Head Start began as an eight-week demonstration project in 1965 to help break the cycle of poverty, providing preschool children of low-income families with a comprehensive program to meet their emotional, social, health, nutritional and psychological needs. Since then it has become the nation’s largest federally funded early child care and education program for children… Read More
Move over Grinch. The FDA is doing everything in its power to give American consumers a terrible holiday gift this year. Today they took the final step toward approving genetically engineered (GE) salmon, the first GE food animal. Even after countless Americans have expressed their deep concerns about this frankenfish, the FDA has turned a… Read More
‘Tis the season for giving thanks, counting blessings and reflecting on the year past. While many Americans may not be aware, we can all now be grateful that on November 27, President Obama signed the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act (WPEA) into law, providing federal government employees with the power to speak the truth … which consequently gives… Read More
The melons ripened just in time for our annual powwow on the Ioway Reservation near White Cloud, Kansas. The summer’s near-record heat and drought that engulfed much of the region was slightly less intense on our lands near the Missouri River, which allowed us to get a relatively good crop of blue hubbard squash, white corn, red amaranth, and yellow watermelon without a drop of irrigation. Read More
Before Whole Foods, Martha Stewart and Anthropologie got wind of Anarchy In a Jar, Laena McCarthy’s jam, jelly and preserves company was simply a way to put her passion into practice. She grew up watching her mom can food, and then in college, made the connection between those early impressions of DIY sustainability with a new curiosity for food politics.
A botched batch of strawberry jam eventually led to launching her own company in 2009, amidst what McCarthy describes in her new cookbook, Jam On, as “a food-production renaissance blossoming in Brooklyn.” Perhaps it was luck, as she says, or perhaps her key to success is her innovative ingredient combinations, sourcing directly from small farms, or choosing to recreate recipes with less sugar than usual. What began as a revolutionary idea against the norm, to share with the public pure, concentrated, clean flavors, is today flourishing from coast to coast. Although somewhat ironic, from “anarchy” to popularity, the wide approval is a heartening sign that the consumer is primed for knowing more about where their food comes from. And in this case, that food happens to be quite delicious. Read More
Brahm Ahmadi spends a lot of time thinking about something most people take for granted: grocery stores.
But it hasn’t always been this way. As one of the founders of the nonprofit People’s Grocery in West Oakland—the Bay Area’s most notorious food desert—he and his colleagues started out with more affordable, less ambitious projects, like a mobile food delivery service and a local community-supported agriculture (CSA) box. But it quickly became clear—as several grocery chains tried to enter the neighborhood and failed, and residents were left relying on corner stores or taking long trips by public transportation to other neighborhoods—that the area needed a reliable, independent grocery store. Read More
Environmental advocate/writer Kerry Trueman checks in with food politics pioneer and NYU nutrition professor Dr. Marion Nestle, whose most recent book is Why Calories Count, with Malden Nesheim. You can read more of Nestle’s insights at food politics.com and follow her on Twitter @marionnestle. Nestle is currently working on her next book, Eat, Drink, Vote: The Illustrated Guide to Food Politics, due out from Rodale in September 2013. Read More
At a time when over 50 million people are food insecure and we face an obesity crisis, it’s a shame that 40% of food is never eaten. A closer look shows us that Americans are tossing 52% of the nation’s nutritious fruits and vegetables[i] – wasting produce, more than any other type of food product, including seafood, meat, grains and dairy, at nearly every level across the supply chain.
Some of this massive produce loss is happening well before it reaches retailers, as perfectly edible produce is literally being left on the field or sent to the landfill. And many of these good fruits and vegetables are never even harvested. A new report commissioned by NRDC investigates losses at the farm level. Read More
The Vancouver Sun’s headline this week read almost like it was from The Onion: “Body slamming piglets to death humane, pork experts say.”
But it wasn’t a joke. Unfortunately, the article was about the pork industry’s response to the latest animal cruelty investigation, an exposé which documented severe and routine abuse on a pig factory farm. Caught on tape were standard pork industry practices such as slamming live pigs against concrete, locking pigs in tiny cages for months on end, cutting parts of their bodies off without painkiller and more. Read More
GMOs, trans-fats, and buying local. Food retail in underserved communities, farmland protection, and kicking soda out of public schools. That’s just a partial list of the cutting edge food and agriculture issues seizing the attention of lawmakers and advocates across the country. While hot policy topics like these are heating up everywhere, the places where they are currently burning the brightest are in the nation’s state capitols.
Though the federal government passes mega-legislation like the farm and child nutrition bills once every five years, the spirit of local innovation and the relative flexibility of state governments – to say nothing of the incessant tug of war between Washington and the states – means there’s always something daring being cooked up in state policy kitchens. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, which tracks state food and farm legislation, 41 states enacted 77 laws during the 2009 and 2010 sessions related to school nutrition, food access, and direct marketing. If one were to add in a host of legislation related to food security, food safety, and farmland protection, the numbers would be far into the hundreds every year. Read More
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