Essays
Austrian study (click 'See also') links genetically modified corn strain with diminishing fertility, size of mice. Upwards of 90 percent of U.S. soy, 60 percent of U.S. corn, come from gene-altered seeds, suffuse food system, yet government essentially doesn't regulate GMO food. Cause for hope is Obama's declaration for gene-altered organisms 'abetted by stringent tests for environmental and health effects and by stronger regulatory oversight guided by the best available scientific advice.'
By Tom Philpott
Grist 2008-12-12 (entry)
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With cheap food looming as crisis-in-the-making, Obama should consider a Cabinet-level agency over all food safety, enforcement and research. With low price as king, conglomerates trade foods from all over, and corners are cut. In U.S., 12 agencies administer 35 different food safety laws. Consumers must seek out sustainably produced foods - and vote with their pocketbooks.
By Aleda Roth
San Francisco Chronicle 2008-11-29 (entry)
Melamine has pervaded U.S. food system. It's added to fertilizer and accumulates in the farm fields. Last year, millions ate chicken that had been fed tainted gluten from China; Tyson Foods butchered hogs that had eaten tainted feed too. Meat was not recalled. China melamine scandal is opportunity for U.S. to pass fertilizer standards and to test for chemical.
By James E. McWilliams
The New York Times 2008-11-17 (entry)
The mackerel population is abundant, though a mercury advisory has been issued for King and Spanish varieties.
Now that we have caught large portion of all the fish in the sea and we're feeding fish to animals, not people, we have two choices. Either allow overfished species to return to sustainable levels while we broaden our appetites to include mackerel, sardines, anchovies and herring (click 'See also'), or face future of industrially farmed, flavor-deficient fish and accompanying environmental degradation.
By Mark Bittman
The New York Times 2008-11-16 (entry)
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Food industry would rather us not notice: its billions spent on ads to children; its donations to nutrition associations; its lobbying that has made food labels confusing; its minimizing of health concerns related to its products; that it fronts groups that fight obesity and that it tries to discredit critics. Opinion: Modifiable diet factors cause much more illness, death than car crashes, nutrition professor, pediatrician say (click 'See also').
By Adam Voiland
U.S. News & World Report 2008-10-17 (entry)
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Obama must decide what, how and why the whole of America eats. Food system guzzles 19 percent of fossil fuels, gushes up to 37 percent of greenhouse gas emissions; health care is sapping 16 percent of national budget, with four diet-related diseases making top 10 killers list; global food price crisis shows food can't be traded across borders like color television sets (click 'See also').
By Jess Halliday
FoodNavigator 2008-11-03 (entry)
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Americans who surged to the polls to give Barack Obama their votes are ready right now to give more. All you with time and energy left over: Help homeless and hungry people. Work for an environmental organization, a food pantry or a community garden, or all three. Tutor a vet who is aiming for college. Some local cause is struggling. Find it and pitch in.
By Lawrence Downs
The New York Times 2008-11-10 (entry)
Obama must grasp that food, climate, energy, economy are globally linked and must be solved together, and that atmospheric CO2 must be cut from 385 to 350 parts per million. Fossil-fuel use must cease by 2030; we must make massive investment in green energy; we need a Marshall Plan for carbon. And: Food/agriculture sector of economy produces more than one third of greenhouse gas emissions, says UN agency (click 'See also).
By Bill McKibben
The Guardian (UK) 2008-11-06 (entry)
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Barack Obama has opportunity to reposition global food crisis as critical foreign policy, and he should, since hunger is directly tied to civil unrest. Surely a world that found $1 trillion to rescue financial institutions can find $30 billion for short-term hunger needs and improvements to increase food production.
By Nancy Roman
World Food Program (UN)/Reuters AlertNet 2008-11-05 (entry)
With price of bread linked to that of petroleum, metal and other goods, and a billion people in extreme poverty, we must refine farming. Much of the world's best farmland in Russia, Ukraine, Africa produces nothing; poor infrastructure dooms 40 percent of world's food to rot. We need to invest in farming, make it globally desirable, productive, with tangible benefits.
By Doug Saunders
The Globe and Mail (Canada) 2008-10-25 (entry)
To progress on health care crisis, energy independence and climate change, new president must wean food system from fossil fuel and return it to diet of sunshine. Next, new policy must strive for healthful diet for all; improve reliance, safety and security of food supply; promote regional food economies; and reframe agriculture as part of solution to environmental problems.
