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Beet me up: Six summery ways to enjoy the sweetest root vegetable

By • on May 28, 2012

I peek under our hoop house garden bed to check the progress of the hundred beets we planted early in the winter. The greens look healthy and strong. For two months I have resisted the urge to harvest baby beets early. On occasion, I did harvest a few beets under the auspices of "thinning the bed." (Sometimes thinning a garden bed is necessary to give

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Arsenic found in Utah kids’ pee traced to their pet chickens’ feed

By • on July 8, 2010

Poison -  It's what's for breakfast!: A toxicologist for the Utah Department of Health tracked worrisome levels of arsenic in two children to the family’s backyard chicken coop — "along with the eggs that came out of it, the feed that went into the hens that laid them and, finally, widely used

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What does asthma have to do with farm animals — or food?

By • on January 18, 2010

When government officials hear the words "backyard livestock," they tend to worry about disease outbreaks and sanitation crises. And for good reason, as improperly managed animals — including dogs and cats —

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Report scrutinizes ties between Big Food, health organizations

By • on November 2, 2009

Ignore the man behind the curtain: Reporters Rick Montgomery and Alan Bavley examine the “marriages of convenience” between unhealthy food producers and organizations aimed at promoting health, such as the newly announced alliance between Coca Cola and the American Academy of Family Physicians.

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Flat world, fat world: Report from the Healthy Foods, Healthy Lives Symposium, part 1

By • on September 23, 2009

By Nicole de Beaufort On September 21, 2009 in Minneapolis, a crowd of 300 people representing more than 30 disciplines gathered for a symposium hosted by the Healthy Foods, Healthy Lives Institute

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Stanford Hospital gets Farm Fresh

By • on September 7, 2009

Recipe for wellness: Stanford Hospital and Clinics' new Farm Fresh project, launched in a pilot phase last month, brings organic, locally grown and sustainable food to any patient whose doctor approves it and doesn't cost a cent more than traditional fare. Other Northern California hospitals such as

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Time to ban practice of feeding poultry “litter” (eg poop & other waste) to cows

By • on September 1, 2009

File in the bulging folder of Really Bad Ideas: It's estimated that as much as 2 billion pounds of poultry litter (comprising chicken manure aka poop, feathers, spilled feed, bedding material, dead rodents, etc.) are fed to cattle every year. That's more than just gross — it courts mad cow disease,

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NYT mag on obesity: Don’t punish, politicize

By • on August 18, 2009

Who paves the road for the responsibility bandwagon?: Were it up to him, Cleveland Clinic heart surgeon Delos Cosgrove would amend the clinic's wellness policy--which already bans the hiring of smokers--to include a ban on the hiring of obese people. His is a hard-line approach linking obesity to personal

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Do I dare to eat a peach? Not a conventional one, says Tribune study

By • on August 13, 2009

Another day, another facet to the debate over whether organic produce is worth the extra moolah. Unless you've been living on a remote mountaintop with no wireless, you've probably witnessed the recent frenzy over a UK

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Obesity rates rising, health care system buckling

By • on July 1, 2009

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of fattiness: Tom Laskawy has a brutally pointed post about a new state-level study of obesity rates, which found that obesity rates among adults rose in 23 states over the past year and didn't decline anywhere. What's particularly worrying is that in every state, the "rate

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Modern therapy for the LOHAS set

By • on June 28, 2009

Will Peak Soil counseling be next? Clinical psychologist Kathy McMahon has branched out from the usual counseling topics to writing an advice column called Peak Oil Blues about the coming oil shortages. People write in with their worries, brag about how prepared

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Meaty diet found to be heavier in flame retardant PBDEs

By • on June 28, 2009

Free to be me and PBDE: Humans and many animals have become cocktails of chemicals, with a lifetime's "body burden" acquired from skin contact, breathing, drinking, and eating industrial materials. A newly released paper by researchers at Boston University investigates the role of diet in the body burden

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The price of cheap meat: Antibiotic resistance

By • on June 28, 2009

The good, the bad, and the buggy: A useful primer on antibiotic resistance, with two pages of illustrations, explains how bacteria develop resistance and pays special attention to the spread of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) from hospitals into the community, development of resistance

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When “no antibiotics” claims may be misleading

By • on June 15, 2009

This really bugs us: Conventional meat producers routinely feed their animals a steady diet of antibiotics to prevent illness and help them grow fatter faster. But in response to the growing numbers of consumers who hunger for meat and chicken raised naturally, without drugs, more are promoting their

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Health insurance woes strangling rural America

By • on June 14, 2009

FarmedicAid?: Excellent piece about how access to affordable health insurance is a major barrier for small business owners and farmers in rural America. One-third of farmers and ranchers depend on individual insurance — four times the rate for everyone else — and in many cases those premiums come

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