not going to be able to "chew the right thing" if there's no one growing it for us. Demand
Heartland Institute aims for gut, but hits below the belt
Good news! The plot to get us to pay more for organic food has been foiled by our friends at the Heartland Institute, the Big Food-funded spin factory masquerading as some sort of grassroots libertarian nonprofit. (I especially love the Smokers' Lounge section.) Today I read an
Canadian hog farmers are greedier than their pigs
It seems that Canadian industrial hog farmers have forgotten why food exists. They have forgotten that food is for eating, and not just for selling. It just so happened that due to the industrial revolution, and the creation and eventual popularization of city living, that many people who eat food stopped
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Digest: Tomato pickers get raise, Norman Borlaug to the rescue, Wal-Mart retreats
There's a golf course worth of links coming at ya. Fore! Pennies add up: McDonald's has reached agreement with a Florida farmworkers organization to pay 1 cent more per pound for the tomatoes it buys from state farms. Think that's nothing? It's a 75 percent pay raise for the laborers. Time for Burger
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Adding SOLE to your pet’s diet
Man of La Muncha and I are currently "owned" by a small tortoiseshell cat, Ms. Teeth and Claws. Ms. Claws is our third cat; previous cats included a pretty black and white girl and a large Maine coon cat. We have loved all our cats, and have always fed them "good" pet foods, figuring that while they
Digest: Foolish fuel, no “organic” cloned progeny, toxic fertilizer
Fuel for the fire: Tom Philpott flames corn-based ethanol boosterism for what it is — an agribusiness boondoggle and an economic and environmental disaster in the making. (Gristmill) Related headline: Farmers
In a whopper of a move, Burger King has it slightly more our way
Burger King announced today it will be moving to cage-free eggs and pork from cage-free sows. It is also going to make an effort to buy from poultry suppliers that use gas, known as "controlled atmospheric stunning," instead of electric shocks for slaughtering chickens. The New