By Michael Pollan
The New York Times 2008-10-12 (entry)
On border of Kazakhstan and China, conservationist has spent 70 years in 'fatherland' and forest of apples, cataloging as hedge against memories of famine. As solution to urbanization and loss, he proposes pairing restoration and commerce. Author (click 'See also'): Foragers and traditional farmers are food's safe-keepers. North America lost more than 15,000 apple varieties in 400 years.
By Gary Paul Nabhan
Orion Magazine 2008-05-01 (entry)
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Food is a prism of understanding. Grandma's pot roast, Daddy's salad dressing, the meal you ate when you first fell in love: we each have our own stories and they're more interesting with recipes. Food writing is a gentler, lovelier voyeurism that links our humanity. How better to know other families, other love stories, than through meals people share?
By Luisa Weiss
Tufts Magazine 2008-06-21 (entry)
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In society that takes comfort in its politicians hunching over burgers from the Dollar Menu at fast-food outlets, Alice Waters, with her Edible Schoolyard, is truly subversive. She plants seeds of honest taste memories in every child. To become American, Slow Food must figure out how to make sure everyone can afford a lovely, local bunch of carrots.
By John Birdsall
San Francisco magazine 2008-09-01 (entry)
In 1987, Joe Biden promised to hire an Italian chef if elected president, so he could always eat his favorite food. It was an unusual campaign promise, but indicative of his engaging personality that will mesh well with staid, more serious Barack Obama.
By Carl P. Leubsdorf
The Dallas Morning News 2008-08-23 (entry)
Urban farming could relieve strain on food supply, increase food independence, combat obesity. When dinner is plucked from balcony pots or lawn, carbon footprint nearly disappears. Want to cool cities cheaply? Plant crops on rooftops. It's an excuse to geek out with NASA tech. Best of all, it would reconnect us to our frontier spirit.
By Clive Thompson
Wired magazine 2008-08-18 (entry)
Summer tomatoes ripe and in vogue, says author/tomato farmer (click 'See also' for book review). Heirloom tomatoes, multi-colored and multi-cultural, replace Jersey beefsteaks in
regional cuisine. Think Hungarian heirloom tomato salad with black radishes, a salsa cruda of Oxhearts and grilled peaches.
By Tim Stark
The Washington Post 2008-08-13 (entry)
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Court papers show that Agriprocessors' human-resources employee helped distribute false green cards to Iowa slaughterhouse workers. In 2006, Swift official was charged with harboring illegals and failing to report crime after meatpacking raid. Companies seem to rely on a mid-level manager to create bogus documents, then claim ignorance.
By Rekha Basu
The Des Moines Register 2008-08-03 (entry)
Cool hobby of gardening teaches children skills that help them succeed.
Vegetable gardening has become wild and dangerous, a radical way to rebel against authority and subvert the dominant industrial-food paradigm, says longtime gardener, once the dweebiest of dorks who grew tomatoes outside his dorm room. Young people are flocking to the garden. We'll tend our veggies while we wait to see if our hobby is passing fad or lasting effort to diversify our food system. Click 'See also' for more columns.
By John Hershey
San Francisco Chronicle 2008-07-26 (entry)
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Social, cultural dimensions of our food system should raise great concerns for conservatives. Even the smallest acts of resistance to corporate-governmental collaboration on policy and nutritional guidelines are crucial to recovering local culture and will nurture ability to either govern or to resist centralized government.
By John Schwenkler
The American Conservative 2008-06-30 (entry)
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Genetically modified foods would reduce some effects of global warming, but lack of long-term safety studies and lack of global trust in agri-biotech firms hinders acceptance. Monsanto must show it cares for people and environment more than profit - by paying medical bills of those harmed by its products, cleaning up its environmental disasters, and by dropping the strong-arm tactics with farmers.
By Laura H. Kahn
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 2008-05-14 (entry)
When hunger drives people into conflict, mere food aid tends to fuel fighting, as combatants seek to harness it for goals of war. Immediate challenge is for international community to swiftly respond to widespread outbreaks of violence. Peacemakers must incorporate remedies to socioeconomic roots of conflict.
By Michael Vatikiotis
Bangkok Post 2008-05-26 (entry)
Mark Bittman: It's time to stop raising animals industrially and stop eating them thoughtlessly.
To ensure our health and the health of our planet, which are intertwined, we must reduce consumption of meat and processed foods, says longtime food journalist. Livestock production pollutes air, land, water and our bodies; if we eat more plants and less of everything else, we live longer. We don't need animal products, or white bread, or Coke - we're not born craving Whoppers or Skittles.
By Mark Bittman
TED: Ideas Worth Spreading 2007-12-04 (entry)
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Spring displays a disquieting undertone this season, not born simply from the news that the cost of rice has climbed out of reach for many but because it seems that time is ripening a little too quickly. Already, we have sweet, dark-green Lancaster County asparagus, and if summer rushes, local strawberries due in late May might shave a week or two off that. Meanwhile, we give thanks for April's showers.
By Rick Nichols
The Philadelphia Inquirer 2008-05-01 (entry)
Beyond rising population, economic growth (sea transport accounts for a third of the price of grain) and global warming, policy of ignoring agriculture has contributed to food crisis. World Bank now pushes investment in rural irrigation, roads, transport and energy. Since climate change threatens agriculture, we must produce more on less land and with less water - which leaves genetically modified plants - but their use is disputed.
By Frédéric Lemaître
Le Monde (Translation by Harry Forster); The Guardian Weekly 2008-02-27 (entry)
When it comes to food production, we need free trade. Rice feeds about half the world, but only about 5 to 7 percent of rice is traded across borders. Now, recent export restrictions are expected to lower international trade in rice. Those restrictions show farmers that their crops are least profitable precisely when the food is most needed, and could make shortages and high prices permanent.
By Tyler Cowen
The New York Times 2008-04-27 (entry)
Presidential candidates are missing opportunity to put food at the center of their green plans, to support beginning farmers and to champion communities' efforts, nationwide, to build local food sources including farmers' markets and edible gardens. Neither candidate has dared to address the farm/food bill and how it could catalyze a truly green economy.
By Anna Lappé
Grist 2008-04-22 (entry)
Despite food crisis, hedonism dominates food media. We assume readers want window to epicurean life, and we linger over fast rewards, not strategic planning. But food revolutionaries and their followers believe that industrially produced cheap food is not cheap. The time is right for mainstream voices to marry pleasures of the table with reality, to recommend less packaged food and less meat.
By Sara Dickerman
Slate 2008-04-16 (entry)
For what lies in the hearts and minds of the candidates, there are better places to look than their palates -- and their recipes. First families don't get to the White House because of their cooking, so let's stop pretending that politicians own well-thumbed copies of "The Fannie Farmer Cookbook," and let's stop asking them for family recipes.
By Walter Scheib
The New York Times 2008-04-20 (entry)
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Growing mint in a backyard garden means one less purchase at the supermarket.
The climate-change crisis, caused by our everyday choices, is upon us. We can tell ourselves stories to justify doing nothing; waiting for politicians or technology to solve the problem suggests we're not serious. But planting a garden reduces our sense of dependence. It's solar technology, it's nutritious, it's delicious, it's practically carbon-free, it reduces trash, it burns calories, it builds community and it sets a standard.
By Michael Pollan
The New York Times 2008-04-20 (entry)
Pasadena's new Whole Foods Market is Vegas with organic, gluten-free scones. First rule of sustainable architecture is keeping new buildings small and efficient. With 30-foot ceilings, endless aisles, 280 subterranean parking spots and TVs always on, this place is neither. Forget about doing more with less. This green-tinged cornucopia is about doing more with more.
By Christopher Hawthorne
Los Angeles Times 2008-04-06 (entry)
Slow Food is as "global" as McDonald's but networked, not hierarchical. It is a potent promotion machine that preserves for small elite the valuable goods and services that, as an economic system, globalization destroys. Tiny sacramental packages of gourmet products with irreducible rarity can't be sold to mass consumers because they don't scale up in volume. That's tough for capitalism but easy for a cultural network.
By Bruce Sterling
Metropolis magazine 2008-03-19 (entry)
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Until government awakens to approaching convergence of crises, we are at mercy of grocers. Expert believes that radical shift in diet, to mostly plant-based foods, is only long-term solution, considering dependence of industrial food system on oil and its rising price, land shortages due to appetite for meat, shortage of farmers, pressures on crop land by biofuels and effect of climate change.
By Rosie Boycott
The Guardian (UK) 2008-03-28 (entry)
Contrary to anti-biotech group's position, environmental impact from cross-pollination on seed and forage fields of Roundup Ready alfalfa is no different from that which exists conventionally. Anti-biotech movement goes past money lost to feeding and caring for people, and to the unavailability of biotech Golden Rice, with its high Vitamin A content that could prevent blindness in children.
By Harry Cline
Western Farm Press 2008-03-17 (entry)
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An appreciation of nature and life cycles begins in the garden (The Edible Schoolyard, above), then flows throughout the school day.
Placing the idea of the garden at the heart of school, beyond the transient thrills of consumption, nurtures regard for the natural world and life's cycles. We learned that nature wasn't limited to the garden; discussions flowed from the lunch tables to history classes, at our weekly faculty meeting and at assemblies.
By Philip Nix
ecoliteracy.org 2008-03-14 (entry)
Barack Obama says that inadequacy of food recall process is clear, since most Hallmark/Westland beef recalled had already been eaten. He says that if elected, he will hire more federal food inspectors and ask the USDA whether federal food safety laws need to be strengthened. He says that as a parent, 'there are few issues more important to me than ensuring the safety of the food that our children consume.'
BarackObama.com 2008-02-18 (entry)
With nation's largest beef recall under way, Hillary Clinton details the food safety plan she would pursue if elected. It includes increasing USDA food safety funding by more than 50 percent, creation of a Food Safety Administration, granting safety agencies recall authority, creation of a national tracing system, and prosecution of production facilities that allow unsafe food to enter our food supply.
HillaryClinton.com 2008-02-18 (entry)
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Plastic Bags, 2007. Depicts 60,000 plastic bags, the number used in the U.S. every five seconds. (Partial zoom.)
Giving up bottled water was easy - a chance to cloak cheapness in environmental virtue. Abandoning plastic bags is an inconvenience that means changing the hearts and minds of others. First, we must remember to bring our own bags, then there's the disbelief and disgust of cashiers as the lines lengthen behind us at the supermarket.
By Jane Black
The Washington Post 2008-02-06 (entry)
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Weed-free fields, fat yields lead nation's farmers to enrich agribusiness giants Archer Daniels Midland and Cargill, and to a devil's bargain with Monsanto, the maker of genetically modified seed and the weedkillers those seeds can tolerate. The company has used patent law to gain control of our two biggest crops - corn and soybeans - and voided the age-old tradition of seed-saving in farm country.
By Tom Philpott
Grist 2008-01-17 (entry)
See also
Real beneficiaries of cloning are the meatpacking companies - those that wish for nugget-shaped chickens. Anyone who really cares about food or farmers and their animals, likes different tastes, textures and delights and is more interested in diversity than uniformity. A cloned animal looks like what it is: a dead end.
By Verlyn Klinkenborg
The New York Times 2008-01-23 (entry)
Eating locally makes sense in the summertime, when tomatoes are ripe in Jersey, or the dates are golden in California. But in Ohio during winter? Herewith, a distovore's meal in which each component collected frequent flyer miles before they were gathered from Whole Foods.
By Joel Stein
Time magazine 2008-01-10 (entry)
Great thinkers gather to ponder their list of 100 fruits and vegetables, with the task a simple one: Which are standouts from the last 50 years? Some answers were off course (a pork sausage, a table, a Scrabble game), but in short: lemons, Brussels sprouts, celery, tomatoes, pawpaws, baked beans, mushrooms, pomegranates and beets.
By Craig Brown
The Telegraph (Great Britain) 2008-01-12 (entry)
Farmers, who know their turnips and tend their olives or harvest their wheat, can read the warming trend in harvests, or lack of them. Many are somewhere between disbelief and denial, but beyond the hard numbers, there's the UN panel on climate change, consistently sounding the alarm.
By Mort Rosenblum
The New York Times 2007-12-23 (entry)
Schools, desperate for money, accept money from fast-food companies in return for printing logos on report cards and more, but those savvy marketers aren't trying to sell one Happy Meal. They're branding their products early and often in impressionable young minds to build loyalty and create lifelong customers.
By Julie Deardorff |
Chicago Tribune 2007-12-16 (entry)
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The efficiency of factory farming may be nearing its limits. Two sacrifices of biological resilience are MRSA, a superbug that kills people, now found in concentrated animal feeding operations and in pig farmers; and the fatal epidemic among honeybees, pollinators of nuts, fruits and vegetables. What if researchers find that one cost of cheap meat is an epidemic of drug-resistant infection among young people?
By Michael Pollan
The New York Times 2007-12-16 (entry)
After rising by one-third in past year, food-price index is at its highest since it began in 1845. High prices offer an opportunity to break a cycle of crop subsidies without income loss. Doing so would help taxpayers, revive the stalled Doha round of world trade talks, boost the world economy, and directly help many of the world's poor.
The editors
The Economist 0000-00-00 (entry)
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With more space devoted to prepared foods and other goodies than to fresh fruits and vegetables, new Whole Foods in Pasadena commands a premium but provides a sense of self-satisfaction for patronizing such an ostensibly "green" business.
By David Lazarus
Los Angeles Times 2007-12-02 (entry)
Hand-washing, once a sign of gentility, respect for others, and a necessity since food was eaten out of hand, has fallen out of favor. Too bad for us. It's a low-tech, effective way to stop the spread of bacterial and viral infections.
By Katherine Ashenburg
The New York Times 2007-11-27 (entry)
For organic farmer, a food life list is about saving and savoring, about the communal act of eating with family and friends and the experience of real wasabi, true truffles and the perfect peach. It's about the value of quality over abundance and economy of scale.
By David Mas Masumoto
Los Angeles Times 2007-11-21 (entry)
After one meal of turkey with all the trimmings, 35 million Americans resume their places in line at soup kitchens, food banks and food stamp offices. It's time to rethink our devotion to food donation, and concentrate on ending poverty.
By Mark Winne
Washington Post 2007-11-18 (entry)
Eating local makes sense when the farmers' market is joyously abundant, but subsisting on root vegetables all winter is best as a well-told story. The best way to cut fossil fuel use is not to skip the Chilean grapes, but to avoid accidents and congestion by walking to the market.
By Tim Harford
Forbes.com 2007-11-15 (entry)
Slashing commodities subsidies addresses only a symptom, not the problem of the farm/food bill. Real reform in federal farm policy will come from changing the message to farmers, which, since the early '70s has increasingly been: Produce as much as you can."
By Tom Philpott
Grist 2007-11-08 (entry)
Addressing every ingredient or additive fear in this writer's pantry or refrigerator would require him dedicating his life to organic chemistry, so he's decided to have another glass of chardonnay and turn his attention away from the nutrition label.
By Eduardo Porter
The New York Times 2007-09-25 (entry)
Fasting for Ramadan helps writer with self-discipline and in achieving greater awareness of a plentiful food supply, the tendency for lavish spreads during iftar and their distraction from religion, and the extent of food waste.
By Aziz Junejo
The Seattle-Times 2007-09-15 (entry)
In a culture centered around meals and eating, Yom Kippur demands fasting, and that makes one writer recall childhood, when he contemplated fast food instead, and whether salt counts as nourishment.
By Michael Rosenberg
Detroit Free-Press 2007-09-24 (entry)
To celebrate Ganesh Chaturthi with modak - dumplings stuffed with coconut and jaggery - or moon-shaped karanji, or to eat stellar Indian food, go no farther than the nearest temple, where the prices are low, writer says.
By Chidanand Rajghatta
Times of India 2007-09-16 (entry)
Though armed and hungry guerrillas with a taste for wild meat often spell doom for mountain gorillas, it's Africa's demand for charcoal - cooking fuel -- that truly is endangering them, leveling forests and spoiling water for drinking and habitats, paleontologist says.
By Richard Leakey
BBC News 2007-09-10 (entry)
As country's importance grows in the international market, Chinese people should understand that there will be greater scrutiny of both country and products, so greater care for quality and food safety is important; errors would victimize its own people first.
By Wu Jianmin
People's Daily Online (China) 2007-08-27 (entry)
After Philadelphia Inquirer was sued for defamation for a restaurant critic's commentary, another critic contemplates restaurant reviews of the future, and ways to best guide diners in spending their discretionary dollars.
By Phil Vettel
Chicago Tribune 2007-07-19 (entry)
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Mountaintop removal coal mining, with toxic leftovers shoved into streams, foul residents' water and kill the fish; study traces mining pollution to children's nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, and shortness of breath; long-term effects unknown.
By Eric Reece
Orion Magazine 2006-01-01 (entry)
Big water has Coke, Pepsi and Nestle behind all those bottles of all that water being marketed as preferable to the stuff that flows from the tap, with one spokesperson comparing it to French wines and iPods, both of which are shipped long distances.
By Alex Beam
The Boston Globe 2007-08-20 (entry)
Vietnamese-American watches his former country's leader and listens to the demonstrators chanting for democracy, but to him, the first problem is the hunger of the begging children, and the desperate circumstances that cause a parent to abandon a child.
By Tam Pham
Asia Times 2007-08-16 (entry)
It's a stretch to blame the precipitous worldwide decline of marlin, swordfish, tuna and sharks on Hemingway, even figuring spawning rates over four generations, but quest for sportsman-trophy fish photos like his have targeted the at-risk bluefin tuna.
By Paul Greenberg
The New York times (may require subscription) (entry)
On the 25th anniversary of its release, Victor Schonfeld recalls the events that led to his creation of "The Animals Film," a British documentary using evocative, exploratory cinematography techniques to illuminate factory farming.
By Victor Schonfeld
The Guardian (UK) 2007-07-05 (entry)
